BEIJING, April 10 (RIA Novosti) – Chinese police have detained three people for spreading rumors about the H7N9 bird flu virus that has killed nine people there, the Xinhua state news agency reported on Wednesday.

Police in the southwest province of Guizhou have detained two men for five days for claiming on the internet that the virus had spread to the capital of their province. Chinese police say that the men wrote on their microblogs that there were birds infected with the potentially deadly virus at one of the markets in the city of Guiyang, but that there is no official confirmation that the virus has been found there.

A third man has been detained for 10 days for “actively taking part in spreading rumors,” Xinhua reported, without giving further detail.

Nine people have died in China from the H7N9 virus since the beginning of March, and a total of 31 people have been registered as infected with the virus. All of the cases have been registered in the east of the country. No incidences of the virus spreading from human to human have been recorded.