A man in China has been reported to be infected with H10N3 strain of bird flu, becoming the first human case of the flu. However, the Chinese authorities have stated that this flu is highly unlikely to spread widely among people.
As the health officials stated on Tuesday, unlike Coronavirus, which also originated in China, the risk of community transmission of H10N3 is low.
The infected Chinese person has been identified to be a 41 year old man, who is a resident of the eastern city of Zhenjiang. According to China’s National Health Commission, the man was hospitalized on 28th April after he developed fever and other symptoms. Later, he was diagnosed with the H10N3 strain of bird flu (avian influenza) on May 28.
Currently, the man is reported to be in a stable condition, and the hospital is ready to discharge him.
It is still not yet clear how he got the infection, but the officials say that this was a case of “accidental cross-species transmission.” The commission also stated that the patient’s close contacts were also medically observed, but no other person have contracted the infection.
The commission mentioned that H10N3 is a low pathogenic virus. Hence, the risk of large-scale transmission is low,” the commission said.
Filip Claes, the regional laboratory coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases at the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific stated that this is not a common virus.
Claes said, “There have been only around 160 isolates of the virus detected over the course of 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.”
As reported by Reuters, “while many different strains of avian influenza are currently in China, there have been no significant numbers of human infections since the H7N9 strain killed about 300 people from 2016-2017.”
CDC also added to the subject stating that Avian influenza viruses rarely infect people. Poultry workers are most likely to get sick when working with infectious or dead animals, told health officials.