The Egyptian Health Ministry confirmed on Sunday that a two-year-old baby has been infected with the bird flu virus, bringing the number of human cases of bird flu to 53 in the country.

    Shorouk Said, from the Delta governorate of Minufiya, some 65 km north of Cairo, was admitted to hospital on Friday, Health Ministry spokesman Abdel-Raham Shahin told the state-run MENA news agency.

    The baby girl contracted the deadly virus after being in contact with infected birds, said Shahin.

    This is the second case of human bird flu reported in Egypt in 2009.

    On Jan. 12, a 21-month-old baby girl from Kerdasa, in the northern Egyptian governorate of the 6th of October, was reported to have been infected with the virus.

    In last December, an 16-year-old Egyptian girl in the southern Egyptian governorate of Asyut died of bird flu, bringing the death toll from the human cases of bird flu in the country to 23.

    Egypt first reported the H5N1 bird flu virus in dead poultry in the country in Feb. 2006 and discovered the first human case the following month.