Bird Flu Returns to China, Thailand

China and Thailand reported new outbreaks of bird flu, a highly contagious disease that health experts fear could sicken humans.

Thailand’s deputy agriculture minister, Newin Chidchob, said today that tests had confirmed fresh outbreaks of bird flu in two central provinces where thousands of chickens died recently.

China’s outbreak was the first report of the avian illness since Beijing declared it had “stamped out” the disease nearly four months ago. Tests at a farm in the southeastern province of Anhui have confirmed that chickens had died of bird flu, the government said on state-run television.

Bird flu has also been confirmed on farms in Vietnam in recent days.

Although the newest cases have affected only poultry, health experts have said they fear that bird flu might mutate and cause an epidemic in humans.

At its height earlier this year, the disease ravaged flocks throughout Asia. It also spread from birds to humans in Vietnam and Thailand, killing 24 people. About 100 million chickens across the region were slaughtered to halt its spread.

In China, the affected farm, in the city of Chaohu, has been quarantined, China Central Television said.

Authorities killed all the poultry within two miles of the farm and vaccinated poultry within three miles, the report said.

Thailand’s agriculture minister said about 8,300 chickens had already been culled in Ayutthaya province, and 800 in neighboring Pathumthani province.

Chickens at the afflicted farm in Ayutthaya began to die about two weeks ago, farm owner Veera Sripramong said Tuesday.

He said he owned 43,000 chickens and that about 7,000 of them had died during the last two weeks.