Colds, cough trigger Scare

Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:28 AM ET

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Hundreds of people with colds and coughs were turning up at medical camps in bird flu-hit areas of western India on Tuesday as two more people were quarantined as a precaution, authorities and witnesses said.

The two new cases from the western state of Maharashtra raised the number of people isolated to 10.

The two had no symptoms of flu but were quarantined because they had been in close contact with a farmer who died on Sunday and who had initially been thought to be the first human victim of bird flu in India, said Vijay Satbir Singh, the state's top health official.

"We are taking no chances. Even though we now know that the dead man didn't have bird flu, we have put these two persons in quarantine as a precaution because they were in close contact with him," Singh told Reuters.

So far, India has reported no human case of avian influenza, whose initial symptoms include cough and fever. Laboratory reports for the first of the quarantined people were expected late on Wednesday.

"About 500 people have walked into makeshift medical camps in Navapur (town) to get checked for cough and cold since Monday evening," said T.P. Doke, Maharashtra's health director.

"We collected 46 new blood samples and throat swabs and have sent them for testing."

Navapur is in Nandurbar district, about 450 km (280 miles) north of Mumbai, India's commercial hub.

Reports of thousands of poultry deaths poured in from pockets across the country, the latest from the southern Indian state of Karnataka where 16,000 dead chicken were found.

Although early indications did not point to bird flu, officials were running more tests on samples from among the 16,000 to conclusively rule out the H5N1 avian influenza, an official said.

Sales of poultry products have fallen 25 to 30 percent in India since the outbreak was first reported at the weekend, an industry official said on Tuesday.

Doke said authorities had completed a door-to-door search in Navapur where 30,000 people had been examined after the H5N1 virus was confirmed in some of the 50,000 poultry found dead in the region.

As a bird flu scare swept India, health and poultry workers in Navapur poisoned or throttled chickens and then dumped them into pits wrapped in black plastic sheets in a frantic effort to contain the virus, witnesses said.

Workers wearing blue overalls, anti-viral masks and goggles used spades to fill up the trenches because heavy earthmovers were in short supply, they said.

TV channels showed some locals complaining of a rotting stench from the pits, but officials said there was no fear of infection as the ditches has been sprayed with disinfectant.

"We have culled about 300,000 birds and are vaccinating poultry around the area to create a buffer zone. The outbreak has been, by and large, contained," said Singh.

Officials estimate up to 500,000 birds would have to be culled and the job was expected to be completed on Wednesday.

Federal health authorities said the situation was "under control", but all eyes were on the test results for the 10 people quarantined in Navapur.

"Whether they (the quarantined people) are really H5N1 or not will be known to us tomorrow evening," Subhash Salunke, regional advisor of the World Health Organization, told Reuters.

"These cases are mild. They don't appear to be that of H5N1 but I can't say anything unless I have a lab report."

Scary thought really, but I smell a coverup, suddenly they're culling chickens next thing you know people are showing up sick in hospitals, if there are deaths, ten to one it'll be like unexplained virus takes hold on human, no immediate threat is found.  The government blames the sudden weather changes.