Vietnam, fearing new cases of the bird flu virus that killed more than 30 people across Asia last year and ravaged the region’s poultry industry, is urging consumers to exercise caution in buying chicken.

The health ministry’s latest warning came after tests showed on Thursday that bird flu had killed a 6-year-old boy on Dec. 30, taking the number of Vietnamese deaths from the virus to 22.

A 9-year-old boy died on Tuesday, the first bird flu death of 2005. The government has culled nearly 30,000 poultry since the beginning of December.

Bird flu also killed 12 people in Thailand last year and cases were reported across Southeast Asia and China.

“Consumers should refrain from buying poultry without quarantine and without clear origin,” a Vietnamese health ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

The World Health Organisation warned Vietnam may face new bird flu cases this month as poultry is transported around the country ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrations in early February.

Culls are continuing across Vietnam. The agriculture ministry said bird flu had spread to 11 provinces by Jan. 3 - nine of them in the Mekong Delta, where the epidemic broke out in late 2003 before spreading across the country and wiping out 17 percent of Vietnam’s poultry stock.

The latest confirmed death occurred in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap. The 6-year-old victim tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus, Nguyen Ngoc Diep, director of the provincial hospital, told Reuters.

“He was hospitalised on December 29, but his condition was already critical,” Diep said, adding that the boy was the first fatal case of the H5N1 virus in Dong Thap.

Health workers in affected areas have culled 28,700 poultry since the beginning of December, Bui Quang Anh, head of the agriculture ministry’s animal health department, was quoted by the Vietnam Net e-newspaper ( http://www.vnn.vn ) as saying.

On Wednesday, doctors said preliminary tests in Ho Chi Minh City showed the H5N1 strain killed a 9-year-old boy in Tra Vinh, another Mekong Delta province.

A 16-year-old Vietnamese girl infected in late December remained in a critical condition in the Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases, doctors there said.

On Jan. 1, animal health officials started tightening inspection of all poultry shipments to Ho Chi Minh City, home to nearly 10 million people, and banned the transport of live poultry on passenger buses.