GENEVA, June 7, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - A man infected with H5N2 bird flu, the
first confirmed human infection with the strain, died from multiple factors,
the WHO said Friday, adding that investigations were continuing.

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday that the first laboratory-
confirmed human case of infection with H5N2 avian influenza virus had been
reported from Mexico.

Mexico's health ministry said the 59-year-old man had "a history of chronic
kidney disease, type 2 diabetes (and) long-standing systemic arterial
hypertension".

He had been bedridden for three weeks before the onset of acute symptoms,
developing fever, shortness of breath, diarrhoea, nausea and general malaise
on April 17.

The man was taken to hospital in Mexico City on April 24 and died later that
day.

"The death is a multi-factorial death, not a death attributable to H5N2," WHO
spokesman Christian Lindmeier told journalists in Geneva on Friday.

"The patient came to the hospital after weeks of multi-factorial background
of multi other diseases," he said.

His body was subsequently routinely tested for flu and other viruses, and
H5N2 was detected, Lindmeier said.

Seventeen contacts of the case in the hospital were identified. All tested
negative for influenza.

In the man's place of residence, 12 contacts in the weeks beforehand were
identified. All likewise tested negative.

"Investigations are ongoing. Serology is ongoing. That means the blood
testing of contacts to see if there was any possible earlier infection,"
Lindmeier said.

"The infection of H5N2 is being investigated to see whether he was infected
by somebody visiting or by any contact with any animals before."

The WHO said Wednesday that the source of exposure to the virus was unknown,
though H5N2 viruses have been reported in poultry in Mexico.

Based on available information, the United Nations' health agency assesses
the current risk to the general population posed by the virus as low.

- Low food risk -

Markus Lipp, senior food safety officer at the UN's Food and Agriculture
Organization, said the risk of contracting avian influenza though eating
poultry was "negligibly low".

"In all the hundred years of avian influenza... there has not been any
demonstrated food-borne transmission," he told the media briefing via video-
link from the FAO's headquarters in Rome.

"Animal handlers, of course, who are in extremely close contact with animals
may get an infection but it's an occupational risk. It's not a food-borne
transmission," he said.

"Humans do not have avian influenza receptors in their gastro-intestinal
tract, contrary to certain animal species, as far as we know. So there is a
very slim likelihood, just from that perspective."

Of all the food safety risks when eating poultry, "probably the lowest risk
is connected to avian influenza", Lipp said.

- H5N1 spread -

A different variant of bird flu, H5N1, has been spreading for weeks among
dairy cow herds in the United States, with a small number of cases reported
among humans.

But none of them are human-to-human infections, with the disease jumping
instead from cattle to people, authorities have said.

H5N1 first emerged in 1996 but since 2020, the number of outbreaks in birds
has grown exponentially, alongside an increase in the number of infected
mammals.

The strain has led to the deaths of tens of millions of poultry, with wild
birds and land and marine mammals also infected.

The human cases recorded in Europe and the United States since the virus
surged have largely been mild.