The government enforced strict control measures last year to control the disease and officials say these steps have paid off.

The Health Ministry said Vietnam has had no bird flu cases in humans in the past three months.

The Agriculture Ministry signed early this week a directive to allow chicken breeders at large-scale farms to resume hatching, a practice banned by the government since late November 2005.

Breeders are now required to vaccinate all of their day-old chickens before selling them to the market, Deputy Agriculture Minister Bui Ba Bong said in the directive.

"The vaccination has started in Nam Dinh province and we plan to go on with other provinces," Bui Quang Anh, head of the Animal Health Department, told Reuters late on Friday. The department oversees the nationwide vaccination campaign.

However, the hatching of ducks and geese, which can carry the H5N1 virus without showing symptoms, will remain banned until February 2007, Saturday's official Nhan Dan newspaper said citing the Agriculture Ministry.

Anh said more than 242 million birds in Vietnam were vaccinated in the last five months of 2005 and this played a crucial role in ending bird flu outbreaks in poultry.

Health experts said while poultry vaccinations last year appeared to have eliminated the source of human infections, consumers boycotting poultry before the Lunar New Year festival last month also helped stop the virus resurfacing.