The world is battling the COVID-19 pandemic which broke out last year leaving the world helpless and medical workers overburdened. While the world is still battling this deadly virus, China has now reported its first case of human infection from a particular bird flu strain in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, China’s national health commission (NHC) said on Tuesday.
In a statement on its website, the NHC has confirmed the case of human infection with the H10N3 strain.
The case, detected in a male aged 41 and living in Zhenjiang, a city in the eastern part of the province, was transmitted from poultry, the statement said.
The risk of spreading on a large scale was very low, the NHC assured, adding that there hasn’t been any case of human infection of H10N3 reported in the world before.
The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted a genome sequence on a blood sample from the patient last week and confirmed that it was the H10N3 strain. He is now in stable condition and has broadly met the standards for discharge, the Commission noted.
Local authorities have traced the patient’s contacts and have kept them under medical observation.
There are many different strains of avian influenza in China and some sporadically infect people, generally those working with poultry.
H5N8 is a subtype of the Influenza A virus (also known as the bird flu virus). While H5N8 only presents a low risk to humans, it is highly lethal to wild birds and poultry.
In April, a highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu was found in wild birds in northeast China’s Shenyang city.