JAKARTA, October 25, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A fourth person died Tuesday, October 25, from bird flu in Indonesia as a scientist accused the government of covering up the initial outbreak, while China was struck by another outbreak of the virus amid warnings that the lethal disease could cost the Asia region up to 290 billion dollars.

Indonesian Health ministry official Renuizar Rusin confirmed the country now has four bird flu fatalities, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"We now have seven cases of bird flu, including four fatalities," health ministry official Renuizar Rusin said.

Another ministry official, Hariyadi Wibisono, said the latest victim was a 23-year-old man who died on September 30 in Bogor, south of Jakarta.

Results received Monday from tests conducted in Hong Kong confirmed the cause of death, he said.

WHO Indonesia director Georg Petersen said the victim had a history of contact with birds.

"As far as we know this H5N1 is circulating in birds in Indonesia. As long as that happens we expect there will be occasional infections in humans. It doesn't mean the situation has changed," Petersen told AFP.

Scientists fear the current H5N1 strain may mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus that would make it highly infectious as well as lethal -- possibly killing millions worldwide.

The WHO raised Indonesia's human death toll from bird flu to four on its website.

Wibisono said samples taken from people who had contact with the deceased had been analyzed and returned negative.

Some 44,736 birds have been culled in China, but the virus keeps popping up at different places. (Reuters)

Meanwhile, Chairul Nidom, an Indonesian microbiologist who first revealed the bird flu outbreak, said the government covered up the outbreak among poultry for about six months and tried to halt it secretly using dubious vaccines imported from China.

Only a day after Nidom announced the outbreak in January last year the government confirmed it, Nidom, a researcher at the Center for Tropical Diseases at Airlangga University in Surabaya, told AFP.

"The government has in the past often been tardy in anticipating outbreaks and it seems that old habits die hard. Little has changed," he said.

"If action had been taken promptly, the damage wouldn't have been great and the risks to humans could have been minimized," Nidom added.

Despite the great fears worldwide resulting from the deadly virus, Indonesia's official news agency Antara and one of its leading dailies – Jakarta Post – had almost no news, reports or editorials on the issue Tuesday.

The only piece of news appearing on the Post's online edition Tuesday, was a short piece of news taken from AFP about the fourth human casualty of the virus.

The WHO says bird flu has to be defeated in Asia if the world wants to see the threat coming to end. But in China's Anhui province, 2,100 geese and chickens were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus that has killed at least 60 people in Asia since late 2003, two-thirds of them in Vietnam, according to AFP.

The outbreak, the sixth in China this year, was detected on October 20 in Liangying village and so far 550 birds have died, according to a Ministry of Agriculture report to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).

Another 44,736 birds have been culled, as China strengthened monitoring around the country, winning praise from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

"They report the outbreaks swiftly and the cooperation is very smooth, especially in information sharing," FAO China representative Noureddin Mona told AFP.

Several countries have already announced plans to build stocks of antiviral drugs and vaccines to combat the threat. Governments also have destroyed some 140 million birds wherever the virus has been found.

"All of these measures are good, but they are only the second line of defense," FAO head Jacques Diouf told AFP. "The real battleground is on the animal front."

The Asian Development Bank warned Tuesday that a severe outbreak of avian influenza could cost the Asia-Pacific region alone between 250 billion and 290 billion dollars.

According to its preliminary estimates, the Manila-based bank believes that even a relatively mild pandemic could cost the region around 90-110 billion dollars due to the effects of reduced consumption, investment and trade, reported AFP.

The bank said the various stages of a growing human pandemic would have widespread and serious implications for economic development and the welfare of people in the region and beyond, with health systems overwhelmed.

After its emergence in Asia in 2003, the H5N1 strain finally jumped to Europe this month with outbreaks reported in Turkey, Romania and Russia's south Urals region of Chelyabinsk.