China reports world's first human case of H10N3 bird flu

Beijing [China], June 1 : China has reported the first case of human infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu.
A 41-year-old man from Jiangsu province had various symptoms including fever and was hospitalised at the end of April, South China Morning Post reported.
Genetic analysis confirmed the virus strain on Friday and emergency contact tracing did not find other cases or abnormalities, the National Health Commission said.
"Experts think the analysis of the virus' complete genome showed the H10N3 strain had an animal origin and had not adapted to infecting humans effectively yet," it said.
"This infection is an accidental animal-to-human cross-species transmission. The risk of a large-scale transmission is very low."
The commission said there were no previously reported human H10N3 infections, making the Jiangsu man possibly the world's first documented case of this strain.
The patient's condition had stabilised and he was ready to be discharged from the hospital, it said.
Gregory Gray, an infectious disease epidemiologist from Duke University, said H10N3 was an unusual influenza A virus to be found infecting a human.
"It will be interesting to see what genetic changes permitted it to infect a human," Gray said.