China confirms first-ever case of unique ‘bird flu’

China's National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement that a 41-year-old man in China's eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu.

The 41-year-old man was hospitalised on April 28 after developing a fever and other symptoms and is currently in a stable condition and meets discharge standards

The detail of how he contracted the virus is still to be known.

Health authorities played down the outbreak, saying the case was a sporadic virus transmission from poultry to humans, and the risk of causing a pandemic was extremely low.

“This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission” said authorities. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.”

H10N3 is a low pathogenic or relatively less severe strain of the virus in poultry and the risk of it spreading on a large scale is very low while no other cases of human infection with H10N3 have previously been reported globally.

There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017.