China reports TWO human cases of bird flu in middle-aged man and woman hundreds of miles apart
China has reported two human cases of avian flu in a man and a woman more than 800 hundreds of miles apart — amid growing concern the virus is on the verge of spreading to humans and causing a pandemic.
The 53-year-old woman from eastern China’s Jiangsu province tested positive last month for the H5N1 strain that has devastated bird populations worldwide, BNO news agency said.
Meanwhile, Chinese health officials announced that a 49-year-old man in southern China’s Guangdong province tested positive for H5N6 after coming into contact with live birds.
Concerns have emerged in recent weeks about a possible spillover after a Cambodian girl died of the virus and her father tested positive. Scientists on the ground said the strain they were infected with had mutations that made it better at infecting humans.
Workers in protective suits in Cambodia’s Prey Veng province, where a schoolgirl recently died of bird flu
The Cambodian girl’s father also later tested positive for the virus, despite showing no symptoms
A worker catches chickens at a market in Phnom Penh on Feb. 24, 2023. The father of an 11-year-old Cambodian girl who died of bird flu earlier this week tested positive for the virus, health officials said
New outbreak of human bird flu cases in Cambodia has sparked fears a new Covid-like pandemic is on the way
The female Chinese patient developed symptoms after eating chicken on Jan. 31 and tested positive for H5N1 sometime in February.
Her current condition is unknown and little information has been released.
Genetic sequencing in China found the case was due to the H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b – the avian flu strain that is currently devastating bird populations worldwide and has infected many birds and mammals since 2021.
A clade is a further subdivision of flu viruses within tribes.
But yesterday it emerged that the avian flu strain that claimed the life of a schoolgirl in Cambodia has evolved to better infect human cells, a worrying development.
Dr. Erik Karlsson, who led the team at the Pasteur Institute in Cambodia that decoded the genetic sequence of the girl virus, warned that it was different from that of birds.
He told sky news: ‘There are some indications that this virus passed through a human being.
“Every time these viruses invade a new host, they go through certain changes that allow them to replicate a little better or possibly bind a little better to the cells in our airways.”
But he added that the virus had yet to fully adapt to humans, saying it was essentially “still an avian virus.”
Dr. Karlsson said the new mutations are unlikely to have happened in the girl, but they likely existed in a “cloud” of viruses with random genetic changes in birds.
Like all flu, the virus is primarily spread through airborne droplets that are inhaled or enter a person’s mouth, eyes, or nose
A young girl from Prey Veng in Cambodia (see map) died of H5N1 bird flu this year. She was infected with the virus in mid-February and is the first case in the country since 2014
The species in its current form is unlikely to cause a major outbreak. Widespread transmission requires a mutation that makes it possible to bind to a receptor located on cells in the nose.
H5N1 has a human fatality rate of about 50 percent. There have only been about 870 human cases worldwide.
The 2.3.4.4b strain has devastated the world’s bird population over the past year.
More than 15 million animals have been killed by the virus itself, while governments have collectively culled more than 200 million animals worldwide to contain the spread of the virus, 58 million of them in the US alone.
Meanwhile, a man in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong has tested positive for H5N6.
The Hong Kong Ministry of Health and Center for Health Protection (CHP) announced yesterday that the man contracted the flu after coming into contact with live birds.
He developed symptoms on December 17 last year and was admitted to hospital four days later in ‘serious condition’.
Since 2014, a total of 83 cases of bird flu in humans have been reported by mainland health authorities.
The agencies collectively urged the public not to visit wet markets and farms.
Bird flu is a contagious form of flu that spreads among birds.
In general, bird flu infections in humans are rare.
In these cases, it can be transmitted to humans through close contact with a dead or live infected bird.
People can get sick if enough virus gets into someone’s eyes, nose or mouth or is inhaled.
People who have close or prolonged unprotected contact (not wearing respiratory and eye protection) with infected birds or in areas where sick birds, their mucus, saliva or faeces are contaminated may be at greater risk of infection.
Other means of transmission include touching infected birds, their droppings or bedding. People can also get bird flu if they kill or prepare infected poultry for eating, as the woman in China is said to have done.
Bird flu is heat sensitive, making it unusual for humans to contract it through food. Properly cooked meat does not contain the virus.
Wild birds are carriers, mainly through migration.
As they clump together to reproduce, the virus quickly spreads and is then carried to other parts of the world.
New species usually appear first in Asia, from where more than 60 species of shorebirds, waders and waterfowl migrate to Alaska to mingle with migratory birds from the US. Others go west and infect European species.
The current strain, H5N1, is not only spreading rapidly, but also killing at an unprecedented level, leading some experts to say it is the deadliest strain yet.
Millions of chickens and turkeys in the UK have been culled or quarantined, affecting the availability of turkeys and free-range eggs.
Since 2003, only 860 human cases have been reported to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) repeated yesterday that the risk to the general public was low.
But people are urged not to touch sick or dead birds because the virus is deadly, killing 56 percent of people it manages to infect.
The CDC recently said it was ramping up its pandemic preparedness in response to the threat.
The agency said it was in a “posture of readiness” with several vaccine candidates and drugs in the works.
National testing capacity was also built up in case the H5N1 strain spread to humans.
In the UK, health authorities say they have begun modeling scenarios for an avian flu pandemic in response to the threat.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has described the situation in Cambodia as ‘worrying’ in a noticeable shift in rhetoric.
Earlier this month, the agency had assessed the threat of bird flu to humans as “low.” But the WHO says it may reconsider that status based on the latest update.
Dr. Sylvie Briand, WHO’s director for preparedness and prevention of epidemics and pandemics, told reporters they were considering the shift.
She said: ‘The global H5N1 situation is concerning given the widespread spread of the virus in birds around the world and the increasing reports of cases in mammals, including humans.’
Concerns about the spread of bird flu to humans arose this month after cases also emerged in mammals, including minks and sea lions.
This brings the virus one step closer to infecting and spreading among humans.
Bird flu viruses usually have a harder time spreading in people because the mortality rate is so high and the infection can kill so quickly, meaning people die before they have a chance to pass it on.
Professor Francois Balloux wrote on Twitter this week that bird flu is a ‘serious concern’.
But he said that while human-to-human transmission is happening, it’s not happening any more than before at the moment, and “by far the most likely scenario for H5N1 is nothing happening at this point.”