Navapur hospital free of patients

Mumbai, Mar 10 (UNI) With the discharge today of last two of the total 14 people admitted in isolation ward of civil hospital in the avian flu-hit town of Navapur in western Maharashtra following confirmation of outbreak of the deadly disease in poultry livestock on February 18, the town become free of patients who were kept under surveillance for fear of human catching the infection due to H5N1 virus.

'' Now there is no body under observation in the isolation ward of Navapur hospital,'' state health director Dr P P Doke told UNI this evening.

The state health officials had collected a total of 207 blood samples and throat swabs of people from the town. All 95 samples taken in the first 72 hours of the outbreak of the disease had tested negative for the flu in National Virology Institute, Pune and National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), New Delhi.

Meanwhile, workers engaged in cleaning up 52 poultries in and around Navapur are being kept separately even as road and train services were resumed to and from the town last week, tahsildar K S Rajguru told UNI on telephone. Officially, the quarantine, imposed on the town on February 20, however, continues, he added.

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