The Maharashtra health department is sending samples from poultry workers in Nandurbar district to the National Institute of Virology for human avian flu testing as a precautionary measure after a bird flu outbreak.
The Tamil Nadu government has issued a high alert following reports of widespread crow deaths, raising concerns about a potential avian influenza outbreak. Authorities have implemented stringent precautionary measures and urged the public to report any unusual bird deaths.
The Centre said bird flu has been confirmed so far in Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Gujarat, and asked these six states to contain the disease as per the action plan.
Nearly four lakh chickens have died in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh and vicinity over the past 45 days, prompting the Animal Husbandry Department to send samples for testing to ascertain the cause. Avian influenza is suspected, but the cause is yet to be confirmed.
Three tigers and a leopard died of avian influenza at an animal rescue center in Maharashtra's Nagpur, prompting authorities to put zoos on alert. The animals had been relocated to the Gorewada Rescue Centre from Chandrapur following incidents of man-animal conflict. The big cats died at the end of December after showing symptoms including limping and fever.
At present, the situation in Kerala is being monitored before any action can be taken, they said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said the best available strategy to combat avian influenza was to control it at the level of animals and sought more funds for the purpose.
The Maharashtra government on Saturday confirmed that bird flu had resulted in the recent deaths of chickens in Nandurbar and Dhule districts of the state.
District Magistrate Rajesh Pandey said 283 birds were reported to have died in and around Sukna area between April 27 and May 4 following which samples were sent to High Security Diseases Laboratory in Bhopal, which confirmed the outbreak of avian flu.
India's vibrant BPO and knowledge-based sectors may be adversely impacted if the Avian flu turns into a pandemic, Hong Kong-based security and risk management consultancy firm, Hill and Associates, warned on Tuesday.
According to a health department source in Imphal, so far close to 10,500 people were scanned by medical teams from over 1,700 households.
Bird flu among chickens has been confirmed in Surat district of Gujarat, official sources said in Ahmedabad Friday.
Some cases of bird flu have been detected in four villages of Jalgaon district in Maharashtra, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar told the Lok Sabha Tuesday.
Under the partnership, Bharat Biotech will use the patented virus like particle technology platform of Novavax to develop the single dosage pandemic influenza vaccine and undertake clinical trials before manufacturing and marketing the same.\n\n
A bird flu outbreak caused by the H5N1 strain has been reported in Bokaro, Jharkhand, leading to the death of around 250 birds at a government poultry farm. The outbreak was confirmed on March 7, prompting authorities to cull 46 birds and destroy 506 eggs at the farm. A 1-km radius has been declared an affected zone, where birds will be culled, and a 10-km radius has been designated as a surveillance zone, prohibiting the sale and purchase of poultry. This outbreak comes roughly a month after a similar incident in Ranchi, where 5,500 birds were culled.
China has reported the first case of human infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu from the country's eastern Jiangsu province, China's National Health Commission said.
According to Dr V N Katoch, Director Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) several influenza viruses keep on circulating among human, birds and animals like pigs and keep on recombining and reasserting with each others. These changes cause genetic variations among these viruses and new viruses emerge in this process.
Officials at the Marghazar Zoo have started screening, disinfection and isolation of birds for early detection of the disease.
Some 5,500 birds had died in the farm, following which samples were sent for tests at a laboratory in Islamabad. The tests confirmed the presence of bird flu, officials said.
A fresh outbreak of bird flu was reported from Murshidabad district of West Bengal on Friday, prompting the authorities to launch a culling operation, as the Union health ministry rushed a central team to the state. Culling of poultry began at Khargram and Nabagram areas of the district, which were the worst-affected when the avian flu hit the state last year. Over 1,000 chicken and ducks have died in the two blocks in the past few days, officials said.
With avian flu spreading fast in West Bengal, Meghalaya has sounded a high alert and an expert team is expected to reach the state on Thursday to oversee precautionary measures.
With the disease now virtually knocking at Kolkata's doors after spreading in Howrah, Rehman told PTI that poultry products from the affected areas would not be allowed to enter the city. The fear has aggravated since the spread to South 24 Parganas, part of which form the city's suburbs, and Kolkata Municipal Corporation has formed eight teams to monitor the situation in the city.
Fresh poultry deaths were reported from a farm in South 24-Parganas in West Bengal on Wednesday, raising fears that the dreaded H5N1 virus might be spreading to the organised sector after affecting backyard poultry. District health officials told PTI that there had been no instance of avian flu in the area earlier. Blood samples have been collected from the farm situated at Benerpukur, health officials said.
Kerala has had 202 fatalities in 2024 so far. In July alone, there were 202,122 episodes of fever, 2,250 cases of dengue, 1,850 cases of mumps and several other illnesses. 10,000 cases of dengue have been reported from Karnataka. 1,000 swine flu cases have been documented in Rajasthan.
The Jharkhand government has sounded an alert after bird flu cases were reported at a veterinary college-based poultry farm in Ranchi. The Union Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying has asked the state to take all measures to contain its spread. Around 150 Guinea fowls died over the past 20 days at the farm. The presence of H5N1, a type of avian influenza A virus, was confirmed in samples sent to the ICAR-National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD) in Bhopal.
Culling of chickens and ducks began on Tuesday in parts of Kerala to contain the H5N8 strain of bird flu, while Jammu and Kashmir sounded an alert and started collecting samples from migratory species after Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh reported cases of the avian influenza.
The United States argued that it had not had an outbreak of high pathogenic avian flu since 2004, while India had 90 such outbreaks between 2004 and 2014
The death of a 11-year-old boy due to 'bird-flu', even before the devastating effects of the second Covid wave have waned, has alarmed the medical fraternity though they assert that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 virus is extremely rare. The event has also put the Rs 90,000 crore domestic poultry industry which was seeing some uptick in demand after months of low sales last year into a spot of bother, as any curb on sale or production of eggs or chicken could have a devastating impact on its revenues. It is estimated that around 60 million people are directly impacted by the poultry sector in India. H5N1 virus, also commonly known as bird flu, is known to spread from chickens but other birds such as ducks and crow are also carriers of the virus.
Hetero is the only Indian partner of multinational drug major Roche Scientific for the manufacture and supply of the latter's patented drug, Tamilflu in developing countries.
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