New bird flu virus claims world’s first human victim

Chinese scientists have recorded the world’s first human death from a new avian influenza virus.

The victim, a 73-year-old woman, went to hospital in late November and died there from multiple organ failure.

She contracted the virus from poultry, though it originally came from wild birds. It possesses a mutation that could make it more virulent and more capable than other viruses of being passed on to humans.

Identified as H10N8 JX346, it may be the result of multiple combinations between a series of different avian influenza viruses, say the scientists, in a paper published in the London-based Lancet magazine.

The woman had visited a live poultry market a few days prior to infection, which suggests an incubation time of about four days. However, no source of infection was subsequently found there by health officials.

The basic H10N8 virus was first isolated from lake water in China's Hunan province in 2007 and later at a live poultry market in Guangdong in 2012. The sub-strain found in the dead woman, however, has never been seen before.

Dr Jeremy Farrar, of the Wellcome Trust in London, said: “We should be especially worried when those viruses show characteristics that suggest they have the capacity to replicate easily or to be virulent or resistant to drugs.”

However, it is too early to judge how worrying the Chinese death is because health surveillance has improved in China. "It is highly unlikely this event would even have been noticed or reported just a few years ago," said Dr Farrar.

Virologist Dr Ben Neuman from the University of Reading said there was no cause for alarm, because other people who came into contact before the woman fell ill should have begun to be infected before now.

“There are no reports that the virus has spread to anyone else. H10N8 fits the profile of an avian flu virus in that the disease is terrible but the virus is not readily transmitted,” Dr Neuman said last night.