The H5N1 virus has been found in poultry in Uthai Thani, a northern province located 220 kilometers away from the capital Bangkok.

“On November 3, around 200 backyard chicken began dying after falling ill in a short period of time,” said Sakchai Sriboonsue, director general of the livestock department.

“We were told two days later today the official test have confirmed that it’s H5N1,” he added.

Thailand is known as the world’s fourth-largest exporter of poultry. It has to slaughter millions of birds to stop the progress of the bird flu virus that was found in poultry in January this year.

After that the country had been declared free of H5N1.

According to Thailand’s public health ministry, no human-form of bird flu has been found since August 2006 when the last case was confirmed.

Until now, there are 25 confirmed human cases of bird flu, in which 17 have passed away.

The systems, which cover vaccines from Dengue fever to the Ebola virus, are highly concerned with scientific communities. Although they were quietly put in place more than a decade ago, they could now be more relevant because of recent concerns about bird flu, U.S officials said.

They make “no scientific sense,” said Peter Palese, chairman of the microbiology department, He said, “the more vaccines out there, the better,” he said. “It’s a matter of protecting ourselves, really, so the bird flu virus doesn’t take hold in these countries and spread.”But some scientists say, the idea of using vaccines for bioweapons is far-fetched. Under normal conditions duration of six weeks required to approve export licenses for any vaccine on the list, said Thomas Monath,

That could make it harder to contain an outbreak of bird flu among chickens in, say, North Korea, which is in the region hardest hit by the virus. Sudan and Iran already have recorded cases of the virus in poultry and Syria is surrounded by affected countries. Cuba, like all nations, is most vulnerable because the disease is delivered by migratory birds.

Kumanan Wilson, researcher in University of Toronto said, “That would pose a much graver threat to the public than the theoretical risk that the vaccine could be used for biological warfare.”

The danger of biological warfare use depends on the specific types of virus or bacteria. But bird flu vaccines contain inactivated viruses that can’t be resuscitated through genetic engineering.