By Wu Jiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-01-09 07:27

A bird flu outbreak in the city of Turpan in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region has been brought under "effective control", a top agriculture official said yesterday.

"We have very strict monitoring and control over the disease," Agriculture Vice-Minister Gao Hongbin, told a press conference held by the State Council Information Office.

"Once it was discovered, it was brought under control in a timely manner and was stopped from spreading."

As of December 29, an outbreak of bird flu in the region had led to the deaths of 4,850 fowl.

The national bird flu laboratory confirmed on Thursday that is was the highly infectious H5N1 strain.

Authorities in the city of Turpan were forced to cull more than 35,000 birds, but no human cases had been reported, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.

Xinhua cited an unnamed official as saying a warmer winter had brought more migratory birds to the area around Turpan, which "increased the chances of bird flu outbreaks".

"The wild birds ought to have flown south, but they stayed near the city because of the warm weather this winter," it quoted the official as saying.

"This added to the risk of infection and made the control of the disease considerably more difficult."

In December, a man surnamed Lu died of the H5N1 strain in Jiangsu province - although no poultry outbreaks had been reported there at the time.

Lu's 52-year-old father was also infected with the disease but recently recovered after receiving three weeks of treatment.

(China Daily 01/09/2008 page3)