The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging hospitals to accelerate advanced testing of people they suspect may have bird flu.

People hospitalized for flu should be tested for bird flu within 24 hours, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday, in an expansion of the agency's efforts to tackle increasing infections in humans.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that hospitals speed up testing people who are hospitalized with the flu for H5N1 bird flu. Health care workers in hospitals are urged to perform additional testing on patients hospitalized with influenza A — ideally within 24 hours of admission — to determine