While China continues to wrestle H7N9 which had so far claimed 35 lives, it has succumbed to yet another subtype of the Influenza A viruses, this time the H5N1. The country had reported an outbreak in its southern part Tibet, where a child has died and 64 other children remain infected.

Local health authorities theorized the children contracted the disease from eating live chickens that were sold 10 days earlier.

The children came from the Guangxi autonomous region. But cases were likewise detected in the villages of Dingsan and nearby Eshan. School authorities ordered the closure of the Dingsan Elementary School to prevent further spreading.

Health experts are now looking at a possible angle that the Tibet outbreak did not originally start from there.

A village resident relayed to The Epoch Times that peddlers from Nanning brought in truckloads of chickens and sold them at very low prices 10 days before the outbreak. He noted the flu symptoms started appearing five days later.

"Locals believe these chickens were already carrying the influenza virus. A chicken usually costs around 20 yuan each (AU$3.29), but these ones were only 8 to 15 yuan each. The people here bought them to eat as they didn't realize the chickens were infected," the villager said.

First detected in 2009, the H5N1 became a world-wide pandemic also in the same year. Although the World Health Organization said the pandemic was already over in August 2010, H1N1 is still very much actively circulating.