TORONTO (Reuters) – A teenager is in critical condition at a British Columbia children’s hospital, sick with what is believed to be Canada’s first human case of bird flu.
“This was a healthy teenager before this, so there was no underlying illness,” provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said at a news conference Tuesday.
“It just reminds us that in young people, this is a virus that can progress and cause quite serious illness, and the deterioration that I mentioned was quite rapid.”
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British Columbia health officials said Saturday that the province had detected Canada’s first human case of H5 bird flu in a teenager.
Henry said the province is still identifying the exact strain but assumes the case is H5N1.
The World Health Organization says the risk of H5N1 to humans is low because there is no evidence of human transmission, but the virus has been found in an increasing number of animals, including cattle in the United States.
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Henry declined to reveal the teen’s gender or age, but said he first developed symptoms on Nov. 2 and was tested on Nov. 8, when he was admitted to the hospital. Symptoms included conjunctivitis, fever and cough.
As of Tuesday, they were hospitalized with acute respiratory distress syndrome, he said.
The teen had no exposure to farms, but was exposed to dogs, cats and reptiles, Henry said. No source of infection was identified.
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“This is absolutely an ongoing investigation.”
The most serious illness occurs when the virus binds to receptors in the lungs, he said.
Public health officials identified and tested about three dozen contacts and found no one infected with the virus.
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There is no evidence that the disease is easily transmitted between people. But if that happened, a pandemic could occur, according to scientists.
In early November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged farmworkers exposed to animals with bird flu to be tested for the virus, even if they had no symptoms.
Bird flu has infected about 450 dairy farms in 15 U.S. states since March, and the CDC has identified 46 human cases of bird flu since April.
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(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen)
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