india's encounter with avian influenza seems far from over. Navapur in Maharashtra, where the avian influenza first broke out in January this year, had barely started breathing a sigh of relief at the containment of the deadly virus when a veterinary laboratory in Bhopal announced the presence of the pathogen in samples collected in Jalgoan district, 140 km away.

The Bhopal-based High Security Animal Diseases Laboratory (hsadl), on March 14, said a few samples collected around February 25, from four villages