UK health authority: Worked on chicken farm, risk of spread between people 'continues to be very low'
A case of human infection with avian influenza was confirmed on Monday 27 January by British health authorities in the United Kingdom. The person who contracted the infection worked on a farm and was in contact with a large number of infected chickens on a farm. According to the UK Health and Security Agency, the risk of a wider spread among people who do not perform the same job "continues to be very low". The English case is the first European one: according to the WHO, in fact, of the 81 cases of avian influenza reported in the world in the last year, 66 are in the United States, 10 in Cambodia, 2 in Vietnam and one each in Australia, Canada and China.
The case in question was identified in the West Midlands region of central England. The patient was admitted to a highly specialized unit for the treatment of the consequences of infectious diseases, but is generally well and on the road to recovery, the UK Health and Security Agency said in a statement. The infected person was affected by the A(H5N1) virus, while the birds from which he was infected had contracted the infection linked to the DI.2 genotype, different from that detected in the outbreaks that have recently returned among birds and mammals in the USA.
The British health authorities also recalled that there is no evidence so far in the medical-scientific literature of any case of contagion from human to human with this virus, but only (and in rare circumstances of close contact) from animal to human.
The alarm over the spread of avian influenza in farms, including Italian ones, continues to rise.
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