BERLIN, Feb. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The German woman previously suspected of having caught bird flu was indeed not infected with the virus, the hospital where she was treated said Tuesday.

    "It was about a human influenza virus," said the Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg.

    The German woman who had just come back from Thailand was found bearing bird flue-like symptoms and then taken to the Hamburg institute for medical examination on Monday.

    The Robert-Koch Institute in Berlin, which is in charge of disease control, said a bird flu case in Germany is "very unlikely," although "not impossible."

    The current bird flu epidemic, first reported in Vietnam, has spread as far west as Pakistan and as far east as Japan and been confirmed in other economies including South Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, China and China's Taiwan Province in less than one month. Enditem