More than 370,000 chickens have been culled in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu after an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, say officials.
The outbreak is thought to be the first in mainland China since June.
Meanwhile, a man has reportedly contracted the virus in Cambodia, while Taiwan is investigating suspected infection among birds.
The death of a teenage girl from H5N1 was announced in Egypt on Tuesday, and a bird cull is also under way in India.
More than 200 people in a dozen countries have died of the virus since it resurfaced in Asia in 2003, say global health authorities.
Experts fear that the virus could mutate into one that is easily transmissible from human to human.
Migrating birds blamed
China’s Ministry of Agriculture said it received notification that the H5N1 virus had been found in two areas of Jiangsu on Monday.
The usual precautions have been imposed: birds have been slaughtered in the surrounding area, farms quarantined and disinfected, and the transport of fowl banned.
But no information has been released about the scale of the outbreak – how many birds were found to be carrying the H5N1 strain of the virus and how many of them died.
Officials say they think migrating birds might have been the source of the disease.
They are currently testing samples of the virus to check it has not mutated into a form that would pose a risk to human health, reports the BBC’s Chris Hogg in Shanghai.
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