China closes poultry sale in second city after bird flu outbreak
Hangzhou suspended live poultry trade, making it the second city in China to take this action since an unusual strain of bird flu has hit the country.
Shanghai is the other city to close live poultry trading after the outbreak that has left six dead.
Chinese authorities have killed more than 20,000 birds from a live-poultry trading zone in Shanghai in an effort to deal with the issue.
The cull at the Shanghai poultry trading zone came as researchers in the United States said they had started work on developing a vaccine for H7N9.
The H7N9 avian flu virus had been found in pigeons. The virus had not previously been found in humans until a series of cases were reported in China this week.
As of Saturday morning, China has confirmed 16 human infections of the H7N9 avian flu virus.
One victim, 64-year-old man, died Thursday hours after doctors had confirmed he had been infected with the H7N9 virus, Chinese officials said.
No cases of human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 virus have been confirmed so far.
"We don't know yet where the humans got their virus from," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who heads the epidemiology and prevention branch in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) influenza division.
The virus has not been shown to spread easily between humans, he added.
The CDC, based in Atlanta, is working closely with Chinese authorities trying to find the source of the human infections.
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