The extensive multi-agency public health investigation into the first human case of avian flu (bird flu) acquired in Canada has identified no additional cases or evidence of human-to-human transmission.
BC’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, says the teen infected with the H5N1 variant of avian flu is stable but still “incredibly sick,” adding that health officials remain hopeful progress will be made towards their recovery.
“This young person has received the best possible care from the clinical team at BC Children’s and is stable, though still very sick. Our thoughts remain with them and their family, and we remain hopeful—as they have made some progress in the last few days—that they will recover from this very severe infection.” said Henry.
Extensive contact tracing conducted over the last two weeks involved testing 60 healthcare workers, 16 family members and friends of the teen, and 25 animals (including domestic pets). All tests came back negative.
Henry says that while it’s reassuring no further cases have been identified in connection with the infected individual, officials have been unable to determine how they contracted the virus.
“We may not ever know for certain exactly where they were exposed and where it came from. This is not unheard of. So, our detailed public health investigation is closed for now unless anything new arises, and I am very confident that there are no additional cases out there right now. But we still need to be careful, and we need to watch and think about how to prevent this from happening to anybody else.”
The public health investigation initially determined the teenager was infected with the same strain of H5N1 currently circulating in wild birds and poultry.
However, advanced testing determined the whole genome sequence of the virus closely matched the variant impacting wild birds in the Fraser Valley area in October. It was not directly related to outbreaks at the 54 poultry premises currently dealing with avian flu outbreaks.
The teen has no connection to any of the premises in the province experiencing outbreaks.
There have been no further human H5N1 cases detected in Canada, but Henry says variants identified in the genome indicate a potential for adaptation to humans, something officials will monitor closely.
“This is something that we need to investigate more, and our scientists at the BCCDC Public Health Lab—who have experience in this influenza team—have been working with scientists from around the globe to understand the implications of that,” she said.
“It’s also really important for us to determine if this was a mutation that led to this young person becoming infected or if it contributed to them having more severe disease than we’ve seen in other people infected with H5N1, particularly in North America.”
At this point, Henry says officials can only confirm that the disease is influenza spreading rapidly in birds. That said, there is the potential for it to evolve and adapt to become more capable of human infection and transmission with more human exposure.
While this is the first case of H5N1 in a person in BC and the first acquired in Canada, the USA has been dealing with a small number of human cases this year, including one reported in a child in California last week.
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