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in collaboration with
Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)
Medical validation:
April 12, 2023
According to the World Health Organization, a woman in Guangdong province, China, has just died of H3N8 avian flu. Should we be worried about this first death? The answer of Dr Gérald Kierzek, medical director of Doctissimo.
It was the World Health Organization (WHO) that sounded the alarm in a press release: Tuesday, April 11, a 56-year-old woman died of H3N8 avian flu. This virus, in circulation since 2002, had so far made no known human victim.
The patient had “multiple predispositions”
The person who died on March 16 is a resident of Guangdong province in southeast China. According to the WHO, she fell ill on February 22 and was hospitalized soon after”for severe pneumonia.”
“The patient had multiple predispositions. She had a history of exposure to live poultry prior to illness onset and a history of wild birds around her home“, the organization said in a statement.
If frequenting a live bird market could have led to this contamination, “the exact source of this infection remains to be determined, as well as the link between this virus and the other avian influenza type A (H3N8) circulating in the animal environment“, specified the world organization, calling for research on the question.
As a reminder, the H3N8 virus, identified for the first time in North America, was until now considered likely to be transmitted to animals (horses, dogs and sea lions).
Only two human cases had been recorded in China, in April and May 2022.
But this death, to say the least worrying, redistributes the cards. Should we be worried about it or not?
For its part, the United Nations institution wants to be reassuring: it ensures that the virus does not seem to be able to be transmitted between humans.
“The risk of its spread nationally, regionally and globally is considered low.”she says.
This case requires “conventional monitoring”
An opinion shared by Dr Gérald Kierzek.
“This infected woman was not at risk of infecting anyone else: there is no human-to-human transmission. This is an isolated case. It therefore requires classic monitoring”, affirms the medical director of Doctissimo before adding “We must get out of the post-traumatic stress in which the Covid plunged us“.
The WHO has also assured “that none of the close contacts of this case had developed an infection or symptoms of the disease at the time of writing this report“.