PARIS, Feb 26: France stepped up measures on Sunday to contain the spread of deadly bird flu, as Hong Kong joined Japan in banning poultry imports from the first European Union member to register the disease on a farm.

As the EU came to terms with the arrival of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain in its farm sector, in Asia, where bird flu was first identified, China warned of possible widespread outbreaks of the flu during the coming spring bird migratory season, and announced two more human cases of the virus.

Experts fear that H5N1, which has killed more than 90 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003, may mutate into a form that can pass between humans, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.

Human fatalities from the disease have been recorded in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Cambodia, Turkey and Iraq.

Eight EU countries have so far confirmed cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, but until Saturday when it was discovered in a turkey farm in eastern France, all these cases had been found in wild birds. So far the virus has not jumped from birds to humans.

On Sunday in eastern France authorities tightened restrictions ordering a 10-day ban on anybody approaching small lakes in the Dombes region after “some 50 dead swans and ducks” were collected in the past four days.

The birds were being tested to see if they, too, had succumbed to the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu that had struck the farm and other wildfowl in the region.

In a sign of the damage to France’s lucrative poultry sector Hong Kong said it was banning the import of French poultry until further notice.

“We will be in contact with the French authorities and follow up the situation,” a government spokesman said.

It joined Japan which late Friday banned French poultry imports because of the outbreak.

France is the fourth-biggest poultry exporter in the world, after the United States, China and Brazil.

Bird flu also continued its advance in Germany over the weekend, after more outbreaks in the north of the country and the first suspected cases in the region around the capital.

After confirmation on Saturday that the deadly strain had been detected in a wild duck found dead in southern Germany near the Swiss border, the first time the south had been hit by the virus, more cases were announced on Sunday in wild birds on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen.

In Asia China warned of possible widespread outbreaks of avian influenza during the coming spring bird migratory season, as the health ministry announced two more human cases of the virus.

In India officials battling a bird flu outbreak culled hundreds of thousands of chickens and checked around 90,000 people for symptoms in Gujarat state as authorities ordered tests on dead birds at the other end of the country.

“More than 88,900 persons have been surveyed by the team. Of these 10 human cases have been kept under observation in isolation wards at the referral hospital,” said an official in the state of Gujarat who declined to be named.

Malaysia, where no human cases of bird flu have so far been reported, said five people isolated with suspected bird flu had tested negative.

And in Africa officials in the bird flu-stricken north of Nigeria were engaged in a media campaign to persuade people to continue eating chicken, for fear that poultry farming, one of the country’s biggest industries, could collapse, leaving hundreds of thousands of people out of work.—AFP