Seventeen more ducks died on Saturday due to bird flu in the now closed Deer Park in the national Capital, the highest number so far in a day.
Six birds had died on Friday. The Deer Park will remain shut until normalcy returns, authorities said.
Delhi's Animal Husbandry Minister Gopal Rai has advised the authorities to “deeply bury” the carcasses and undertake necessary disinfection processes in the park. Rai will visit the Deer Park on Sunday afternoon to take stock of the situation, a Government statement said.
Earlier on Saturday, a rapid response team constituted by the Delhi Government, that collected eight samples from live birds in the Ghazipur poultry market. Besides, seven carcasses of birds were collected from different parts of Delhi on receipt of calls on the helpline set up by the Government.
Rai had set up six rapid response teams on Wednesday to collect samples from bird sanctuaries and poultry markets. He later increased the number of teams to 10. All the samples will be sent to the central lab in Bhopal, which had earlier confirmed that the virus strain found in the initial sample of birds was H5N8 avian influenza.
On Friday, Rai had visited Ghazipur poultry market and said no indication of avian virus infection was found in the 2.2 lakh chickens that arrived in the market.
On the other hand, officials of the Delhi Government's Animal Husbandry Department said the death of three crows in Sunder Nagar raises suspicions about the disease spreading beyond the zoo and sanctuaries and infecting indigenous birds. But any alert on this would be issued only after test results come in. The animal husbandry officials are working in full swing with all their leaves cancelled in view of the current situation.
A senior official of the department has said, “We have constituted 10 rapid response teams, besides forming a 23-member team headed by development commissioner Sandeep Kumar for better coordination between departments. Apart from this, 10 municipal corporation teams have been kept in reserve for any possible crisis. Civic bodies have been asked to maintain cleanliness at dump yards near poultry farms.”
The first deaths of two migratory birds was reported on October 14 in Delhi Zoo, and six more birds were found dead the following day. One bird each died on October 17 and 19. On Thursday, eight more birds died in the city.