Health Minister Ashok Bhatt said the state government had requested the Central government to establish a branch of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Surat. The demand was made during Union Health Minister Dalit Ezhilmalai's visit to Surat on Wednesday.

He said an epidemic forecast centre would be opened in Ahmedabad as an extension to the ongoing British Council-run Malaria Research Control Project in Surat. The Centre government has already given permission to start the Ahmedabad project, he added.

The administration held a meeting with various associations of privatemedical practitioners in a bid to further strengthen the surveillance network and keep a tab on larger number of patients from various parts of the city. The medical practitioners suggested that a virology laboratory be started at Surat.

The administration has reiterated that no plague cases had been reported in the city and discounted chances of an outbreak of any epidemic. Reacting to a report in a vernacular newspaper that one of the six rodent samples had tested positive for plague symptoms, the Health Minister said the report was baseless.

He clarified that while five samples had tested negative the quantity of the last sample was found insufficient by the NICD team. However, the sixth sample had shown presence 0.3 per cent rat fleas. While the occurrence of rat fleas is diagnosed from body hair, the presence of plague bacterium is diagnosed from rat viscera.

The rodent samples have been taken as a matter of routine ever since the plague scare in 1994. Medical teams and paramedics had checked10,687 people in Surat Municipal Corporation limits while 3,097 were checked in rural areas over the last five days. There were no signs of any epidemic, Bhatt claimed.

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation of the affected persons and the water supply network was reviewed at a meeting presided over by Water Supplies Minister Narottam Patel. The civic body is supplying drinking water by 67 tankers and has pressed 125 hand-fogging machines to control malaria. Only 107 people are currently housed in the relief camps.

Surat Electricity Company chief executive Amitav Thakur said all sub-stations in the residential areas had started functioning while 93 in industrial areas had started working.