The China Animal Agriculture Association announced that China's poultry industry has already lost around 10 billion yuan (US$1.62 billion) due to the growing H7N9 scare in the mainland. And the figure only refers to direct losses.

The amount of loss has already stirred China's poultry industry and yet Ma Chuang, deputy secretary-general The Chinese Association of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, said China should brace for the worse.

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Chuang told state-run media that the 10 billion yuan only referred to direct losses and the real impact of the disease will be far more than that. Chuang could be stating the truth as the airline, hotel, and food industry have started complaining of losses starting in the week after the H7N9 bird flu virus began infecting humans.

The Four Seasons was among several upmarket Shanghai hotels to take chicken off the menu while Taobao Marketplace, the e-commerce platform of the Alibaba Internet group, confirmed that it had banned online trading of live poultry in the Shanghai region.

Last week, US-based Yum Brands Inc recorded a drop in its March sales in China and put the blame in part on the Avian-flu scare for significant losses in its KFC profits.  Yum and the rest of the affected restaurants claimed many of their patrons have been reluctant to eat poultry since the H7N9 avian flu outbreak started in late March.

China's authorities have been taking precautions to halt the spread of the deadly disease. Some local governments have issued bans on poultry transportation and live poultry markets have been closed in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

State-run media, however, are scrambling to discourage panic and urged the public to avoid making the entire issue a disaster for the whole poultry industry. In an editorial, the Global Times said that not eating poultry was "unfair to farmers".

The World Health Organization (WHO) said there was no evidence yet of human-to-human transmission and the cases did not appear to be connected. On Sunday, China reported 11 new H7N9 human infections, bringing the total number of such cases around the country to 60. Total death toll was 13.

Michael O'Leary, the WHO's representative in China, said there is no way to predict how the H7N9 virus will spread but the new cases in different places is not surprising. In fact, China's state news agency Xinhua said 19 people who had close contact with the two new victims in Henan had shown no signs of infection.

The number of H7N9 infections continue to grow even as China's Food and Drug Administration said it has expedited the approval of intravenous form of Peramivir for use in combating the bird-flu outbreak in the country.

Peramivir is produced by North Carolina-based BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc but the drug manufacturer said it had not applied for approval of the vaccine. Peramivir's approval was announced on the website of China's Food and Drugs Administration.

The drug was selected by the Chinese government of its injectable delivery method and its proven efficacy against the viruses resistant to Tamiflu. The Chinese Ministry of Health said the virus was receptive to Tamiflu.