China said a fresh outbreak of bird flu was free of any human infections, but three people on a French island off Africa were being tested on Wednesday in what were thought to be the first suspected human cases outside Asia, Reuters reported. "These three people who all travelled to Thailand have visited a bird zoo where they had come into contact with birds," French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said of the tourists who were now back home on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. "Initial tests have been done there and these came out positive," he said, but fuller results would only be ready on Thursday. "For the moment, these are only suspected bird flu cases. Nothing is confirmed." In China's new outbreak of the virulent H5N1 strain of avian flu, its third case since last week, hundreds of chickens and ducks died in a village in central Hunan province. Beijing notified the United Nations on Tuesday, according to the Web site of the World Organisation for Animal Health. In Europe, where the first cases of the disease surfaced in recent weeks as birds migrate for winter, Croatia confirmed H5N1 killed some dead swans found by a pond there last week. Sixty-two people have died from the virus after close contact with birds in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. H5N1 cannot pass between humans but scientists fear it could mutate to do so, unleashing a pandemic that could kill large numbers.
