Another person in mainland China has fallen seriously ill after testing positive for H5N6 bird flu, raising the number of cases so far this year to 17, officials say. The spike in human cases has led to calls for increased surveillance.
The latest case is a 51-year-old woman from Nanchang in Jiangxi province who developed symptoms on February 20 after exposure to live domestic poultry, according to the Hong Kong Health Department. She was hospitalized 3 days later and remains in critical condition.
Other details about the case were not released by the Chinese government, which often takes a long time to announce new cases.
Last week, China reported that a 12-year-old girl and a 79-year-old man died of H5N6 bird flu in early December. Both lived in Liuzhou in the Guangxi region and visited a live poultry market before falling ill. It’s unknown why it took 3.5 months to report the cases.
Only 76 people have been infected with H5N6 bird flu since the first confirmed case in 2014, but the vast majority of cases were diagnosed during the past year. At least 17 cases, including five deaths, have been reported so far this year.
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