Fresh Bird Flu Outbreaks Hit Asia

China, Vietnam and Japan reported fresh outbreaks of bird flu yesterday as Asian governments adopted increasingly desperate measures - ranging from the cull of hundreds of thousands of poultry to an official warning against kissing parrots - to prevent the disease from spreading to humans.

With new cases being reported on an almost daily basis in the world's most populous and worst affected region, health officials are turning towards developing vaccines and boosting the output of antiviral drugs, as well as surveillance and tightening controls on animal husbandry.

While there is no evidence yet that the H5N1 virus can spread between humans, scientists warned that the increasing prevalence of the disease among birds heightened the risk that it could mutate and infect local populations.

In China, the agriculture ministry said nearly 9,000 chickens had died and 369,000 domestic birds had been culled in and around a poultry farm in the northeast province of Liaoning. It was the most deadly of four outbreaks in the country in little more than two weeks. Wild birds are blamed for spreading the disease. Several dead magpies were found near the latest outbreak.

In Vietnam, the worst affected country with 41 human deaths in the past two years, the latest suspected infection was of a 24-year-old pregnant woman who came down with a fever and respiratory problems. She was from Bac Giang province, where bird flu has killed more than 3,000 chickens, ducks and geese. On Thursday, Indonesia said three children were being tested for bird flu.

Japan announced plans to kill 180,000 birds after H5N2 - a slightly less virulent strain of bird flu - was detected at a farm 56 miles north-east of Tokyo.

With hoarding on the rise, the Swiss drug maker Roche has been unable to keep up with demand for antiviral drug Tamiflu, banning sales to private doctors and pharmacies in Hong Kong, the US and Canada. Thailand announced plans to distribute its own generic version of the drug as early as February, and China's biggest pharmaceutical firm, Shanghai Pharmaceutical, said it was in talks with Roche about producing Tamiflu.