China reports another spate of bird flu He might not be open for business any time soon. The Chinese state news agency reported Wednesday that 14 new cases of bird flu were identified Tuesday and that two more people died, bringing the total number of cases to 77, with 16 dead since March 31. Although initially discovered in Shanghai and its neighboring provinces, this strain of bird flu, the H7N9 virus, has broken out in several places, including Beijing, and might be slowly gaining pace. The government is urging people to move quickly to head off the spread of the disease, most importantly closing down chicken markets. And many urban residents who keep pigeons as pets are trying to figure out what to do with their beloved birds. So far, it does not appear that this strain of bird flu has spread from person to person, which government officials have stressed. But one new case involves a 4-year-old who has tested positive for the flu virus without showing any symptoms; a World Health Organization official in Geneva said the child might have caught it from "close and prolonged contact" with one of the other patients. "I think we're in unknown territory," Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said in an e-mail. The risk is that the H7N9 virus mutates so that it no longer just jumps from birds to people, but starts to go from people to people as in all the big flu pandemics. Hotez said there is "no evidence this has happened yet, but it's something that requires vigilance." He added that "the likelihood of a true pandemic is still small - but not zero." Various ramifications The bird flu, which has killed more than one in every five people who have caught it, poses a political as well as public health challenge for the Chinese government. In 2002, an epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) broke out in Guangdong, but the Chinese government under then-president Jiang Zemin did not report it to the World Health Organization until February 2003, after reports appeared elsewhere. Even then, the government underestimated the number of cases, hindering a more effective response, according to its critics. Ultimately, SARS infected 8,273 people and killed 775 in 37 countries. When Jiang's successor, Hu Jintao, took office in March 2003, he and his premier, Wen Jiabao, sought to distinguish themselves by providing more information about the SARS epidemic.