In China, a case of H10N3 avian influenza has been detected in a 41-year-old man. The disease had never been reported in a human before. The risk of an outbreak, however, remains "extremely low", according to authorities.
It usually hits birds. Now it affects humans too. China has just announced the first case of H10N3 avian flu. The 41-year-old patient, from the city of Zhenjiang, has been hospitalized since late April with a progressive fever. The doctors, supported by genetic analyzes carried out by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), finally determined the diagnosis a few days ago, indicated the Chinese Ministry of Health, which however wants to be reassuring.
"The risk of large-scale dissemination is extremely low", he indeed noted, underlining an “ accidental interspecies transmission ” .
It should be remembered, however, that in rare cases, avian flu can trigger epidemics in humans. The latest, that inherent in the H7N9 virus, claimed more than 300 victims in 2016 and 2017 (case fatality rate of around 40%). Evidence also suggests that the flu strain that caused the 1918 pandemic, H1N1, also originated in birds, disproving some older studies suggesting it originated from a mixture of human and porcine viruses.
The CCDC then conducted a surveillance campaign in the surrounding province of Jiangsu in search of additional cases of infections, particularly among the patient's contact cases. For the moment, no other case has been detected, assure the authorities. The man, who is now in stable condition, will soon be discharged from hospital.
However, researchers will need to examine the genetic material of the strain that infected this patient in depth to determine how it differs from H10N3 samples usually taken from birds, says Filip Claes , from the United Nations Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Diseases.
The latter points out that H10N3 does not often occur in its natural hosts. For now, only 160 cases approximately of the virus have indeed been reported over the last forty years, mainly in various waterfowl or wild birds . To date, the strain has not been detected in chickens. Regarding the Chinese patient, the CCDC did not specify how the man was infected.
Finally, let's recall that, earlier this year, the Russian authorities have also reported the first known cases of a virus called H5N8 passing from poultry to humans. Seven poultry factory workers had been affected, but no evidence of human-to-human transmission was subsequently detected.
