Photographer: Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov / Bloomberg
Russia said it found the world’s first cases of H5N8 bird flu strain in humans, although the virus has not yet spread among people.
Authorities have sent information about the seven cases detected in workers at a poultry farm in southern Russia to the World Health Organization, Anna Popova, the country’s head of public health, said on Saturday.
“It is not transmitted from person to person. But only time will tell how far future mutations will allow it to overcome this barrier, “he said. The discovery of this strain now” gives us all, all over the world, time to prepare for possible mutations and the possibility of reacting in a timely manner and developing test and vaccine systems ”.
Affected workers at the poultry farm, where a bird outbreak was reported in December, had minor cases and have recovered, Popova said.
Rapid identification of the strain means that tests can begin to be developed to detect new infections and potential vaccines, Rinat Maksyutov, head of the Vektor research center, told state television.
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In November, Vektor reported that a new strain of H5N8 flu was circulating in 15 regions of Russia among birds and wild birds, but was not considered dangerous to humans, the Interfax news service reported.
In 2012, health officials investigated an avian flu strain that killed hundreds of wild ducks in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia for potential risks to humans.
More than 2 million ducks and other poultry were slaughtered in France in late January due to bird flu outbreaks or as a preventative measure, the country’s agriculture ministry reported.
There have been 862 laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, including 455 deaths since 2003 in 17 countries, according to the WHO in a December 9 report. Six of the 14 cases of H5N6 bird flu in humans reported since 2014 were fatal, the WHO said in a November 2016 publication.
“Although human infections with A (H5) virus are rare and usually occur in individuals exposed to sick or dead infected birds (or in their environment), they can cause serious illness or death in humans,” he said. WHO on its website.
(Updates with Vektor’s head in the fifth paragraph, WHO data in the ninth)