The World Health Organization on Friday said the child with H5N1 bird flu reported by Australia last month had travelled to Kolkata, India. But the family said they did not have any known exposure to infected people or animals while there.
The WHO said on Friday that the child, Australia’s first case of H5N1 in a person, had traveled to Kolkata from February 12 to February 19 and returned to Australia on March 1.
BIRD FLU MYSTERY—The new Australian child case with H5N1 virus has a weird background—as in zero exposures to high risk animals:
📌Child had no interaction with birds, animals or sick humans either in India 🇮🇳 or Australia 🇦🇺
📌Child had no geographic or human links to any… pic.twitter.com/T7CqfurCi8
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) May 24, 2024
The child was hospitalized on March 2 and remained there for more than two weeks. No close family contacts in Australia or India developed symptoms of Bird Flu as of May 22, the WHO said.
The WHO said genetic sequencing showed the virus was subtype H5N1 and part of a strain that circulates in Southeast Asia and has been detected in previous human infections and in poultry.
Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said while it would be difficult to do months after the fact, an investigation is needed to see if the child was in contact with poultry or other birds, or if there was an outbreak of this version of H5N1 nearby.
“H5N1 viruses do not transmit efficiently between humans and I suspect there’s an occult animal exposure that led to the infection,” Adalja said.
Meanwhile, A fifth poultry farm near Melbourne has been infected with a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza, the government of Australia’s Victoria state said on Friday.
The farm is close to three others where an H7N3 strain of bird flu had already spread and authorities said the latest detection was not unexpected.
Another farm in Victoria has hosted an outbreak of a different H7N9 strain of the virus.
Neither strain is the same as the H5N1 type that has spread globally through bird and
mammal populations and even into humans.
(REUTERS)
