A few days ago, an eleven-year-old girl died of the H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia. According to the country’s Ministry of Health, the father also tested positive. According to the Phnom Penh Post the 49-year-old man has no symptoms.
On the weekend said the Ministry of Healththat the pathogen responsible for the girl’s death does not belong to the strain called clade 2.3.4.4b, which has been causing severe outbreaks among birds, mainly in Europe and North America, for the past year and a half. Rather, the H5N1 strain clade 2.3.2.1c was found in the girl. It is the most common bird flu virus in the country.
Cambodia has a long history of bird flu outbreaks that have also infected humans. According to the WHO, 56 people contracted H5N1 between 2003 and 2014; 37 of them died. In the years that followed, no more human infections with the pathogen were recorded – until the girl’s case became known.
According to media reports, the child from the province of Prey Veng in the south of the country fell ill with fever, cough and sore throat on February 16. Three days later, his condition worsened, so he was taken to a children’s hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh. There, doctors tested the girl for bird flu. On February 22, the test showed that the child had contracted a highly pathogenic variant of H5N1. On the same day the girl died.
By the weekend they had Authorities tested 30 contacts. Only the father received a positive result.
It is currently not clear how the father and daughter got infected. The ministry had pointed out that a large number of dead wild animals had been found near the family home.
Highly pathogenic variants of the bird flu pathogen H5N1 have been spreading among birds to an unprecedented extent since autumn 2021 – especially in Europe and North America. The virus is also increasingly being discovered in mammals. If the virus were to adapt to mammals, it might be easier for it to make the leap to humans. So far, however, there is no evidence that H5N1 has acquired the ability to infect humans more easily. As a rule, very close contact with a sick animal is necessary for infection.
For example, only a few people have become infected during the recent, massive H5N1 epidemic among birds. According to the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institute for Animal Health, five human infections were reported worldwide between the beginning of the wave in autumn 2021 and the end of January 2023. Two occurred in Spain, one each in the UK, US and Ecuador. All those affected had been infected through close contact with infected poultry. In Ecuador, a girl had to be hospitalized; all other infections were asymptomatic or mild. There was also one death in China in 2022, although it is not entirely clear whether the H5N1 variant currently dominant in Europe and America was the cause.
James Wood, head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, told Britain’s Science Media Center it was remarkable how low the number of human infections was. As tragic as the death of the Cambodian girl is, it alone does not signal that the global situation has suddenly changed. Nevertheless, the virus would have to be carefully monitored.