Vietnam family tests negative for bird flu

HANOI: A Vietnamese family has tested negative for bird flu, a health official said on Sunday, after their hospital admission with respiratory ailments had sparked fears of a resurgence in human infections.   

The mother and her three children fell ill a week earlier after eating a chicken that had died on their farm in Ca Mau, one of three southern provinces where the H5N1 strain of the virus has killed poultry this month.   

But tests at Ho Chi Minh City's Pasteur Institute found that the family was not infected with the avian influenza virus, which between 2003 and 2005 killed 42 people in Vietnam, said the institute's Dr Phan Van Tu.   

"All four people, the mother and her three children from Ca Mau province, on Saturday tested negative for the H5N1 virus," Tu said.

"They were suffering normal pneumonia."