A man in eastern China has reportedly contracted what is believed to be the first human case of H10N3 bird flu, though the Chinese government claimed that the “risk of large-scale spread is low.”
“The 41-year-old man in Jiangsu province, northwest of Shanghai, was hospitalized April 28 and is in stable condition, the National Health Commission said on its website,” according to The Associated Press. “No human case of H10N3 has been reported elsewhere, the commission said.”
“This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” the statement from the Chinese Communist Party’s National Health Commission said. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.” The NHC also added that the virus strain is a less severe strain of the virus in poultry.
“The man was stable and ready to be discharged from hospital,” reported Reuters. “Medical observation of his close contacts had not found any other cases.”
According to Filip Claes, regional laboratory coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases at the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, H10N3 is “not a very common virus.”
Reuters also added that, “There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017.”
One form of bird flu that is particularly impactful is the highly pathogenic influenza A virus subtype H5N1, which has killed millions of poultry throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe. According to some reports, the mortality rate for humans who contract H5N1 is 60%, and the first known transmission of this strain to a human occurred in Hong Kong in 1997. There were 18 human cases, with six confirmed deaths.
News of the first human case of H10N3 in China comes as the communist regime is already under scrutiny for its role in the outbreak and spread of COVID-19.
On Saturday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) explained to Fox News’ Jeanine Pirro that he was “very worried” that U.S. government funding was still being used by the Chinese communist regime to research and develop biological weapons.
“I’m very worried that this stuff still goes on and that the U.S. government’s been funding it,” Paul told Pirro.
“We’re creating Frankenstein super-viruses that, if they leak out of the lab, accidentally or on purpose, could devastate the world. The SARS virus is 15 times more deadly. If that one gets out, and we enhance its ability to be transmitted, that could kill 50, 100 million people,” said Paul. “This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This should be debated.”
As The Daily Wire reported, former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that “the Wuhan Institute of Virology is ‘still up and running’ — the same lab from which the virus that causes COVID-19 may have originated according to the Biden administration, which is now demanding an investigation from lawmakers,”