DHAKA: When a 39-year-old furniture factory owner named He came down with flu symptoms late last year, he wasn’t worried.

According to his family, the man, who worked in Guangdong province in southern China, had always been healthy, reports CNN.

Weeks later, He was on a ventilator. Hospitalized for about 20 days, he slipped into a vegetative state and later died, his family said.

He was diagnosed as having H7N9 virus, a new strain of avian flu that jumped from birds to humans for the first time last year, said his close cousin, who requested not to be identified.

‘I couldn’t believe it,’ she said. ‘How could this happen to him? It all came so suddenly to a healthy person’.

In recent weeks, China has seen a spike in cases and experts are worried that infections will gather pace as the country celebrates the Lunar New Year this week - a peak time for travel and for poultry sales.

Cases have also been reported in Taiwan and in Hong Kong, which on Tuesday began culling 20,000 chickens after a sample of live chicken imported from mainland China tested positive for H7 viruses.

According to the WHO, most of the human cases were exposed to the H7N9 virus through contact with poultry or contaminated environments, such as live bird markets,

BDST: 1410 HRS, JAN 28, 2014