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 fears might mate with the human influenza virus and unleash a flu pandemic among people with no immunity to it.

The disease has hit 10 Asian countries as far apart as Pakistan and Japan with a rapidity that the WHO has called "historically unprecedented."

"We don't know how this virus is spreading and so it's safe to presume that nowhere can consider itself safe," WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said in Manila.

The Japan Times Weekly: Jan. 31, 2004
(C) All rights reserved