H3N8 Bird Flu Kills First Human in China


The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the first person known to have died from a type of bird flu that doesn’t usually affect people was found in China. The third person to get the H3N8 strain of avian influenza was a 56-year-old woman from Guangdong in southern China. China found out about the other two cases last year. The WHO said the woman had “multiple underlying conditions” and a “history of exposure to live poultry” before getting sick. She went to the hospital on March 3 with “severe pneumonia” and died in less than two weeks. The health agency said that the strain doesn’t seem to “spread easily from person to person” and that the risk of a local or international outbreak is “considered to be low.”