Officials in India say seven new cases of bird flu have been reported in the western state of Maharashtra, the site of two earlier outbreaks this year and one in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh state.
Results from the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) in Bhopal have confirmed H5N1 in two samples from a town in the Burhanpur region of Madhya Pradesh, on the border with Maharastra and in seven samples from Maharashtra.
HSADL Deputy Director Dr H K Pradhan says a further 114 samples were being tested from 23 villages around Icchapur.
The virus is suspected to be the H5N1 strain.
The government says a medical team of three senior doctors from Delhi will be sent to the area as a precaution and an alert has been declared.
Poultry movement has been banned and containment teams have been sent in to the region affected along with 200 veterinary personnel.
Unlike Navapur, where the flu first appeared, the Burhanpur region has few organised poultry farms and the poultry population is low across the entire district.
Less than 7,000 poultry in a 10-kilometre radius of Ichhapur will be culled and buried.
Bijay Kumar, animal husbandry commissioner of Maharashtra, says about 250,000 birds would have to be culled spread over some 200 villages in the Jalgaon region.
Maharashtra's animal health minister Anees Ahmed said the positive samples were tested during routine surveillance following the second outbreak in Jalgaon and appears to be a case of co-infection at the same site more at the same time.