China reported that the world’s first human disease of the H10N3 bird flu strain on Tuesday but said the possibility of it spreading widely among individuals was low.
A 41-year-old man was admitted to a hospital with fever symptoms in the eastern city of Zhenjiang on April 28 and was diagnosed with H10N3 a month later, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said in an internet statement.
“The risk of large-scale spread is extremely low,” the NHC said, adding that the man was in a stable condition and his close contacts had no”abnormalities.”
No information was provided about ho the man contracted the illness.
It explained H10N3 as low pathogenic — not as likely to cause death or acute illness — in birds.
The NHC said there was no human cases of H10N3 previously reported on the planet.
Several strains of bird flu have been discovered among animals in China but mass outbreaks in humans are rare.
The last human outbreak of bird flu in China occurred in late 2016 to 2017, with the H7N9 virus. The H7N9 has infected 1,668 people and maintained 616 lives since 2013, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Following recent avian influenza outbreaks in Africa and Eurasia, the head of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention last week advocated stricter surveillance in poultry farms, markets and wild birds.
Some of the first instances of COVID-19 were detected at a food and animal market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
