The World Health Organization said on Tuesday April 11 that China had notified it of the death of a patient with H3N8 flu. A world first.
China has recorded the death of a 56-year-old woman infected with H3N8 avian flu. The World Health Organization (WHO), which released the information on Tuesday, said it was the first known case of death from this type of flu.
According to his information, the disease broke out in this patient on February 22, 2023, and she died. She had “multiple underlying medical conditions,” and had “a history of exposure to live poultry prior to illness onset, and a history of wild birds around her home.”
The Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Guangdong, China, did not provide further details on the circumstances of his death. The WHO said none of the woman’s relatives developed the infection or any symptoms.
In addition, samples were taken from the home of the deceased woman, as well as from the market where she went before the onset of symptoms, and the results were positive for influenza A for the samples taken in the market.
THREE cases of human transmission worldwide
“However, it is still unclear what the exact source of this infection is (…) To better understand the current risk to public health, more information is needed from human surveys. and in animals,” the organization said in a communiqué.
This is the third known case of human infection with influenza H3N8, a subtype of influenza A, endemic in birds, horses or dogs. The two previous cases had also been identified in China, in April and May 2022.
The WHO expects that other cases of contamination in humans will be detected sporadically in the future, as the bird flu virus continues to circulate among poultry populations. However, the organization indicates that the risks of sustained human-to-human transmission remain low.