KARACHI, Feb 4: A team of the city government’s agriculture and poultry officials on Monday sealed a poultry farm maintained by the Sindh Rangers near the Toll Plaza on the Super Highway after samples taken from its birds were tested positive for avian influenza by a laboratory in Islamabad.

Thousands of birds had already been culled by Rangers in the small hours of Sunday on the assumption that samples taken from the birds would be declared positive.

This was the second farm in the vicinity sealed by the authorities after declaring it affected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus over the past four days.

Around 1,200 birds had been culled earlier at a private farm by the surveillance staff and operation teams from the city district government. The birds culled by the teams were stuffed in large plastic bags for being affected with bird flu while thousands of birds had already died from the condition during the last week of January.

Sindh Poultry Director Dr Akbar Ali Soomro told Dawn that the Rangers were provided with the plastic bags and relevant sprays much before the release of bird samples results by the National Reference Laboratory (Poultry Diseases), Islamabad, and the Rangers killed the birds on their own.

He said: “I received the confirmation that the birds have been tested positive for H5N1 on Monday morning. Only then the information was passed on to district officials concerned to carry out the relevant exercise, including the anti-viral sprays inside the sheds and their surroundings, before sealing the farm in order to contain any further spread of the disease.”

Around 5,500 boiler birds died or were culled by the workers at the poultry farm maintained by the Rangers during the last six days.

In reply to a question, Dr Soomro said that the poultry directorate had collected information from other parts of the province as well and maintained that no case of bird flu had been reported from there so far. But, he said, he could not confirm whether samples from other birds had been collected and sent to Islamabad or not and mentioned that he would have to check his serological surveillance staff first.

Sources privy to the anti-bird flu exercises told Dawn that the Rangers and staff of the provincial government remained confused about the place where the farm workers could be shifted for relevant medical tests and observation. Till Monday evening, the workers could not be taken to any government hospital and they were kept at the Rangers’ camp set up near the infected poultry farm.

Gadap Town Health Officer Dr Khalil Ansari told Dawn that nine persons associated with the Rangers’ farm had been advised not to move in people. A medical team of the city government is visiting them twice a day for observation purposes and examining them for any symptoms like fever or flu type symptoms and chest congestions, he added.

Three poultry workers taken from another farm in the vicinity to the isolation ward of the civil hospital on last Friday were all well, he said, adding that they had not shown any sign of avian influenza virus so far.

The city government officials have, meanwhile, got a tip-off that a couple of farms located in the same vicinity are keeping peacocks, parrots and some other birds, sources said, adding that a surveillance team would visit the areas along the highway to ascertain the factual position and come up with the correct picture.