A significant increase in people infected with the H5N6 subtype is raising concern about a strain that may be more contagious to humans and that, so far this year, has claimed 6 lives

A considerable rise in the number of people infected with bird flu in China this year has researchers concerned since a previously circulating strain looks to have mutated and may be more contagious to humans. In particular, the Asian country has reported 21 cases of the H5N6 subtype so far in 2021, compared to only five last year.

Scientists first identified H5N6 avian influenza in poultry in Laos in 2013, according to a 2020 report published in ‘Emerging Infectious Diseases’ (EID). And since 2014, a total of 49 confirmed human cases infected with H5N6 have been reported, according to the WHO’s ‘Avian Influenza Weekly Update’.

Of the 21 people infected this year, at least six have died and of the remaining cases many have been seriously ill. 

“The increase in human cases in China this year is of concern. It’s a virus that causes high mortality,” warns Reuters Thijs Kuiken, professor of Comparative Pathology at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam (Netherlands). 

According to the EID report, human H5N6 infections have a death rate of 67%.

The WHO has confirmed that among the 21 infected people in China, the majority came into contact with poultry and there have been no confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission.

“Currently available epidemiologic and virologic evidence suggest that A(H5N6) influenza viruses have not acquired the ability of sustained transmission among humans, thus the likelihood of human-to-human spread is low,” said a spokesperson for the WHO. 

The spokesperson also stated that broader geographic surveillance of affected areas in China and nearby regions is “urgently required” to understand the recent increase in human cases.

Currently circulating H5N6 could be a new variant that infects humans more easily than the previous variant of the virus, Kuiken says. Or there may be a significant increase in H5N6 among poultry, which could result in increased human exposure to the virus.

Human-to-human transmission

Health expert explains that the most common thing –and what is happening with H5N6– is that the virus is transmitted directly from birds to people, but not between people like COVID, “and therefore the number of infected people is relatively low.”

But it could happen that, at a given moment, the virus mutates and increases its transmission capacity between people, then we would be facing a much more complicated scenario to control.

Therefore, they stress that it is necessary to monitor viruses and their evolution to anticipate these possible changes in behavior.

Image Credit: Getty

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