In Australia, health officials confirmed the country’s first human case of the H5N1 bird flu strain.
It occurred in March when a child from India got sick. According to the health authority, the child was severely infected but has since recovered.
Officials noted that the risk of spreading the virus in Australia is low since it doesn’t usually spread easily among people.
The strain that caused the illness in the child wasn’t the same one that caused the outbreaks in the US.
In India, the WHO reported that sporadic bird flu cases were reported in various regions, such as Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, in February.
The national health authority noted that it was supporting the local government in response to an outbreak at a farm, which wasn’t connected to the human case.
The Australian Agriculture Ministry stated that the outbreak at the farm near Meredith in Victoria was caused by the H7 strain.
Although it’s a relief that the virus wasn’t the same as the one that caused the outbreaks in the US and Antarctica, the country takes any situation involving the highly pathogenic variant seriously.
Between 1976 and 2021, Australia experienced nine bird flu outbreaks in poultry.
The Agriculture Victoria noted that the country experienced three strains of bird flu in 2020 and 2021.
These included the highly pathogenic H7N7 virus at multiple farms, as well as low-pathogenic strains of H5N2 and H7N6 at two turkey farms.