China, home to a vast poultry industry, said yesterday the deadly bird flu virus which has killed eight Asians had struck in three provinces, possibly two more, and perhaps the sprawling financial capital of Shanghai.

It said tests confirmed the H5N1 virus had got into chickens in Hubei and Hunan provinces as well as the southern region of Guanxi. Outbreaks were also suspected in Anhui and Guangdong, the southern province where Sars was born.

Another suspected outbreak was reported in a Shanghai suburb and a mass slaughter of domestic fowl was under way around all three new outbreaks, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Outbreaks in China - widely condemned for covering up Sars for several months - were the nightmare health officials had prayed they would not have to face.

Experts fear the world's most populous country could become a huge incubator for the virus if the new cases are confirmed.

Especially in Guangdong, people live cheek by jowl with their chickens and other farm animals, raising the possibility the virus may combine with human flu to produce a strain that could sweep through a world where people have no immunity to it.

The fresh outbreaks prompted Hong Kong, just south of Guangdong, to immediately ban imports of live birds and poultry meat from mainland China.

So far, all eight people - seven of them children - known to have died from bird flu have caught it directly from infected chickens, victims of a virus probably spread by migrating birds.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.