China has confirmed the first known human case of the H3N8 strain of avian flu, a disease which is known to infect horses, dogs and seals, but has not previously been detected in humans.
News agency AFP reported that China's National Health Commission on Tuesday said a four-year-old boy living in central Henan province tested positive for the strain after being hospitalised earlier this month with a fever and other symptoms. The boy was infected directly by birds and the strain was not found to have "the ability to effectively infect humans", the commission said, according to the report.
Earlier, China has reported the first case of human infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu from the country's eastern Jiangsu province.
H10N3 is a low pathogenic or relatively less severe strain of the virus in poultry and the risk of it spreading on a large scale is very low. There are many different strains of avian influenza in China and some sporadically infect people, generally those working with poultry.
H5N8 is a subtype of the Influenza A virus (also known as the bird flu virus). While H5N8 only presents a low risk to humans, it is highly lethal to wild birds and poultry. In April, a highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu was found in wild birds in northeast China's Shenyang city.
