WEDNESDAY, June 2, 2021 (HealthDay News) — The world’s first case of H10N3 bird flu in a person has been reported in China, but officials say chances are low that the virus will spread widely among people.
The patient is a 41-year-old man who was admitted to a hospital with fever in the eastern city of Zhenjiang on April 28 and was diagnosed with H10N3 a month later, the China National Health Commission (NHC) said in an online statement, CBS News reported.
The man is in stable condition and his close contacts have no “abnormalities,” according to the agency. It did not say how the man became infected. “The risk of large-scale spread is extremely low,” according to the NHC, CBS News reported.
While several strains of bird flu have been found among animals in China, large outbreaks in humans are rare. The last human epidemic of bird flu in China was caused by the H7N9 virus and occurred in late 2016 to 2017, CBS News reported. Following recent avian flu outbreaks in Africa and Eurasia, the head of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention last week urged stricter surveillance in poultry farms, markets, and wild birds.
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