Thailand’s prime minister ordered a campaign to wipe out the bird flu virus by the end of October on Wednesday, a day after the country announced its first probable case of human transmission.

While there was no evidence to suggest the case could set off a human pandemic, it spurred the government into frenzied efforts to stamp out the H5N1 virus that has killed 20 people in Vietnam and 10 in Thailand this year.

“By October 31st, we must be able to declare there is no more bird flu in Thailand,” Thaksin Shinawatra told the provincial governors he summoned to an emergency meeting from around the country.

“It must be physically wiped out” by then, when the hot, humid monsoon season is due to give way to the cooler weather that draws migratory wildfowl thought to spread the virus.

He ordered the governors to conduct a chicken census of every household in the country, assume every dead fowl was killed by bird flu and to cull ruthlessly where ever the H5N1 virus was found.

Thaksin, a flamboyant former telecoms tycoon who likens his rule to that of a chief executive officer, said all ministers responsible for bird flu would be sacked if the campaign failed.

But Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang said Thailand, a leading chicken exporter before the disease hit, was in for a long battle to wipe out the virus.

“We are talking at least three to five years,” he said after an earlier emergency meeting of agriculture and health officials. “There are no fences along borders of countries in Asia to block migrating birds,” Chaturon told a Bangkok radio station.

“As long as the disease persists in China, Vietnam and Malaysia, Thailand won’t be able to get rid of bird flu and vice versa.”

Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said she had ordered public health volunteers in every village to help reinforce the surveillance system of agriculture officials.

“For safety’s sake, people need to take extra precautions to protect themselves,” she told reporters.

“Even if just one chicken dies, villagers must protect themselves with gloves or plastic bags to destroy the carcass. If the death is suspicious, they must inform local livestock officials immediately.”

DRIVEN BY DEATH

The furor was provoked by the death of 11-year-old Sakuntala Prempasee, who, according to the English-language Nation newspaper, died in the arms of her mother, coughing blood.

The girl was cremated and there is no proof yet that she died of the H5N1 virus. Tests on samples taken from the girl before she died are being conducted. Her mother, Pranee, went back to work 220 miles away near Bangkok. She died days later.

On Tuesday, the government confirmed Pranee died of bird flu and said an aunt with whom Sakuntala lived was recovering from it.

The case was what one U.S. expert called a fluke in a region where people live cheek-by-jowl with farm birds and animals and it has been impossible to substantiate suspicions that humans, not chickens, transmitted the virus.

“Because the mother lived in a separate city, it was much easier to be confident that the likely mode of transmission or the probable mode of transmission was person to person,” said Scott F. Dowell of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It doesn’t necessarily tell us that anything has changed about the virus and about the way it is transmitted.”

Experts say Pranee’s death resulted from close and prolonged contact with her daughter as she tended the girl in hospital and did not indicate any risk to the greater population.

Thailand thought it was on top of the problem in June. A month later, there were fresh outbreaks. Vietnam reported more. China reported a single case.

The virus struck Malaysia for the first time, although there are signs the outbreak is being contained and Singapore has eased a ban on poultry products from its neighbor.

But experts are still grappling for a solution, knowing the longer the H5N1 virus survives, the greater the chance of it meeting a human influenza virus in an animal capable of hosting both, such as a pig.

The H5N1 virus, capable of swift mutations, could then combine with the human flu virus into a form that could sweep through a human population with no resistance.

In 1918, such a pandemic swept around the world and killed an estimated 20 million people.