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Rabat – China’s National Health Commission (NHC) has reported its first human case of the H10N3 strain of bird flu. The NHC stated that the 41-year-old man hails from China’s eastern province of Jiangsu.
According to the NHC, the man was hospitalised on April 28 after developing a fever and other symptoms.
Strains of the avian influenza have threatened the world for decades; scientists recorded the first human infection of the H5N1 strain in China in 1997. The H5N1 had a 60% mortality rate.
Chinese health officials claim the risk of an outbreak is low and have yet to record any other cases of the H10N3 bird flu.
Many experts have been critical of China’s livestock management practices as the world recovers from the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020.
The last widespread outbreak of the bird flu in China killed nearly 300 people in 2016-2017 when the H7N9 strain took the country by storm.
Illnesses derived from avian influenza have a low chance for spread by human-to-human contact.
“It is not a very common virus,” said 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 Filip Claes.
Although the NHC has not reported any new cases of the H10N3 strain, health officials are taking new precautions to curb the possibility of a second pandemic.
