JAKARTA Indonesia’s health ministry said today that H5N1 avian influenza virus samples it sent to a World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory in the United States in February showed no signs of mutation, according to a Reuters report.

On Feb 22, Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza division at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Indonesia’s health ministry shipped 15 clinical samples to the CDC lab, which is a WHO collaborating facility. She said the samples were from two patients whose infections were confirmed by the WHO on Feb 5 and 12.

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JAKARTA A 3-year-old Indonesian boy has died of bird flu, bringing the nation’s death toll from the disease to 105, health officials said Saturday. It was the second bird flu death reported in one day in Indonesia, where health officials announced earlier that a 16-year-old boy from Central Java province had also died from the disease.

The latest victim was identified only as Han, a 3-year-old boy from southern Jakarta who died Friday at a hospital in the eastern part of the capital, Jakarta, radio El-Shinta reported. Nyoman Kandun, a senior official at Health Ministry, confirmed the report but did not provide details. Laboratory tests confirmed the boy had been infected with the dangerous H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, Kandun said.