India isolates 26 people as bird flu spreads in Asia

By Bappa Majumdar

KOLKATA (Reuters) - India has put 26 people in isolation with bird flu symptoms and hundreds more people are being monitored, officials said on Friday as Pakistan and Thailand reported outbreaks of bird flu in poultry.

India is battling its worst outbreak of avian influenza, which has spread to 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts. The densely populated state is adjacent to Bangladesh, itself trying to control a major outbreak of bird flu, and has millions of backyard fowl.

India has not reported any human infection of the H5N1 bird flu virus in its four outbreaks of avian influenza since 2006.

"The preliminary tests for bird flu are negative, but more tests are being conducted and the list of sick people reviewed every day," R.S. Shukla, a senior health official, told Reuters.

To the west in neighbouring Pakistan, authorities said bird flu had been detected at a poultry farm on the outskirts of its biggest city, Karachi.

But officials said on Friday there was no likelihood of any human infection.

"We are now monitoring the workers on the farm as well as another one adjacent to it," said an official of the Sindh provincial government.

In Thailand, the virus has been found in a second province in the north.