Canada has insisted that a duck infected with bird flu caught a North American strain that is less virulent than the H5N1 strain that has hit poultry in Asia and killed at least 67 people in the region since 2003. Still, officials have started to cull the 56,000 birds on the farm where the duck was found.

China's grim description came a day after the country reported its 17th outbreak since late last month. The massive nation -- where billions of poultry are being vaccinated -- has reported one human fatality and one suspected death.

"The government is making all efforts to combat bird flu, which is a serious epidemic in China," Liu Jianchao, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters at a routine briefing.

Liu added that China was still "facing serious challenges" and that the country "will step up our efforts in order to resolve this bird flu issue."

Duck Infected

Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan followed the United States in temporarily halting poultry imports from mainland British Columbia, where Canadian officials said they found a duck infected with bird flu.

Hiroyuki Kanegawa, Japan's Agriculture Ministry spokesman, asked the Canadian government to provide more information about the case. "We hope to get more details as soon as possible."

Canada has insisted the bird caught a North American strain of the disease that was less virulent than the virus that has hit poultry in Asia and killed at least 67 people in the region since 2003. Still, officials have started to cull the 56,000 birds on the farm where the duck was found.

Japan reported that signs of a bird flu infection were found at a poultry farm in northern Japan. It was the latest in a series of outbreaks that has led to the killing of about 1.6 million chickens over the past few months in the region.

The birds in the town of Ogawa -- 100 kilometers (62 miles) northeast of Tokyo -- were being tested, and the results were determine whether 290,000 chickens would be culled, said Ibaraki Prefectural (state) official Osamu Kamogawa.

Japan began asking travelers from bird flu-affected areas to have their shoes disinfected upon arrival at the country's four major airports, including Tokyo's international gateway at Narita. The Japanese were trying to prevent poultry manure contaminated with the bird flu virus from being tracked into their country.

Last December, Japan confirmed a single human case of bird flu but the patient recovered.

Misconceptions About Bird Flu

Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, said the number of human bird flu cases is likely to be far higher than reported because of poor surveillance outside the capital, Jakarta. The government planned a nationwide campaign to measure the extent of the virus in the sprawling country of more than 13,000 islands, Supari said.

All but two of Indonesia's 11 confirmed cases of bird flu -- seven of which have been fatal -- have occurred in the greater Jakarta area.

In Thailand, epidemiologists and laboratory experts from 11 Asian countries were attending a four-day meeting in the capital, Bangkok, to fine tune their country's plans to prepare for a flu pandemic. The World Health Organization was working with the nations at the meeting, which began Monday.

Australia's government sought to clear up misconceptions about bird flu by launching a Web site about the illness. The site provides news about the spread of the virus and gives tips on how to prepare for a possible human flu pandemic.

"There is a lot of misinformation around. There are a lot of misunderstandings around," Health Minister Tony Abbott told reporters.

Australia has had no recorded cases of bird flu, and the Web site's overseer, travel health expert Dr. John Gheradin, said the risk of catching the illness in the country is "clearly zero."

With China reporting outbreaks almost daily, the risk that the virus might cross the border into Hong Kong is growing, said Leung Pak-yin, chief of the Center for Health Protection.

Leung pledged to business leaders that officials would be ready for a flu pandemic.

"If anything happens in Hong Kong, we are sure that the one thing we want to ensure is we have the lowest mortality rate in Hong Kong and that we are the place that is going to recover first in the world, both from the health aspect and also from the economic aspect," Leung told members of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.