By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Chinese authorities has reported first-ever human infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu in the country’s eastern Jiangsu province.
China’s National Health Commission announced on Tuesday that the virus was detected in a 41-year-old man from Zhenjiang city.
The unnamed man, according to a government statement, was hospitalised on April 28 after developing a fever and other symptoms.
He was reportedly diagnosed as having the H10N3 avian influenza virus on May 28, but details of his infection were not given.
The man was stable and ready to be discharged from the hospital even as medical observation of his close contacts had not found any other cases.
The H10N3 is a low pathogenic, or relatively less severe, the strain of the virus in poultry.
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, noted that the strain is not common.
Only around 160 isolates of the virus were reported in the 40 years to 2018, mostly in wild birds or waterfowl in Asia and some limited parts of North America, and none had been detected in chickens so far.
There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017.
No other cases of human infection with H10N3 have previously been reported globally.