Health officials in Russia have reported what is believed to be the first human case of H5N8 influenza (bird flu) infection to the World Health Organization.
“If confirmed, this would be the first time that H5N8 has infected people,” confirmed a WHO spokesman in Europe in a statement to CNN.
There are several different strains of avian influenza and new variations appear each year, similar to human influenza viruses.
In most cases, virus strains infect only birds and are commonly detected in poultry animals, where mass slaughter follows any reported outbreak to restrict spread. However, as previously reported, infection of humans with avian influenza is not uncommon. Several strains are capable of making the leap, especially for farmers who have close contact with bird species. Some of these outbreaks have generated public health scares in the past, because certain strains of bird flu can be fatal.
The latest announcement reports that seven farm workers are infected with a new strain of bird flu, H5N8, in southern Russia. The outbreak of the H5N8 virus in poultry has been reported for the first time in recent months in several regions of Russia.
The World Health Organization statement confirmed that individuals who were infected were “asymptomatic and no person-to-person transmission has been reported”.
The last detection of H5N8 in humans could not have happened at a worse time, since the world is still facing the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a Bloomberg report, Anna Popova, Russia’s head of public health, said during a television speech on Saturday:
“It is not transmitted from person to person. But only time will tell when future mutations will allow us to overcome this barrier, ”she said. The discovery of this strain now “gives all of us, the whole world, time to prepare for possible mutations and the possibility to react in a timely manner and develop testing and vaccine systems”.
Russian authorities are currently gathering more information about the cases, and WHO has yet to officially confirm the reports.
If the virus mutated and spread among humans was achieved, this would cause great concern, as previous transmissions of H5N1 and H7N9 influenza strains from birds to humans resulted in a mortality rate of 60 percent and 39 percent, respectively.
Currently, our best method for dealing with bird flu is the mass culling of birds to stop the spread as soon as an outbreak is detected on a farm. Human cases are isolated, and genetic changes in the virus strains are closely monitored to predict whether the virus is mutating to make it more likely to spread between humans.