The Thai government today confirmed that two boys and a number of chickens have contracted the bird flu virus, after denying for several days that the virus was present in the country, Associated Press reports.

Thai officials said the boys were at separate hospitals in different provinces of the country's central region. Both of them live near poultry farms where chickens have died, said Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphun, who added that the boys allegedly touched the carcasses of the dead birds.

For more than a week Thai farmers were saying millions of chickens were infected with bird flu, but officials were saying, until today, that the birds were suffering from fowl cholera.

Scientists have said people get the disease through contact with sick birds and so far there have been no indications of person-to-person transmission.

World Health Organization officials, however, have said the virus could mutate to allow human transmission, which could make the bird flu a bigger health crisis than SARS.

Five people have died in Vietnam from bird flu. Millions of chickens were infected in South Korea, Japan and Vietnam.

After confirming the cases in Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra urged the public not to panic, saying "If it's bird flu, it's bird flu. We can handle it."

WHO said it will send two influenza experts to the country to help it deal with the outbreak. Thailand is among the world's five biggest poultry exporters (Sutin Wannabovorn, AP/Yahoo! News, Jan. 23).

In related news, authorities in China's Guangdong province have announced they are controlling exports of live birds due to fears over bird flu.

On Monday, a wild falcon was found dead near a chicken farm in Hong Kong, which borders Guangdong, with the same strain of bird flu that killed five people in Vietnam. Hong Kong officials said the case was isolated (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo! News, Jan. 23).