The Odisha government stepped up culling operation on the second day by destroying about 8,962 poultry birds around Keranga village in Khurda district, considered the epicentre of H5N1 contamination.
About 10 rapid response teams and six surveillance squads were pressed into service to complete the disinfection drive as soon as possible...
Meanwhile, carcasses of 20 crows were found near government-run homoeopathy college near Kharavela Nagar area here . Reports of crow deaths kept coming from different parts of the State, but researchers were not attaching much importance to them.
So far no confirmation about crows being affected by H5N1 had reached the State, although more than 1,000 samples had already been despatched to High Security Animal Diseases Laboratory, Bhopal.