#16,281
With a hat tip to Shiloh and Sharon Sanders on FluTrackers, for the second time in just over a month, we have word from Dongguan City - located about 90 km from Hong Kong - of another human H5N6 infection, this time involving a 52 years old male who is currently hospitalized.
Details on his condition, onset date, or possible exposures to poultry are not provided.
This is the second case reported out of Mainland China in the past 24 hours (see HK CHP Monitoring Another Human H5N6 Case On the Mainland (Hunan Province), and the 26th case reported by China since last December, which has more than doubled the total number of cases reported over the previous 6 years.
Not everyone who gets severe influenza in China gets hospitalized, and not every hospital is equipped to test for H5N6, so it is likely that some cases go undetected. This surge during the summer, is also notable, as avian flu is usually at its nadir during the warmer months.
Today's barebones (translated) report from the Guangdong Provincial Health Commission follows, after which I'll have a brief postscript.
Dongguan City reports 1 case of H5N6
Time: 2021-10-28 21:00:47 Source: Guangdong Provincial Health Commission
The Guangdong Provincial Health Commission notified on October 28, 2021 that 1 case of H5N6 was reported in Dongguan.
Liu Mou, male, 52 years old, from Gaozhou, Maoming, Guangdong, currently living in Wanjiang Street, Dongguan City. The patient is currently being actively treated in a designated hospital in Dongguan.Experts judged that the case that appeared this time was an accidental case, and the risk of transmission of the virus is low at this stage. Experts remind: citizens should continue to be vigilant and take the following measures to prevent H5N6 and other bird flu.
Wash your hands frequently: wash your hands after touching poultry, before eating, and after going to the toilet.
To be cooked: poultry and eggs must be cooked before eating.
Seek medical attention early: If you have respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough, headache, general malaise, etc., go to the nearest medical and health institution as soon as possible. If you have been in contact with poultry before, you should take the initiative to tell your doctor.Do not eat dead poultry meat.
Do not buy poultry and bird products of unknown origin.
Avoid going to live poultry markets as much as possible.
As far as we know, H5N6 has not yet learned how to transmit efficiently from human to human, although there are a few cases where cases had no known contact with poultry. Unless, and until that happens, H5N6 will remain a minor public health threat, mostly to those with close contract with poultry.
Over the past two months China's CDC has published two detailed outbreak reports (see below) in their CCDC Weekly. Both of which warn that HPAI H5N6 continues to mutate and reassort, and that its threat to public health is increasing.
China CCDC Weekly: Genetic Characterization of Two Human A (H5N6) Viruses — Guangxi , China, 2021
CCDC Weekly: Outbreak Report - Five Independent Cases of Human Infection With HPAI H5N6 — Sichuan Province
Every human infection is another opportunity for the virus to figure out (via host adaptation) how to spread more effectively, and so we watch upticks in human cases - such as we've seen this summer in China - very closely.
