An agriculture official said yesterday the newly confirmed bird flu case in China is only a single isolated incident and not a large-scale outbreak.

But the possibility of discovering cases in other places does exist, Zhang Zhongqiu, vice-director of the stockbreeding and veterinary bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture, said yesterday.

That is because experts suspect the new case was caused by migratory birds, he said.

Located aside a lake and on a slope, the chicken farm where the disease was found is a relatively isolated place, Zhang said.

To date the ministry has not received reports of new cases, he added.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health yesterday issued a circular requiring health departments at all levels to carry out monitoring and prevention efforts in order to prevent bird flu from infecting humans.

The national bird flu reference laboratory on Tuesday confirmed that chickens in East China's Anhui Province were killed last Saturday by the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.

The virus was found at a chicken farm in the Juchao District, Chaohu in Anhui.

The ministry has urged stockbreeding and veterinary departments across the country to spare no efforts in epidemic prevention, Zhang said.

In another development, Anhui provincial government has issued an urgent circular to demand local governments and related departments deal seriously with regular epidemic control measures, standardize control over poultry raising and strictly sterilize chicken or duck farms.

The circular also said that an epidemic monitoring system and a related information network should be established by local governments at all levels.

Supervision should focus on poultry farms and areas that have reported bird flu cases before and on those that were in danger.

According to the circular, local governments should pay compensation to those who suffer losses from compulsory poultry vaccination and slaughter.

Beijing and South China's Guangdong Province have taken measures to prevent the disease from spreading.

(HK Edition 07/08/2004 page1)