A 59-year-old woman from China’s Sichuan province is hospitalized in serious condition with H5N6 avian flu, Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection said today.
The woman is from Ziyang City, her symptoms began on November 25, and she was hospitalized 4 days later. An investigation revealed that she had visited a live-poultry market before her symptoms began.
Her illness marks China’s eighth human H5N6 infection of 2023 and the country’s 89th since the virus was first detected in humans in 2014. China reported its last H5N6 case in the middle of December, which also involved a woman from Sichuan province. That patient, who died from her infection, had also visited a live-poultry market before she became ill. Highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu is known to circulate in poultry in some Asian countries, but only China and Laos have reported human cases, which are often severe or fatal. Most patients have had contact with poultry or had been exposed to poultry environments.