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May 18 (foodconsumer.org) - A cluster of bird flu deaths in an Indonesian family has sparked widespread fears that the highly pathogenic virus might have mutated into a form that can easily transmit among people, the World health Organization (WHO) said May 16.

Bird flu is a disease of birds and it is not easy for humans to catch it from animals. So far, almost all reported cases of bird flu deaths have been caused by direct contact with dead or sick birds.

News reports say at least five members from the extended family in North Sumatra, Indonesia were confirmed by a WHO.-accredited laboratory in Hong Kong to have died of bird flu.

The first in the family to die was a 37-year-old woman who came down with an unknown disease on April 27, two days before a family barbecue and died May 4, New York Times reported, citing recomninomics.com, a site that tracks g enetic changes in infectious disease.

It remains unknown whether the 37-year-old woman in the family died of bird flu because no sample from the woman was collected.

After the barbecue and before the woman died, six family members fell ill and five died from May 9 to May 14. There is no reporting whether the barbecue served as the cause of the bird flu deaths.

Besides the five deaths confirmed to be of bird flu, a sixth family member, a 10-year-old boy, also died and tests for bird flu are underway.

In Indonesia, bird flu in humans has been reported in clusters a few times. But this cluster has been the largest so far, which makes people more worried about the possibility that the virus might have become more contagious.

"It is too early to draw a conclusions," Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the WHO responded when asked if the virus transmitted from person to person killing the cluster of five people.

"I have not heard any suggestion that the virus is any different," Reuters reported, quoting Cheng as saying. But that does not mean we can exclude the possibility of human to human transmission.

Indonesia's health Ministry flatly rejected the speculation that the Sumatra cluster is a case of human-to-human transmission, according to Reuters.

"The spread was through risk factors from poultry or other animals. There is no proof of human to human," Nyoman Kandun, director-general of disease control, told Reuters.

However, tests on animal samples including mature indicated that no animals in or near the family carried the bird flu virus, which virtually excluded the possibility of the conventional animal-to-human transmission.

Even more worrying is the unusual long time lag of nine days between the first and last victims showing symptoms of the disease, Hong Kong virologist Guan Yi pointed out. This tells us that the virus may be able to transmit from one person to another. But there is no evidence to confirm.

In contrast to earlier reports that animals tested negative for bird flu, Bloomberg cited a minister as saying on Thursday May that pigs tested positive for bird flu in the same village on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island where five people from a family have been confirmed infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

The pig samples from the village were tested in a leading animal research centre on Java Island. "After we brought them to Bogor (a West Java city), the serology test found positive results. From 11 pig samples, 10 are positive. Reconfirmation testings are still underway," Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono told reporters on Thursday. He did not say of the H5N1 virus.

If confirmed, the finding of bird flu in pugs could also cause a concern. Pigs can serve as a vehicle in which human genes may get into the virus making it more infectious to humans and killing more people.

Another confirmed, but isolated death of bird flu was reported on Wednesday in East Java, Indonesia. The victim was a 38-year-old catering businesswoman in Surabaya who had dealt with live pigs and pork meat before she died last week.

Two WHO officials are investigating the largest cluster of human bird flu cases in Indonesia's North Sumatra province.

The recent confirmed five deaths bring up to 30 the total of human bird flu deaths in Indonesia.

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