A recent string of bird flu infections in humans in China posed no pandemic risk as the cases were unrelated, but authorities need to remain alert, U.N. experts said on Wednesday.

A Vietnamese man has tested positive for bird flu, the third confirmed infection by the deadly H5N1 virus in the Southeast Asian country this year, health officials said Monday.

A second outbreak of bird flu in less than a month has been detected on another poultry farm in Canada's westernmost British Columbia province, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Wednesday.

Japan's plan for any future influenza pandemic calls for shutting down airports, closing schools and organizing mass cremations of the dead in hopes of keeping the virus off its shores or at least containing it.

China has slaughtered more than 13,000 birds after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus was confirmed in the far west, state media said.

A female nurse aged 30 in Taipei County became the fourth patient killed by flu virus in Taiwan, proving that even the young and able-bodied are not exempt from the mutated virus.

Another bird has tested positive for bird flu in Hong Kong as part of a recent outbreak of the deadly disease, the government said Tuesday.

An outbreak of bird flu in eastern Nepal has been brought under control, official news reports said Tuesday.

An outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu virus has spread to four provinces in southern Vietnam and one in the center of the country, a government official said Monday.

For more than a week now a deadly tide has been washing out of China into the sea surrounding Hong Kong, bringing with it growing fears that China is in the grip of a covered-up bird-flu outbreak.