Two patients hospitalized for human flu have been put in an isolation ward on suspicion of having bird flu in Thailand's eastern province of Chachoengsao, as doctors conducted laboratory tests to confirm the diagnosis, media here reported Thursday.

Thawat Suntrajarn, director of the Department of Disease Control, said that the two patients, who had been earlier admitted to Ban Pho Hospital in Chachoengsao with high fever and bad cough and confirmed an infection of human influenza, were isolated in a closed-circuit television equipped camera to monitor for bird-flu related symptoms around the clock.

"Because they are having a human influenza, further tests are needed to confirm what type of the human flu virus they have and whether they also have bird flu," Thawat was quoted by Thai News Agency as saying.

Authorities didn't release the patients' names but referred them as a 17-year-old youth and a 42-year-old woman. Thawat said both of them worked in a duck slaughterhouse in Chachoengsao, not far from Bangkok.

A local livestock official said the province has raised some 5 million chickens in farms but no bird flu outbreak has been reported in local poultry.

Source: Xinhua