Thailand has banned poultry imports from neighboring countries to prevent a new outbreak of bird flu, Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Khunying Sudarat Keyuraphan announced Monday.

Sudarat Keyuraphan said that the ministry has given an order on a total ban on importing poultry from any neighboring country.

The ban was imposed after some neighboring countries sent dead fowl samples for laboratory tests in Thailand and some samples tested positive for the virus.

Sudarat affirmed that no outbreak had been reported in areas where many fowls died of unknown causes.

However, the minister conceded the presence of bird flu after an absence of nearly a year.

Sudarat said that tests conducted on samples of dead fighting cocks and domestic fowls in Bangmoonnak District of the northern Phichit Province were positive.

The laboratory technicians have not yet been able to identify which strain it is.

Meanwhile, Thailand's public health establishment breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday as laboratory tests confirmed that no new cases of H5N1 bird flu virus has been transmitted to humans in recent months.

No deaths have occurred since February last year and no new human bird flu cases have been found in Thailand over the past year and a half, a senior Public Health Ministry official confirmed.

Director-General of the Department of Disease Control Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn said that according to laboratory tests, patients who were previously reported to have bird flu-like symptoms in many provinces had all been proven to be bird-flu free.