Chinese health authorities reported yesterday, Tuesday, June 1, a case of H10N3 bird flu in a human. He is the first man in the world to have contracted this disease. Is this situation worrying? Can there be an H10N3 flu epidemic?
Hospitalized for a month
It was a 41-year-old man who contracted this bird flu, called H10N3. The latter usually affects animals. In fact, avian influenza is a transmissible disease that rages in animals, in particular farm birds such as chickens, ducks or geese. The patient, from Zhenjiang City, has been admitted to hospital since the end of April, initially because he had a fever. It therefore took about a month to identify the origin of the disease, the name of which was finally reported by the Ministry of Health. However, the circumstances of the infection are still unknown.
However, the patient’s condition has improved as he is expected to return home soon. The contact cases were identified and tested. For the time being, no other person is infected with the virus responsible for the H10N3 influenza. In addition, no other case has been reported worldwide for the moment.
Animal epidemics and human epidemics
The H10N3 strain is ” low pathogenic “. This means that the risk for birds of developing the disease is rather low. According to China, it appears that in humans, ” risk of large-scale dissemination [est] extremely weak ”, Especially in cases of avian flu where transmission between humans remains rare. However, some strains have already given rise to epidemics. This was the case between 2003 and 2011 with the H5N1 influenza, which humans had been infected with through direct contact with infected poultry. Most often, when cases of avian influenza occur, it leads to the culling of all farm birds.
