The avian flu virus that killed a Cambodian girl is not the strain causing mass bird deaths worldwide and feared to trigger a pandemic in humans.
The 11-year-old girl from southern Cambodia who died last week from an infection with the bird flu virus H5N1 was not infected with the virus variant that is currently causing deaths among wild birds and poultry worldwide. She died of an infection with a local strain of virus, which has been present in chickens and ducks in Cambodia for a decade. It concerns strain 2.3.2.1c, which led to sporadic infections in humans in the region in 2013 and 2014. Erik Karlsson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, reported this in the journal Nature, based on the genetic readout of the genetic material of the virus.
Virologists initially feared that the girl had been infected with the worldwide spread bird flu virus variant 2.3.4.4b. It has now also made mammals sick and has infected a handful of people since 2020. Initially, there were rumors that a dozen relatives and acquaintances of the girl had also contracted bird flu. That fueled fears that they had contracted an evolved variant of this virus, which had become transmissible among humans. Such a variant could trigger a global flu pandemic. But on closer examination, none of the girl’s contacts turned out to be infected. Except for her father, who also had the Cambodian virus variant and who has since recovered.