Ricky Scaparo – January 6, 2022
The first human case of a deadly strain of bird flu in the UK has been detected in a person living in the South West of England as the country faces its largest-ever outbreak in animals, health officials have said.
According to Daily Mail, Britain’s ‘patient zero’ caught the H5N1 virus after ‘very close and regular contact with a large number of infected birds which they kept in and around their home, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
It is the first-ever human case of H5N1 — which kills up to half of the people it infects — recorded in the UK and fewer than 1,000 people have ever been diagnosed with the strain globally since it emerged in the late 1990s. According to the Guardian, Bird-to-human transmission of avian flu is very rare and has occurred only a small number of times in the UK previously.
The UKHSA said only a small number of contacts were involved, all of whom were professionals working as part of the incident management team. All contacts of the person, including those who visited the premises, had been traced and there was no evidence of onward spread of the infection to anyone else, it said.
The infected person is well and self-isolating, and the risk to the wider public from avian flu remains very low. Prof Isabel Oliver, the chief scientific officer at UKHSA, said: “Currently there is no evidence that this strain detected in the UK can spread from person to person, but we know that viruses evolve all the time and we continue to monitor the situation closely.
We have followed up on all of this individual’s contacts and have not identified any onward spread. SCMP warned that the UK Health Security Agency emphasized that “people should not touch sick or dead birds”.
England is in the grip of its largest outbreak ever of H5N1 virus, which causes most cases of bird flu. England has reported 63 cases confirmed since November, and at least a million birds have been culled, mostly at poultry farms, BBC News reported on Wednesday.