Thai authorities are denying they tried to cover-up the outbreak of bird flu in the country.
Health experts fear the virus, which has killed six people in neighbouring Vietnam after the latest death was confirmed today, could set off an epidemic worse than SARS.
After weeks of declaring the country free of bird flu, Thailand confirmed on yesterday that two boys, aged six and seven, had contracted the highly infectious flu virus.
"The government never realised it was avian influenza before yesterday, but it was suspecting that it might be.
That's why some measures in extraordinary degrees had been put in place," said Mt Jakrapob Penkair, the government's chief spokesman.
Critics have accused the Thai government of trying to hide the outbreak by blaming the deaths of tens of thousands of chickens since November on poultry cholera.
"The government's efforts to sweep the problem under the carpet has exploded in its face, leaving the poultry industry in tatters and the very safety of the public in jeopardy," the Bangkok Postnewspaper said in an editorial today.
The EU has banned imports of Thai poultry and game.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today that a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy died on Thursday from the H5N1 strain of avian flu, and an eight-year-old girl had tested positive for the virus. She is critically ill in Ho Chi Minh City.
They were the first confirmed cases of bird flu in south Vietnam since four children and one adult died in the north of the country.
The WHO has said the near simultaneous bird flu outbreaks in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and now Thailand and Cambodia were "historically unprecedented" and is worried a new, virulent strain of influenza could sweep around the world.