On Thursday, a 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with a rare strain of bird flu known as H10N3.
The World Health Organization (WHO), confirmed in a statement that the source of the patient’s exposure to the H10N3 virus is not known at this time, and no other cases were found in emergency surveillance among the local population. At this time.
What do we know about H10N3 bird flu?
H10N3 is a type of bird flu or avian flu, These illnesses are common in wild aquatic birds worldwide and can infect domestic poultry and other bird and animal species.
“Infected birds shed avian flu in their saliva, mucus and feces” said director of the animal health research laboratory for food and poultry examination Dr.Momtaz Shahin.
Humans can get infected when enough of the virus gets in the eyes, nose, or mouth, or is inhaled from infected droplets or dust. “The big concern is whether a particular strain of bird flu that’s in humans has the capacity to be transmitted from person to another, these kinds of diseases don’t normally infect humans, but some crossover infections do happen yet there is no indication of human-to-human transmission,” Shahin added.
Is H10N3 dangerous?
The risk of further infection with H10N3 is currently believed to be very low, with experts in WHO describing the case as “sporadic”. Such cases occur occasionally in China which has huge populations of both farmed and wild birds of many species, with growing surveillance of avian influenza in the human population, more infections with bird flu viruses are being picked up.
How are local poultry shops reacting?
“This is not happy news, we lost a lot in the first wave of bird flu in 2009 when the bird flu first spread, both financially and humanly, we do not hope that this disease will happen again, but if it happens, we will deal with it carefully as we dealt with it The first, we were completely isolating poultry from each other and leaving them in rooms far from any human interaction while assigning only one person for each room to deal with them as in feeding the chickens and vaccinate them or even cleaning up after them.” said Ahmed Abdulghany owner of a local poultry store and poultry rooms.
“we do not feed people or sell them chicken unless we make sure that it is completely healthy, as we do not want the spread an epidemic and loss of reputation” Abdulghany added
Could H10N3 Bird flu reach Egypt?
According to the head of farmers syndicate Mr.hussien Abu Saddam, the Poultry production in Egypt is an internal production that takes place in governmental poultry rooms or locally among citizens in their homes where they grow chicken and other types of poultry on rooftops and so on, even the frozen poultry you find in big supermarkets are Egyptian production, so the transmission of this disease to Egypt is unlikely to happen, since we don’t import poultry, “especially as we are keen to vaccinate poultry and strengthen its immunity with healthy food and clean rooms”