In China's central region of Henan, an H3N8 variant of bird flu has been found in humans for the very first time.
According to sources from China's National Health Council, the four-year-old boy who was infected had come into contact with chickens and crows kept in his household.
Avian influenza, sometimes known as bird flu, is an extremely infectious viral disease that first appeared in humans in the 1990s.
Humans have been diagnosed with some strains of bird flu, such as H3N8, however, this is extremely unusual and typically occurs after extremely close interaction with diseased birds or animals.
H3N8 viruses are extensively distributed in birds and horses and have been found in dogs in Europe and North America.
"Viruses frequently transmit to humans and then stop spreading," said Sir Peter Horby, dean of emerging contagious diseases and public health at the University of Oxford.
Horby and other health experts, on the other hand, noted that the extensive propagation of avian flu in birds and the high number of cases this year in the U.K., U.S., and Europe was alarming since it raised the chance for avian viruses to mingle and evolve, as well as human transmission.
Alexandra Phelan, an assistant professor at Georgetown University's Institute for Public Health Science and Safety, believes that we should be strengthening the influence of monitoring worldwide right now.
Apart from H3N8, she continued, there have been a number of other novel influenza spillover incidents from poultry to people in recent years, notably H7N9 and H10N3 in China and H5N8 in Russia.
An epidemiologist from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, Marius Gilbert, noted that a rare virus should be examined meticulously at all times, especially if it has genetic material from two or more similar viruses because it can have unexpected propagation and lethality in the human population.
The instance was described as "strange" by Dr. John McCauley of the World Health Organization's partnering center for guidance and research on influenza.
Consumers in the United Kingdom may no longer purchase free-range eggs, as birds have been prohibited from being outside since November due to nearly 100 occurrences of avian flu. In the U.K.
However, there have been just five incidents of infection from an infected bird to a human, the most recent being in January, when a man contracted the disease from ducks housed inside his residence.
