China confirmed the death of a woman on Wednesday from a combined infection of H3N2 and H10N5 strains of bird flu following a cross-species transmission. However, Chinese health authorities reassured the public that the risk of human-to-human transmission remains low.
The National Disease Control and Prevention Administration in a statement said that the 63-year-old woman from Anhui province had underlying health conditions and developed cough, sore throat, fever and other symptoms on November 30 and died on December 16.
Screenings of close contacts were negative and no suspected cases were found, it said. Whole genome sequence analyses of the virus showed that the H10N5 virus is of avian origin and could not effectively infect humans, it said.
“The outbreak is an episodic cross-species transmission from bird to humans,” it said. The risk of the virus infecting people is low, and no human-to-human transmission has occurred, it added. China has huge populations of both farmed and wild birds of many species, creating an ideal environment for avian viruses to mix and mutate.