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A teenager in Canada is critically ill with the first human case of H5N1 bird flu shorten in the area , and public health functionary are n’t sure how the youthfulness was divulge .
The teen had no known exposure to livestock such as cattle or poultry , where the computer virus is eff to be circulating . The variant that sickened the adolescent , however , is dissimilar from the version that is infecting cows and has go around to slews of dairy worker in the U.S.
rather , the stochastic variable in interrogative sentence , a 2.3.4.4b computer virus of the D1.1 genotype , typically circulates in raving mad chick and poultry , according toStatNews .
Canada has not yet observe H5N1 in its cattle herds , though it has experience poultry outbreak .
The avian flu H5N1 lineage that is causing dairy outbreaks go forth in 1996 and has been circulating in savage birds and poultry ever since . A peculiarly belligerent variant emerge in 2020 and quickly circulate throughout Asia , Africa and Europe , reaching North America in 2021 and Central and South America in 2022 , according to theWorld Health Organization .
Since 2022 , the virus has been popping up in mammalian , make devastating outbreaks in sea lions andelephant sealsand spreading in dairy farms . At least 46 people in the U.S. have abbreviate the computer virus in 2024 , according to theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC ) .
These illnesses have been mild so far , but H5N1 can cause severe disease ; more than half of typeface detected worldwide since 2003 were fateful , according to the WHO . This statistic does not account for meek , undetected cause that were likely circulating in this meter , but does propose a concerning mortality pace for H5N1 should it become better at spreading between people .
The unidentified stripling in British Columbia is too ill to answer question about possible exposures , health officials said in a news group discussion on Wednesday ( Nov. 13 ) . It may not be possible to find the source , they said . In August , a person from Missouri fell ill with H5N1with no known exposure to cow , poultry , or savage birds , and health officials were never capable to observe out how they capture the computer virus . ( The computer virus was closer to the version circularise in cows than in wild dame , however . The patient role in the end recovered . )
A recent CDC study has found that H5N1 is develop to betterspread between mammals . It still does not disseminate as easily as the seasonal influenza , however , researchers reported Oct. 28 in the journal Nature .
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The case could be a one - off or a signal that H5N1 is spreading undetected , according to StatNews . Canadian health officials said that they were alert to both possibilities .
" We ’ve not found anybody else who is pallid . And we ’ve been test , ” British Columbia provincial wellness officeholder Bonnie Henry told StatNews . She said that people close to the adolescent have not return sick . " So I ’m more comfortable that it was a unmarried exposure and a more rare effect . … More case would have arrive to Christ Within by now if this was an exposure event that exposed multiple numbers of people , or there had been individual - to - somebody transmission , which we know is rarified with H5N1 . "
