A 35-year-old poultry market cleaner in northern Vietnam has contracted bird flu, which has killed 47 people in Asia, the Lao Dong newspaper reported on Tuesday. 

It said the woman was taken to hospital on Feb. 24 and tests confirmed on Monday she had the virus, which experts fear could mutate into a form that could pass between people and unleash a global influenza pandemic that might wipe out millions.

The woman, from a Hanoi district, is the latest bird flu patient detected in northern Vietnam, where fewer outbreaks have been reported in recent weeks, but where the cool spring weather still favors the spread of the H5N1 virus.

Officials said the virus killed a 69-year-old man last week and infected another two, all of them in the northern province of Thai Binh, 70 miles southeast of Hanoi and far from the southern Mekong Delta where the outbreaks began in December.

The two patients have been treated in the same Hanoi hospital to which the latest victim was taken.

Doctors there declined comment on their conditions, but state media said one of the two from Thai Binh, a 21-year-old man, was in critical condition and on a respirator after drinking duck blood before the Lunar New Year festival last month.

His 14-year-old sister, suspected of having bird flu, is also being treated at the Hanoi hospital.

The H5N1 strain has killed 14 people in Vietnam since December, taking the total in Asia to 47 since the virus erupted across large parts of Asia at the end of 2003.

Almost all the victims -- 34 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and a Cambodian -- have caught it directly from poultry.

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HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Health officials said Tuesday that a 35-year-old woman from Hanoi is the fourth person to be confirmed with bird flu in the past week.

The woman, who works as a garbage collector, was admitted to the hospital Thursday and test results Monday showed she had the H5N1 virus, said Nguyen Duc Hien, director of the tropical disease unit at Hanoi´s Bach Mai Hospital.

Tuesday´s Pioneer newspaper reported that the woman did not eat poultry, but that she worked in markets where poultry were sold.

In the past week, three people from northern Thai Binh province were discovered to be infected with bird flu, including a 69-year-old man who died Wednesday. A 21-year-old man and his 14-year-old sister also have contracted the disease.