MUMBAI: More poultry samples have tested positive for H5 avian influenza in Maharashtra, which has been struggling to contain bird flu since February, officials said on Wednesday.
The latest outbreak has hit 14 new villages in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra, near the site of two earlier outbreaks, Maharashtra Health Director T P Doke said.
Officials said they suspected that further tests would confirm the virus was the H5N1 strain which had already struck the area.
“Laboratory tests have shown it is H5, which is bird flu. We suspect it will also turn out to be H5N1 because the new outbreak is in the same area,” said Uttam Khobragade, state’s top animal husbandry official.
“Dozens of samples from poultry had been collected after the first outbreak,” said Bijay Kumar, state animal husbandry commissioner. “The results of those are coming out in phases.”
In Jalgaon, veterinary and civic workers were identifying a 10-km radius around the newly affected villages where all poultry would be culled.
Health officials will also simultaneously begin a now-familiar exercise of monitoring people for flu-like symptoms.
Meanwhile, district collector Vijay Singhal said 22 villages in the three km radius of the flu-hit villages will remain under quarantine for some more days as spraying operation to disinfect the area is still on.
He said health check-up of 1.30 lakh population in the 22 villages had been completed and no person examined so far has shown clinical symptoms of human influenza.
But bus services to the villages will remain suspended for some more days as poeple's houses are being disinfected by spraying their inside with sodium hypochlorise and outside with formalin.
