Reuters

The H5N1 bird flu virus may sometimes stick to surfaces or get kicked up in fertilizer dust to infect people, according to a World Health Organization report published on Wednesday.

The WHO team reviewed all known human cases of avian influenza, which has infected 350 people in 14 countries and killed 217 of them since 2003, and found that 25 percent of cases have no explanation.

Most are passed directly from bird to people, they noted in their report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And very rarely one person can infect another — always close relatives via intimate physical contact.

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