China says contains first bird flu outbreak in weeks

BEIJING, Oct 3 (Reuters) The first bird flu outbreak to hit Chinese birds in more than a month has been brought under control in Inner Mongolia but Beijing has banned imports of poultry from the area, local media said today.

A national laboratory on Friday confirmed that about 1,000 birds at a poultry wholesaler in the Jiuyuan district of Inner Mongolia's Baotou city had died of the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

''There have been no new deaths of birds nor human infection,'' the Beijing News said, quoting the local government.

More than 25,000 birds had been culled in the area and the Agriculture Ministry had shipped bird flu vaccines to Jiuyuan for a mandatory inoculation campaign, the newspaper said.

Officials were tracking down where the wholesaler had bought birds from and where he had sold them to, it said, adding that Beijing's city government had banned imports of live poultry and their products from Jiuyuan.

With the world's biggest poultry population and millions of backyard birds roaming free, China is at the centre of the fight against bird flu, seeing dozens of animal outbreaks and at least 20 human cases of the virus since November.

It last reported a poultry outbreak in a duck farm in the central province of Hunan in early August.

Scientists fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that could be passed easily from person to person, sparking a global pandemic.

Reuters AKJ DB0937