New outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu have been reported in central China's Hubei Province and in Xinjiang in the northwest, the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday.

The ministry dispatched teams of flu experts to the outbreak sites to ensure proper quarantines, the slaughter of suspect flocks and the inoculation of healthy fowl.

Local governments were quick to launch emergency actions, blockading the epidemic zone immediately and disinfecting the people, vehicles and goods going in and out, authorities said.

Nearly 90,000 birds were slaughtered with a 3-mile radius of the trouble spots.

Local officials were alerted to the outbreak when 662 birds raised by farmers in villages near Xiaogan City in Hubei died last week. Also last week, 32 birds died in a slaughterhouse and a village around Xinjiang's Hotan.

Bird flu cases were reported earlier in Urumqi and Zepu in Xinjiang, and in Hubei's Jingshan County.

No human infections have been reported in either regions, though a woman died of bird flu in Anhui Province and a 9-year boy in Hunan Province was sickened by the virus but has recovered. Health authorities suspect, but could not confirm, that the death of the boy's 12-year-old sister also was caused by the H5N1 virus.

Outbreaks of bird flu have also been reported in Liaoning Province and in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Meanwhile, blood samples from 252 people who had been in contact with the bird flu victims in Hunan have been sent to the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention for testing, health authorities said yesterday.

Samples were also taken from veterinarians and workers who handled dead poultry, medical workers at the provincial children's hospital where the boy was treated and the Xiangtan central hospital where a schoolteacher is hospitalized with pneumonia-like symptoms.

"We conquered the SARS epidemic in 2003, and we will surely conquer the bird flu virus," Premier Wen Jiabao said in Beijing yesterday while inspecting workshops making avian-flu vaccines.

Wen visited the Beijing Kexing Biological Product Co, which was the first facility in the world to develop SARS vaccines.

"China's bird flu prevention and control situation is severe," Wen said after his inspection tour. "Prevention of human infections from bird flu and safeguarding people's health and safety are the focus of the prevention work."