Punjab has reported its first case of  Bird Flu or avian influenza with samples taken from a dead bar-headed goose testing positive for the flu's H5N1 strain, forest and wildlife preservation department officials said on Wednesday.

Samples from Alpha Poultry farm with 55,000 livestock, and Royal Poultry farm with 60,000 livestock, in Dera Bassi’s Behra village, have tested positive for bird flu (HSN8) at the Bhopal laboratory.

The samples were then sent to the Bhopal-based Institute of High Security Animal Diseases testing after the NRDDL found it to be a suspected case of bird flu, the officials said. "Yesterday, we received a report which found it (samples) to be positive for H5N1," said an official of the department.

The officials said that a team of the animal husbandry department had also visited the reservoir area. Everyday 50 samples of bird dropping are being sent for testing, they said. Report of samples of taken from two poultry farms at Dera Bassi in Mohali are still awaited.

On January 15, the Mohali administration had sent a suspected case of bird flu from the area to a Northern Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (NRDDL) in Jalandhar. For further investigation, it was sent to the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD), Bhopal.  

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