New virus detected in China: What you need to know

Picture Courtesy: Forbes

• China’s National Health Commission has confirmed a 41year old man in the eastern province of Jiangsu has been infected with the rare N10N3 bird flu case, the world’s first in humans, although the commission did not specify how it became infected. But said that during the investigation of his close contacts, no other case was found i.e. the risk of spreading the infection is very low.

• The patient from Zhenjiang city is currently in a stable condition and is expected to get discharged from the hospital soon.

• According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, little is known about this virus, which appears to be rare in birds, although it does not cause serious illness. Apart from this, no other cases of its infection were found even among the local population.

• There were no signs of its human-to-human spread.

• According to the WHO, instances of such virus transmission from person to person are rare, such as the H7H9 strain that hit China during the winter of 2016-17 which took the lives of about 300 people. The H5H1 was the deadliest one which infected people for the first time in 1997, due to which 455 people died worldwide.