China has recorded no new cases of bird flu in the last 44 days, national chief veterinary officer Jia Youling said yesterday.

Jia, also director of the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau under the Ministry of Agriculture, said the country was succeeding in efforts to prevent and contain the disease since the eradication of the most recent cases.

A large-scale immunization campaign had lowered the possibility of new outbreaks across much of the country, he said.

But he added that China still faced the threat of bird flu as the spread of the disease was accelerating around the world, especially with the advance of the northern spring and warmer weather encouraging bird migration.

Jia said the government had made the prevention drive a priority and the Ministry of Agriculture had made detailed arrangements for prevention and containment during the spring.

The ministry had 31 teams working in the provinces to supervise the campaign.

Provincial authorities had used a total of 4.754 billion vaccines by April 7.

The ministry believed that as long as the immunization policy was carried out properly, the possibility of a large-scale outbreak of bird flu in this spring was low.

The ministry predicts the immunization measures will be adopted in the most areas by the end of this month.

A total of 35 outbreaks of bird flu have been reported in China since 2005, involving 194,000 fowls suffering bird flu, with 186,000 killed by the flu. About 22.849 million birds were slaughtered to prevent the disease from spreading. The Ministry of Agriculture announced last month that all cases of bird flu in China had been eradicated.