Human bird flu: Final result awaited

Although the government is not willing to reveal the identity of the patient, Dr Ganguly said the patient did not show any sign of pneumonia.

There is another reason for the confidence that the test will be negative. ‘‘The peak season for contracting pneumonia is over,’’ said Dr Ganguly.

The delay in getting the result of one of the five samples had more to do with technicality than anything else, said the doctor.

‘‘We get results cross-checked at the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi and the National Institute of Virology, Pune. While the four samples that showed negative results were tested at both the laboratories, the sample in question couldn’t reach NIV on time,’’ he said.

The reasons cited for the delay in taking the sample to NIV, however, did not sound satisfactory. ‘‘It was a mistake, as we were handling a large number of samples and missed this one,’’ he said.

Dr Ganguly said the sample was flown to NIV during the day and the result was expected on Saturday. According to him, the five samples had to go through a series of tests and the sample in question missed the last and the most crucial one, the Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). ‘‘We had to cross-check results of the final test and this is causing the delay (in the final report),’’ said Ganguly.

Nashik village boy dead, samples with NIV: Doctors at Mumbai’s JJ Hospital have sent blood samples of a 12-year-old boy, who died last night, to Pune’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) for a bird-flu virus test.

This is the first such sample from Mumbai. Doctors, however, said there was no cause for alarm. They had sent the samples ‘‘to be sure’’ and didn’t think those would test positive for bird flu.

Bhushan Sanjay Ahire, who was from a village in Nashik district, was admitted to the hospital at 10 p.m. on Wednesday with ‘‘a query of bird flu’’, according to doctors. He was kept in an isolation ward and died at 11.30 p.m.

The cause of death as reported in his death certificate was ‘lower respiratory tract infection with septicaemia’. But doctors thought it prudent to send his blood samples to Pune for two reasons. ‘‘One, he was in close contact with poultry products and second his clinical symptoms were similar to those of Avian influenza,’’said Health Secretary AM Khan.

Navapur traffic restrictions: Restrictions on movement to and from the 3-km radius of Navapur, the epicentre of bird flu, would be further intensified if the results of the blood samples of patients under observation is found positive, a senior police official of Navapur said today. Twelve people are under observation at the isolation ward of the local sub-district hospital.

(with inputs from Anuradha Nagaraj in Jaikheda village)