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Jakarta confirms 2 more flu deaths
 Workers disinfect the road as villagers look on at a checkpoint in Qitaizi village, China. RELATED
SPECIAL REPORT
• Bird flu: What you need to know
• Interactive: What is influenza?
SPECIAL REPORT
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- The World Health Organization has confirmed two more people in Indonesia have died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, one day after it reported China's first known death from the virus. Of the 11 patients diagnosed with bird flu in Indonesia, seven have died. Indonesia's health ministry on Thursday described the most recent victims as a 16-year-old-girl who died last week and a 20-year-old woman who died last weekend. Both lived in Jakarta. On Wednesday, the WHO confirmed two people were diagnosed with catching bird flu in China, including a female poultry worker who died from the H5N1 strain in the world's most populous nation. Until now, humans have caught the virus from direct contact with birds, but experts fear the H5N1 strain may mutate so it becomes easily transmissible between people, triggering a worldwide flu pandemic. WHO spokesman Dick Thompson says the organization does not have enough samples to confirm if a 12-year-old girl who died October 17 in China contracted the virus because she was cremated. The two confirmed cases are the girl's 9-year-old brother, who became ill last month in Hunan but survived, and the 24-year-old poultry worker in Anhui who died on November 10, Thompson said. "This is a psychologically telling moment for a country that has never had bird flu cases in the past in humans," Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing, told The Associated Press. "This will drive home to citizens across the country that this can happen in our own backyards," he said. "It's a very real threat." China has suffered 11 outbreaks in poultry over the past month, which prompted authorities to destroy millions of birds, and officials had warned a human infection was inevitable. Nevertheless, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng in Geneva told AP the Chinese cases do not increase the risk of a pandemic because there has been no observed genetic change in the virus and no apparent spread between people. Health workers armed with vaccine and disinfectant have raced to inoculate billions of chickens and other poultry in a massive campaign to contain the virus after the Chinese government announced plans Tuesday to vaccinate all the country's 14 billion domestic fowl. The flu has spread rapidly among birds, first in Southeast Asia and more recently in Europe. However, human cases have only been reported in Asia. More than 125 people have been infected with the H5N1 avian flu strain in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, according to the Centers of Disease Control. About half of those have died. Earlier this month, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged nations to make immediate preparations for a possible pandemic of bird flu. While it is not yet clear if the H5N1 strain will ever gain the ability to infect large numbers of people, Annan said world leaders cannot ignore the threat it poses. The bird flu is expected to top the agenda when health ministers from G7 nations and the WHO meet in Rome on Thursday. Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report. 
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