A new bird-flu outbreak has been detected in Angthong, the third province to be affected this year.

Following the infection, Angthong Governor Wiboon Sa-nguanpong declared this central province a bird-flu outbreak zone.

The declaration immediately banned the transport of fowls both into and out of the province.

Pirom Srijan, head of the Livestock Development Department, confirmed yesterday that chickens and fighting cocks in Samko district in the Central province were found to have the H5N1 virus, which causes bird flu.

"We have been culling local fowls in the "at-risk" area since January 23 as a preventative measure," Pirom said, adding that he received the lab-test results confirming bird flu on Wednesday night.

Phitsanulok and Nong Khai were the two other provinces where bird-flu has been found this year.

Pirom said he had alerted relevant authorities to the bird-flu outbreak in Angthong.

Dr Nirandorn Uangtrakoon-sook, head of the department's Bureau of Disease Control and Veterinary Services, said his agency had informed the Angthong governor that cockfighting must be immediately suspended in the province. Other preventative measures, including disinfectant spraying, were also in place.

The Public Health Ministry already reached the spot where bird-flu infections were detected in Angthong and identified seven people who had contacted sick fowls.

"So far, they do not develop any symptom," Disease Control Department's director general Dr Thawat Suntrajarn said.

But Public Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla remained confident that the country would be able to prevent the disease from spreading.

"We have good monitoring mechanisms in place. We have public-health volunteers across the country. When we can detect the infections early, we can eradicate the risks quickly and can offer treatments fast, where necessary," Mongkol said.

Permanent secretary for Public Health Dr Prat Boonyawongvirot said there were no bird-flu patients in the country so far this year. He dismissed reports that two Chiang Mai residents died of bird-flu last month.

"There's no bird-flu infection in Chiang Mai. The two alleged victims also did not contact any fowl prior to their illness," Prat said.

In a related development, Phitsanulok public-health chief Dr Thawatchai Kamontham visited a 15-year-old girl hospitalised with bird-flu-like symptoms after clearing bird droppings from her school building on January 25.

Two of her friends also developed similar symptoms, but lab tests showed they had caught human influenza.

Meanwhile, Chulalongkorn University virologist Dr Yong Pooworawan sought to play down concern about the rate of human-flu casualties this year. Last month, three people died of human influenza. "Health officials have recently put many human-flu patients on the watch-list because they have bird-flu-like symptoms. So when the human-flu patients succumb, their deaths are officially recorded. In other years, some human-flu patients died but their deaths were not officially recorded," he explained.

Yong said that human influenza rarely led to people dying.

"A human-flu vaccine will be given to 'at-risk' groups, such as people with lung disease or low immunity, elderly people or young children," he said.