HONG KONG, Nov. 29 -- The bird flu virus is far more lethal than the SARS virus that struck Asia last year and could unleash a pandemic that could kill as many as 50 million people, a World Health Organization official said Monday.
A WHO estimate last week that H5N1 could infect as much as 30 percent of the world's population and kill between 2 million and 7 million people was a conservative estimate, said Shigeru Omi, director of WHO's Western Pacific regional office.
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 Disclosures by the Chinese government heightened the world community's sense of alarm over the spread of SARS in 2003. Enter the Gallery
Gallery: Mystery Pneumonia Spreads
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"The maximum range is more . . . maybe 20 [million] to 50 million people," Omi said in a speech here.
"It will be incomparable to SARS," he said, referring to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed 800 people around the world in 2003.
While SARS had a mortality rate of around 15 percent, the H5N1 strain of avian influenza kills up to one-third of the people it infects. H5N1 is versatile and has "become more pathogenic," Omi said.
The virus has killed 32 people in Thailand and Vietnam this year, and millions of chickens, ducks and other birds have been culled across Asia.
