A woman who recently returned from Thailand has been taken to tropical diseases clinic in Hamburg, suspected of having bird flu, German officials said today.
A woman who travelled with her was also taken to the clinic, but is not thought to be infected. Final tests on the woman being examined are expected to be released tomorrow.
Elsewhere, two people have died from bird flu in the past 24 hours in Asia. The death of an man (18) in Ho Chi Minh City today brought the number of Vietnam fatalities to nine while Thailand reported its third death.
The man was killed less than a week after his admission to hospital. It is the second death in south Vietnam.
In Thailand, a 58-year-old woman has died and a seven-year-old boy is being given a 30 per cent chance of survival after his infection was confirmed.
The deadly H5N1 strain of the virus was first detected in humans in Hong Kong in 1997, when it killed six people. It showed up a second time in humans in 2003, when a Hong Kong man died.
The disease is passed to humans though close contact with poultry and fowl. But two sisters who died in late January after caring for their sick brother may have caught it from their sibling, the World Health Organization said yesterday.
If confirmed, it will be the first known instance of human-to-human infection and will heighten concern of a pandemic as bad or worse than the recent SARS outbreak.