India has checked and cleared more than 400,000 people for bird flu in western India, officials said yesterday, as a massive clean-up drive to contain a second outbreak in poultry neared completion.

The latest outbreak — in backyard poultry in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state — was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu, but it has not infected people so far.

“We have completed monitoring 440,000 people in and around the four affected villages of Jalgaon. The week-long vigil is over and there are no human cases,” Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra’s top health official, told Reuters.

Of the hundreds of thousands of people monitored, only four were quarantined in Jalgaon either with flu-like symptoms or as a precaution, but they were expected to be discharged later yesterday after their test results were negative for bird flu.

More than 90,000 birds have been culled in Jalgaon and authorities are concentrating their efforts on cleaning up four villages spread over 1,100 square km (425 square miles) in the district where backyard poultry were found infected with bird flu.

The clean-up operation – disinfecting homes, backyards and drains – could be over in two days, officials said. Jalgaon is next door to Nandurbar district where the first outbreak occurred last month.