With over 25,000 deaths across the globe, H1N1 was declared a pandemic last year. Now, it’s the turn of another virus, H5N1 bird flu, to create a scare in Indonesia where a four year-old girl succumbed to the disease last week. Test reports of three other persons are awaited even though they did not have any contact with the child, an official said on Monday.

A resident of Pekanbaru in Sumatra, the girl died on Wednesday, said Azizman Saad, the head of bird flu unit at Arifin Achmad hospital. Three others, a woman, her seven-year-old child, and a five-year-old girl, all natives of Siak district, northeast of Pekanbaru, were admitted to the hospital on Friday.

Prior to suffering from high-grade fever, the trio had been in direct contact with dead chickens, officials said. As many as 136 deaths, the highest in any country so far, have occurred due to the H5N1 virus in Indonesia. The government, as per a spokesman for the Health Ministry, was still waiting for the results before testing for a possible cluster.

And about the virus, it typically spreads from birds to humans through direct contact. Experts fear that it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, thus assuming the potential to kill millions in a pandemic even dangerous than the one experienced last year.