Malaysia said on Wednesday seven people living near an area with bird flu were being treated in hospital, while India nervously waited to see if a group of 12 in quarantine were the country's first human victims of the virus. The seven, including five children aged between 2 and 12, all had respiratory problems and test results would be available within a day, the health minister was quoted as saying by Reuters. On Tuesday, Malaysia and Hungary joined 13 other countries this month to report outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in birds but none of the newly affected nations has reported human cases. Alarm is growing at the sudden resurgence of the virus in recent weeks as it spreads rapidly across Europe, into Africa and now India, where hundreds of millions of people live in rural areas side-by-side with livestock and domestic fowl. Experts fear it is just a matter of time before the virus mutates and spreads easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Indian health workers, some wringing the necks of chickens, others using poison, are carrying out a mass cull of birds to try to stamp out the country's first outbreak of the virus. The dozen quarantined people have been placed in an isolation ward at a hospital in Navapur town in the western state of Maharashtra, where H5N1 was found in poultry on Saturday. Those quarantined either had flu-like symptoms or were kept there as a precautionary measure. Blood samples from dozens of other people were also being tested, officials said. "The initial results are expected today (Wednesday) evening," Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra's top health official, told Reuters. "We are keeping our fingers crossed." Adding to fears, there were reports of more poultry dying beyond Maharashtra, where the sudden deaths of 50,000 birds heralded the initial outbreak. Malaysian Health Minister Chua Soi Lek told reporters the seven residents lived within 300 metres of the affected area on the edge of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, where 40 infected chickens died last week in the country's first outbreak in more than a year. "Those warded are the ones exposed to the chickens," he said, using a common term for admission to hospital.
