China, where SARS originated, denied on Thursday it was responsible for the bird flu that has killed at least eight people in a rapid sweep across Asia and raised the spectre of a global pandemic. ‘‘It’s purely a guess, a groundless guess,’’ Chinese Vice Agriculture Minister Qi Jingfa said in Bangkok after an emergency meeting of the 10 countries hit by the lethal virus.‘‘We have had very strict surveillance,’’ Qi said when asked about a report by the British weekly New Scientist, quoting experts saying they suspected the new strain of bird flu, which could be a greater threat than SARS, also began in China.The magazine quoted World Health Organisation official Klaus Stohr as saying samples taken early last year ‘‘turned out to be this strain exactly’’ of the H5N1 virus. But he would not say where the samples came from as experts fretted the virus might combine with ordinary flu in a human host to produce a new strain that could spread like wildfire through a human population with no immunity to it. China halted poultry exports from three bird flu-affected areas on Thursday, and like most affected countries, is slaughtering domestic fowl by the tens of thousands in hopes of stamping the virus out.—Reuters
