China will share recent virus samples from human cases of bird flu, the World Health Organization and state media said Friday.

China has reported five new human cases since Beijing last sent samples to WHO in May 2006.

Scientists want to study samples to check if the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus has developed resistance to drugs or gained the ability to spread more easily between people. The samples are also used to make diagnostic tools and vaccines.

"This week, the Ministry of Health informally told us that they'll share the viruses that we requested," Joanna Brent, a WHO spokeswoman in Beijing, told Reuters.

"Normally when we hear those kinds of reassurances, we're pretty positive that they will be sharing shortly," she said.

The agency requested the new samples on March 23, Brent said.

"As requested by the WHO, we will send two recent samples of the virus and one from a Beijing patient who was infected in 2003," the state-run China Daily quoted a Ministry of Health official surnamed Ma.

Safe handover of the samples is underway and could take months, Wang Lin, spokesman for the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, was also quoted as saying.

Last year, China complained that international researchers used Chinese samples without giving proper credit. China's chief veterinarian told reporters that the WHO representative in Beijing apologized for the violation of international protocol.

Treatment guidelines updated

Also Friday, WHO said bird flu patients who received early treatment with the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) showed better odds of surviving, and corticocosteroids may harm H5N1 patients, based on the preliminary conclusions of international experts.

Corticosteroids should be reserved for patients with persistent septic shock, a dangerously low drop in blood pressure when the bloodstream is infected, the agency said.

Early treatment with oseltamivir seemed to reduce the risk of death in H5N1 infections and its use is warranted for late treatment, according to the summary of the WHO-sponsored meeting last month Antalya, Turkey.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu remains mainly a disease of birds. It has killed 172 people worldwide since 2003, according to WHO.