Last Thursday (2/23), an 11-year-old girl died of H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia, according to information from the country’s health authorities. The main theory is that the girl was infected by poultry in Prey Veng province. Her father, aged 49, was also infected and other people in the same region are possibly contaminated.
However, the child’s death has raised suspicions that the H5N1 virus has evolved to better infect human cells. According to scientists from Pastor Institute, investigating the case, the H5N1 virus collected from the girl was different from that found in birds in the region.
The scientist who led the team, Erik Karlsson, said in an interview with Sky News that there are indications that the virus passed through a human being before infecting the girl.
“Whenever these viruses enter a new host, they undergo changes that allow them to replicate a little better or potentially bind to cells in our respiratory tract more efficiently,” he explains.
Karlsson adds, however, that the mutation probably happened randomly within the birds, ruling out the hypothesis that the change happened in the girl’s organism.
The virus has not yet fully adapted to humans and remains a parasite of birds, according to the scientist. However, he warns that it is wrong to downplay the H5N1 threat in Cambodia.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), of the total 873 cases of avian flu in humans reported in recent decades, 458 were fatal. So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 spreads easily in humans.
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