A 16-year-old male student had been confirmed as infected with bird flu in central China's Hunan Province, the fourth case of human bird flu found in China in 2009, said a provincial government official on Monday.

The student, surnamed Wu, fell ill on January 8 in southwestern Guizhou Province, said the official from the Hunan provincial health bureau.

Wu was transferred to a hospital in Huaihua City on January 16 when his condition worsened.

The patient is still in a critical condition, the official said.

According to the test result on Monday from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wu tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

The patient had had contact with poultry, the official said. But no more details had been revealed.

The people who had close contact with the patient are under medical observation. No one has been found ill so far.

In the northern Shanxi Province, a two-year-old girl surnamed Peng was confirmed to be infected with the same virus on Saturday.

The toddler had been in critical condition and doctors had been trying to brought the virus under control, local health officials said on Sunday.

The 67 people who had close contact with the girl had been under observation but no one was found infected.

A 27-year-old woman surnamed Zhang died of bird flu in east China's Shandong Province on Saturday, which was the second death caused by avian influnza in the country in the new year.

The first death this year from bird flu was a 19-year-old woman named Huang Yanqing who died in Beijing on January 5.

(Xinhua News Agency January 20, 2009)