India's plague-enforced isolation appeared to be waning Thursday as several of the more than 18 overseas airlines that boycotted flights to India lifted their travel bans.
At the same time, a massive anti-plague clean-up effort - including the wholesale slaughter of rats - continued in New Delhi and Bombay.But plague-weary officials were urging overzealous district health inspectors not to send dead rats to disease testing centers by mail. Several rat-filled packages have been intercepted at Bombay's main post office.
"The rats are in such a state of decomposition that the parcels are stinking," one postal worker said.
For the most part, life in India has resumed its normal pace as the plague frenzy of last week has subsided.
Businesses are operating, tourists are venturing out and suspended international airline services are slowly restarting.
At the height of India's plague scare last week, more than 18 international air carriers stopped all flights into India, and several nations banned Air India from landing in their territory.
Gulf Air has already restarted its service to Bombay, and an Indian civil aviation spokesman said Qatar Air has asked for permission to resume its flight service.
"We expect most airlines will be back to normal operations within the next week," a Ministry of Civil Aviation official said.
The Russian airline Aeroflot will resume flights to India by Saturday, a spokesman from the Russian embassy in New Delhi said.
Likewise, Air Canada says its Vancouver-London-New Delhi service will be flying by the end of the week. Thai International airlines was also given permission from Indian authorities to restart flights to Calcutta.
In addition to air services, cargo shipments and countless business ties were suspended in the wake of what at first appeared to be the rampant spread of pneumonic and bubonic plague in India.
In less than a month, more than 5,000 suspected cases of plague were reported from at least eight different Indian states.