Routine sampling of blood and faecal extracts from backyard poultry in Tripura has detected the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, infecting birds in a village, 130 km from the state capital Agartala. The virus was isolated from Kalachari village in Mohanpur block just before it started to cause largescale mortality among birds. The samples, that were picked up on April 16, were found to be positive with H5N1 by Bhopal's High Security Animal Disease Laboratory on April 19. However, the final notification of a new outbreak in Tripura was issued by the Centre only on Monday night. The fresh outbreak comes a week after Tripura's 28 rapid response teams (RRTs) had controlled the earlier H5N1 outbreak, which killed over 3,000 birds in Dhalai district. Tripura's animal resource commissioner U Venkateswarulu said: