The bird flu virus spread deeper into Asia today and claimed its first human victim in Thailand after killing a six-year-old boy.
Pakistan said two million chickens had died of a mild form of the disease, and Taiwan reported a new outbreak of the mild strain. The more virulent strain can pass to humans and has killed six people in Vietnam, in addition to the child killed in Thailand.
Thailand expanded its bird flu crisis zone to 10 of its 76 provinces from just two as it grappled with a virus the World Health Organization (WHO) fears might mate with human influenza and unleash a flu pandemic among people with no immunity to it.
Indonesia said at least 400 farms across the archipelago suffered outbreaks. but officials said they would only know by the end of the week - when laboratory test results were available - whether it was the less dangerous of two avian flu strains.
The WHO said it had seen no evidence that people-to-people transmission had taken place yet, but it fears the potentially deadly strain could jump into Burma and Laos from stricken farms just over the border in Thailand.
The spread of bird flu, which has also struck in Japan, South Korea and Cambodia, has emerged with a rapidity the WHO calls "historically unprecedented", and the Thai and Indonesian governments have been criticised for not revealing it sooner.
The Thai boy's death means all but one of at least seven confirmed human bird flu victims have been children, leaving scientists trying to figure out why the young are so vulnerable. So far, all the victims have contracted the disease from sick fowl and not from other people.