Updated 15 April 2013, 22:41 AEST
Chinese state media have urged people to keep eating chicken and help revive the country's poultry industry, as the number of bird flu deaths rises to 14.
The Chinese poultry industry lost 10 billion yuan (USD $1.6 billion) in the week after the H7N9 bird flu virus began infecting humans.
Altogether 61 people have been confirmed as infected and 14 have died in the two weeks since Chinese authorities said they found the strain in humans for the first time.
"The public should somewhat restrain their anxieties to avoid this becoming a disaster for the whole poultry industry," the Global Times said in an editorial, adding that not eating poultry was "unfair to farmers".
The newspaper has called the avoidance of such foods "excessive anxiety" and urged people instead to "demonstrate a collective spirit beyond individualism".
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), influenza viruses are inactivated by temperatures above 70 degrees Celsius and it is therefore safe to eat well-cooked meat products.
The number of cases jumped from 40 over the weekend and spread for the first time beyond Shanghai and three nearby provinces, with two cases reported just west in Henan and one in Beijing.
Beijing health officials said on Monday a boy in the capital, who had been put under observation because he was a close contact of a H7N9 patient, tested positive for the virus but was suffering no symptoms of illness.
Experts fear the prospect of such viruses mutating into a form easily transmissible between humans, which would have the potential to trigger a pandemic.
But WHO says there is not yet evidence of human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 bird flu virus.
Earlier WHO China representative, Michael O'Leary, said more cases of infection were to be expected.
"I think there's no way to predict how it'll spread," Mr O'Leary said.
"We are still looking intensively for the reservoir of infections but the suspicions remain in birds, chickens, ducks and poultry.
"Because it is sporadic...we are sure that other cases will emerge." http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2013-04-15/chinese-urged-to-eat-poultry-despite-bird-flu-cases/1116582?
