On Tuesday China marked a 41-year-old human, who is reportedly the first case of H1ON3 bird flu. China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said that a 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with bird flu.
About the patient
NHC said in a statement that the man was a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was admitted in the hospital on 28th April after he felt like fever accompanied with some other symptoms. He was diagnosed as having the ‘H1ON3 avian influenza virus’ on 28th May, it said, but no more infection related details have been made public.
The World Health Organization (WHO), in a reply to a report, said that-
“The source of the patient’s exposure to the H10N3 virus is not known at this time, and no other cases were found in emergency surveillance among the local population. At this time, there is no indication of human-to-human transmission too.”
Once the man was feeling better and was ready to be out from the observation, he was discharged. Medical observation of his close contacts had not found in any other cases.
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About the H1NO3 virus
H10N3 is a low pathogenic, or relatively less severe, strain of the virus found in poultry and the risk of it spreading on a large scale was once very low. No other cases of human infection with H10N3 have been reported around the globe till now except this man’s case in China.
Filip Claes, regional laboratory coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Centre for Tran’s boundary Animal Diseases at the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific made this clear that, this strain is “not a very common virus”. And also that analysing the genetic data of the virus will be necessary to determine whether it resembles older viruses or if it is a novel mix of different viruses at the origin.
Further adding to the information he said that-
“Only around 160 isolates of the virus were reported in the 40 years to 2018, mostly in wild birds or waterfowl in Asia and some limited parts of North America, and none had been detected in chickens so far.”
Various different strains of avian influenza are present in China and some of the strains tremendously infect people, usually those who are working with poultry. There have been no specific numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain took lives of around 300 people during 2016-2017 infection phases.
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