A few days ago, an eleven-year-old girl died of the H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia. Now the father has also tested positive, as has the country’s Ministry of Health on twitter communicated. According to the Phnom Penh Post the 49-year-old man has no symptoms.
According to media reports, the child from the province of Prey Veng in the south of the country fell ill with fever, cough and sore throat on February 16. Three days later, his condition worsened, so he was taken to a children’s hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh. There, doctors tested the girl for bird flu. On February 22, the test showed that the child had contracted the highly pathogenic variant H5N1. On the same day the girl died.
The authorities then tested twelve of the child’s contacts, four of whom had reported symptoms of the disease. During these investigations, the virus was discovered in the child’s father. According to media reports, he was the only one who had tested positive so far. The Ministry of Health announcedthat it wants to examine more people and animals.
It is currently not clear how the father and daughter got infected. The ministry had previously indicated that a large number of dead wild animals had been found near the family’s home.
Highly pathogenic variants of the bird flu pathogen H5N1 have been spreading among birds to an unprecedented extent since autumn 2021. The virus is also increasingly being discovered in mammals. If the virus were to adapt to mammals, it might be easier for it to make the leap to humans. So far, however, there is no evidence that H5N1 has acquired the ability to infect humans more easily. As a rule, very close contact with a sick animal is necessary for infection.
For example, only a few people have become infected during the recent, massive H5N1 epidemic among birds. According to the Friedrich Loeffler Institute for Animal Health, five infections in humans were known worldwide between autumn 2021 and the end of January 2023. Two occurred in Spain, one each in the UK, US and Ecuador. All those affected had been infected through close contact with infected poultry. In Ecuador, a girl had to be hospitalized; all other infections were asymptomatic or mild.
James Wood, head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, told Britain’s Science Media Center it was remarkable how low the number of human infections was. As tragic as the death of the Cambodian girl is, it alone does not signal that the global situation has suddenly changed. Nevertheless, the virus would have to be carefully monitored.
Cambodia has not had any human cases of H5N1 since 2014. According to the WHO, between 2003 and 2014, 56 infections were registered in the country and 37 people died.