Moscow/Shanghai. August 23. INTERFAX-CHINA - Bird flu in Russia´s Siberia region that borders China continued to spread Tuesday as more birds died from the illness and more birds were slaughtered to stop the block the disease.

As many as 137 birds have died from avian flu in Russia´s Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tyumen, Kurgan and Chelyabinsk regions and Altai territory over the past 24 hours, Russia´s Emergency Situations Ministry sources told Interfax on Tuesday.

A total of 11,715 infected birds have died and another 128,046 have been slaughtered to stop the spread of the disease since July 21, when the first bird flu cases were reported. Eighty-one birds have been killed over the past 24 hours.

Measures are being taken to prevent bird flu from spreading to humans, sources said.

The Emergency Situations Ministry´s press service said that even though the A H5N1 virus is potentially dangerous for humans "no cases of infections among humans have been registered."

The situation with the disease in Russia will become "more calm and predictable" after birds finish migrating in late October, Yevgeny Nepoklonov, deputy head of the FederalVeterinary and Phytosanitary Monitoring Service (Rosselkhoznadzor), told Interfax.

An official with China´s Ministry of Agriculture surnamed Xu said they have no information that the disease has crossed the border and would take immediate action if the bird flu spread into the northern region.

"Anti-epizootic and anti-epidemic measures are conducted to prevent the spread of the infection among poultry and rule out the chances of an infection among humans," the press service said.

A bird flu outbreak recently occurred in Qinghai Province early this year. Since 2004, millions of birds have been killed in Southwest Asia in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the bird flu is common in birds but rarely spreads to humans. There have been human cases of the disease and deaths, mainly in Southwest Asia.