China has confirmed the death of a woman due to an infection with combined H3N2 and H10N5 strains of bird flu.
The 63-year-old woman from Anhui province in China died due to the combined infection, attributed to cross-species transmission, on 16 December.
According to reports, the woman had underlying health conditions.
China’s National Disease Control and Prevention Administration stated that screenings of her close contacts yielded negative results, and no suspected cases were found.
Whole genome sequencing revealed that the H10N5 virus is of avian origin and lacks the ability to effectively infect humans.
According to a statement from the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration “The outbreak is an episodic cross-species transmission from bird to humans.”
The FDA classified the episode as an isolated case of bird-to-human transmission, underlining the virus’s low risk of infecting humans and confirming that no human-to-human transmission happened.
China’s enormous populations of farmed and wild birds create an environment conducive to the mixing and modification of avian viruses.
Meanwhile, in April of last year, a woman died from H3N8 bird flu in China, becoming the first recorded human fatality from the avian influenza virus strain.
The World Health Organization acknowledged the death caused by the virus, which had not been found in humans until two non-fatal instances occurred in April and May 2022, both in China.
The woman who died was a 56-year-old from Guangdong province in southeast China.
