The People’s Republic of China confirmed the first case of H3N8 bird flu in humansalthough the local health authorities assured this Wednesday that the risk of person-to-person transmission is lowofficial sources reported.
As indicated on Wednesday by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China, it is a four-year-old boy from central Henan province who tested positive for the strain after being hospitalized with fever and other symptoms.
According to the data collected, the child’s family raises chickens at home and lives in an area where wild ducks live, the CNS said in a statement.
The child was infected directly by the birds and it was not determined that the strain “had the capacity to infect humans,” they explained from the commission, which added that tests of close human contacts of the child did not detect “abnormalities”.
The CNS noted that the case of the boy it was “a single transmission between species, and the risk of large-scale transmission is low”.
However, he warned the public to stay away from dead or sick birds and to seek immediate treatment in cases of fever or respiratory symptoms.
The avian influence occurs especially in wild and domestic birdsbut cases of human-to-human transmission are extremely rare.
The H3N8 strain has been in circulation since 2002, after appearing in North American waterfowl, and has infected horses, dogs and seals, but had not been detected in humans, the AFP news agency reported.
Likewise, the H5N1 and H7N9 strains of avian flu detected in 1979 and 2013 have been responsible for most cases of human illness due to avian influenza, according to the United States Center for Disease Control.
