The Health Ministry gave few details in its brief report on the first human cases of the disease in the world’s most populous nation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been helping Chinese officials to investigate two cases in central Hunan province, where a girl died of pneumonia and her brother survived. Both had initially tested negative, officials said. The third case was in neighbouring Anhui province and had not been reported previously.

He Junyao, 9, is recovering in hospital in central China after receiving treatment for bird flu. Qi Xiaoqiu, the director of disease control for the Health Ministry, said: “During the early stage, antibodies were not found, but now the boy is positive. The WHO has a set of procedures to confirm a case, and it usually takes two laboratories to confirm.”

The boy, from Hunan province, fell ill last month, at about the same time that his sister, He Yin, 12, died from bird flu-like symptoms. The children were sickened by eating one of their family’s ducks, which had been found dead. The girl had a fever and a cough the day after the duck was served. Her father said that she became weak and pale, and doctors said that she died of a lung infection six days later. The family has spent about £700 on their children’s treatment.

In Liaoning, the worst-hit province, officials said that they had vaccinated 320 million poultry and slaughtered 15 million. Daily checks are being carried out on 72,000 people, and six are in hospital for observation. More than a million people, including soldiers, have been drafted in to work on bird flu prevention. Four of China’s nine outbreaks of the H5N1 virus have happened in the province.

Feng Xiao, whose chickens were the first in Taian village, in Heishan county, to die of the virus, said: “I was very frightened. Some of my chickens were sick when I fed them in the morning, and when I came back after lunch they were dead. I knew it must be bird flu because trucks go down the streets every day broadcasting warnings.” Within hours his 3,800 birds had been burnt. Two days later all 160,000 poultry in the village were destroyed. Villagers, speaking under the gaze of nervous officials, said that they were happy with their compensation of 70p a chicken, even though they could earn twice as much in the market. “We have faith in the party and the Government,” Mr Feng said.

Police roadblocks had been set up on all roads leading to Heishan county. Vehicles had to drive over corn straw matting, where they stopped to be sprayed with disinfectant. Carpets of lime surrounded the village. Officials acknowledged that they had run into opposition to the cull, despite the offer of compensation. Zhou Liyuan, a spokesman for Liaoning province, said: “The masses did not understand why we had to kill their chickens, and some had strong opinions.”

No chicken survives within a three-mile radius of the outbreaks. “You can’t even hear a cock crow,” Zhao Wenxiang, a Taian villager, said. Officials said that they were confident that one woman in hospital for pneumonia would not test positive for bird flu.

The spectre of bird flu spreading to humans has prompted more openness on the part of China, especially after the furore when it emerged that some officials had tried to conceal the outbreak of Sars two years ago. “The virus is mutating, and mutating very quickly,” Zhao Zhuo, the director of the provincial centre for disease control and prevention, said. “And it is becoming more virulent.”

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