China's chief veterinarian Jia Youlin on Friday denied the existence and spread of a new strain of H5N1 bird flu called "Fujian-like virus", as was suggested in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the United States.

"In fact, there is no such thing as 'Fujian-like virus'," Jia said at a press conference hosted by the press office of the State Council, China's cabinet.

"The data used in the article are erroneous and the research methodology is unscientific. The conclusions of the paper are untenable and contravene the facts," said Jia, director of the Ministry of Agriculture's Veterinary bureau.

Rob Webster, of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and Guan Yi, from Hong Kong University, said in their paper that the new strain had already spread to Malaysia, Laos and Thailand, and may cause a major outbreak in Asia and Europe.

Jia questioned the reliability of the paper's data. Guan claimed that he collected over 50,000 samples from Fujian, Guangdong and four other provinces. But Jia said none of the veterinary authorities in these provinces received applications from him as required by law.

Guan also failed to indicate the location and owners of the fowls he used, against internationally accepted standards, Jia said.

If Guan had bought 50,000 poultry in markets for his research, then he would not have used only 76 blood serum samples to support his study, as blood serum tests are quite simple, Jia added.

The only option left, he said, is that Guan collected his samples from manure gathered in fowl markets.

If this was the case, then his results could not be exact, because manure can be easily mixed with other materials and polluted, Jia said.

The PNAS paper also claimed that the bird flu vaccines widely used in China were no longer effective because the virus had mutated. This was also rejected by Chen Hualan, director of China's National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory.

Chen said her laboratory had been following the mutations very closely and that whenever a new virus was detected, they tested the vaccines to check if they were still effective.

She said their data showed that the vaccines currently used were very effective on known bird flu viruses, including those found on water fowls in southern China.

China has also been developing new vaccines to cope with mutated viruses. Chen said a new vaccine had been developed against mutated viruses found in Shanxi and Ningxia provinces earlier this year.

Vaccines produced in China have been widely used in Vietnam and Mongolia, where no outbreaks have been recorded for quite some time.

"This shows our vaccines have been very effective," Chen said.

Source: Xinhua