The culling of poultry birds in the 5-km radius of the affected farm at Chingmeirong in Imphal East district has come to an end. The Rapid Response Teams (RRT) will start “mopping” operations from Friday . Late on Thursday evening, officials at the Bird Flu Control Room in Imphal informed that 20 of the 34 RRTs had submitted their reports for the day. The 20 teams reported to culling 37,336 birds, bringing the total culling count to over 3,00,000 birds.

According to official reports, around 700-odd health workers independent of the RRTs on culling duty have been paying house-to-house visits in the affected area and approximately 45,000 houses have been surveyed by the health department teams. Of these, nearly 1,000 households were found to be having backyard poultry farms.

Meanwhile, the Isolation Ward at the JN Hospital here received two new ventilators. One of the symptoms of avian flu is severe respiratory problems. While fingers are unofficially pointing to neighbour Myanmar as the source of the outbreak in Manipur, the Centre has reportedly instructed the Mizoram Government to keep a check on the entry of poultry products from Myanmar. Apart from Mizoram and Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh also share the 1,600-km long porous International Border with Myanmar, which has reported bird flu outbreaks earlier this year.