A man in Mexico has died from a rampant new virus strain that has never before been found in humans. The 59-year-old was dead within a week after he started to show fever symptoms, sparking global concern over a new deadly virus.
Scientists are on alert amid fears that the virus – a strain of bird flu H5N2 – could be adapting to spread more easily among humans.
The man died on April 24 but lab testing has only now confirmed it was the first human case of this bird flu strain. According to WHO officials, the 59-year-old man was hospitalised in Mexico City after developing a fever, shortness of breath, diarrhoea, nausea, and general discomfort.
Unusually, the man had no known prior exposure to poultry or any infected animals. WHO admitted they do not know how the person became infected. There had been three poultry outbreaks of H5N2 in nearby parts of Mexico in March, but authorities haven’t found a connection so far.
On Wednesday, the UN agency said the current risk of the bird flu virus to the general population in Mexico is low.
Mexico’s health ministry echoed this, reiterating that there had so far been no evidence of person-to-person transmission of bird flu in the case of the man who died.
The man who died did have several underlying health conditions, and all people who had contact with him have tested negative for the deadly virus.
Worryingly, scientists say the case in Mexico is unrelated to a separate outbreak of a different strain of bird flu – H5N1 – in the US that has so far infected three dairy farm workers. It is feared that the Mexican strain has largely gone under the radar, compared to the US one.
Andrew Pekosz, an influenza expert at Johns Hopkins University, said that the death should “ring alarm bells” for humanity.
He said that since 1997, H5 viruses have continuously shown a greater tendency to infect mammals more than any other avian influenza virus.
He said: “So it continues to ring that warning bell that we should be very vigilant about monitoring for these infections, because every spillover is an opportunity for that virus to try to accumulate those mutations that make it better infect humans.”
Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist with the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, said: “It’s so crazy that we don’t know where this is coming from.”