Thais urged to keep watch on pneumonic outbreak in China

However Thailand has not issued a travel warning to China, he said, adding the public are advised to be careful of their health.

The minister said he had ordered the ministry's permanent secretary to determine whether the disease was airborne, spread from human to human, or through the respiratory system.

He was speaking following pneumonic plague broke out in China's Qinghai recently, claiming two fatalities.

According to the minister, pneumonic plague as a pandemic was last found in Thailand in 1952.

China quarantined Ziketan town of 10,000 people in its northwest Tibetan area following two deaths caused by pneumonic plague.

Chinese health authorities warned travellers to the region in mid-July with cough or fever to immediately seek medical attention.

Meanwhile state-run Xinhua news agency reported that a second person has died of pneumonic plague in north-west China after authorities placed a town under quarantine.

A man identified only as Danzin, 37, from Ziketan town in the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture died Sunday morning from the infectious disease.

 Danzin was the neighbour of a 32-year-old herder who died earlier in the outbreak, which has sickened another 10 people, mostly relatives of the herder, the agency said.

 Local authorities have closed off Ziketan town, which has a population of 10,000, and are searching for those who have had close contact with the infected.

 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), pneumonic plague is an air-born disease that can be spread from person to person through coughing.

 Plague is endemic in many countries in Africa, the former Soviet Union, the Americas and Asia, with 1,000 to 2,000 cases reported each year, according to WHO.

 Chinese authorities have urged those who have travelled to Ziketan since July 16 and developed a fever or coughing to go to local disease control centres.