The WHO said the bird flu that killed two people in Vietnam was not a new, more contagious strain, and officials here rejected claims that pigs now have the virus.
Meanwhile, China has confirmed three more outbreaks among birds.
The UN agency said on Saturday that "reassuring" test results from the two Vietnamese sisters, who died earlier this month, show "both viruses are of avian origin and contain no human influenza genes."
The women's blood was tested because experts suspected they may have caught the disease from their brother, who also died. That scenario hasn't been ruled out -- but so far, there have been no known cases of person-to-person transmission in the current bird flu outbreak.
Health experts' greatest worry has been the possibility of the disease combining with a human influenza virus to create a more lethal version that could be spread between people -- giving rise to a global pandemic.
Avian influenza has killed 18 people and ravaged poultry farms in 10 Asian nations and territories. Governments have slaughtered more than 50 million chickens and banned poultry imports to try to contain its spread.
Bird flu has jumped to people in Vietnam and Thailand, with health officials tracing most of those cases to contact with sick birds.
But experts have said it's possible the virus moved to humans through another mammal, such as pigs, which have been implicated in past human flu epidemics.
A Vietnam representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) fanned those fears late Friday, saying preliminary tests found the virus in the snouts of pigs in Hanoi. But that doesn't necessarily mean the swine are infected, his agency said.
The nasal swab test may merely confirm the presence of infected chicken droppings on their snouts. More rigorous tests -- looking for the virus or antibodies in the blood -- still need to be carried out.
Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development ran separate tests on pigs in bird flu-affected areas, and the results were all negative, said Bui Quang Anh, director of the ministry's veterinary department.
"I can formally announce that no bird flu virus has been found in pigs in Vietnam," he said Saturday. "I don't know on what justification FAO made such a statement."
Meanwhile, the WHO said it was also investigating whether a Cambodian woman who died recently had bird flu in the country's first suspected human case of the disease.
The patient became ill in Cambodia's Takeo province and died in a hospital in neighboring Vietnam, said Sean Tobin, a WHO medical epidemiologist in the capital, Phnom Penh.
China's Agriculture Ministry confirmed three additional outbreaks of bird flu in poultry on Saturday.
The cases were confirmed in the provinces of Hubei, Henan and Jiangxi, the ministry said in a statement released through the official Xinhua News Agency.
Quarantine measures were immediately instituted, Xinhua said. Both Hubei and Jiangxi have reported previous cases in fowl in recent days.
In Thailand, the world's fourth largest exporter of chicken products, the government gave away 54.4 tonnes of cooked meat and eggs at a feast Saturday in a park opposite Bangkok's royal palace.
Health experts say eating eggs and chicken meat is safe, as long as they're well-cooked. But many in Thailand, where five people have died, remain unconvinced. There have been 13 bird flu deaths in Vietnam, which this week banned all poultry sales.
In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government has faced widespread allegations of initially covering up the outbreak, which livestock officials may have detected as early as November, to protect Thailand's chicken exports.
Thailand shipped about 453,597 tonnes of chicken worth 52 US$1.3 billion in 2003. The EU, Japan and other major markets have banned Thai chicken products over disease fears.
Governments are battling the virus in Thailand, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan.
The strain afflicting Pakistan and Taiwan, however, is not considered dangerous to humans.
Officials in the US state of Delaware also ordered the slaughter of some 12,000 chickens after confirming that the flock was infected by avian influenza. State agriculture secretary Michael Scuse said the strain is different from the one that has spread to the human population in Asia.
South Korea on Saturday imposed an indefinite ban on US poultry imports "as a precautionary measure."
Japan has temporarily also suspended all US poultry imports, Japanese media said yesterday.
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