RAWALPINDI, April 18: A day after the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza was detected in a private poultry farm in Sihala on Monday, the range of surveillance zone has been enlarged to a radius of 10 kilometres around the infected farm.

Initially, the surveillance zone was restricted to three kilometers to carry out intensive investigations. But the range had been extended and the disease laboratory located at the Poultry Research Institute (PRI) in Rawalpindi put on high alert. It is working till mid night.

A spokesman of the Punjab Government told Dawn that six monitoring teams have been formed to collect samples from all poultry farms within the surveillance zone.

Of the 525 samples collected from the zone till Tuesday, 265 tested negative as did the poultry farm workers.

Flocks were also found completely healthy, he said.

Teams of experts from Islamabad Capital Territory and PRI are out in the field, and the district government and Dr Zafar Jamil Gill, Director-General (Research), Department of Livestock and Dairy Development of the Punjab Government are supervising their work.

Dr Shamsul Hassan, Director, PRI Rawalpindi, is monitoring the testing of samples and determining whether the virus traveled from another area.

Dr Zafar Gill, who is also acting as the Punjab Government’s spokesman on the bird flu issue, told Dawn that the teams will again take samples from the same farms at one week intervals to recheck the virus before declaring the zone free of the virus.

He said that the federal government had sanctioned a grant of Rs11 million to the Punjab government to prepare vaccine to control Avian Influenza at the Veterinary Research Institute in Lahore.

The vaccine would be ready for supply to poultry farms by the end of this month.

Similarly, in Sindh, the Poultry Research Institute in Karachi has been mandated to prepare vaccine for Sindh.