Authority:New mutated bird flu strain is unlikely to spread into Thailand

BANGKOK, September 8 (TNA) - The Thai Ministry of Public Health's Department of Disease Control says that a new deadly bird flu strain in Vietnam is unlikely to spread into Thailand, as there have been no imports of poultry from neighbouring Vietnam. The department's director-general, Dr. Pornthep Siriwanarangsan, acknowledged on Saturday that the new fatal avian flu, believed to be a mutated strain of the previous H5N1 virus, is more severe, having killed two people and caused over 180,000 poultry to have been culled in Vietnam. The director said, however, Thailand has kept monitoring the spread of bird flu, making the country free from bird flu infections in poultry since 2008 and free from infections in humans since 2006. According to the senior Thai health official, bird flu does not, normally, transmit from humans to humans, but only from birds to humans.(TNA)