A human may have infected another human(s) during the last cluster of H5N1 bird flu infections in Pakistan, but only to a small degree, the World Health Organization (WHO) believes. Some of the international test results have not come back yet.
The WHO believes that this could be an instance of close contact human-to-human transmission in a very restricted area and non-sustained, as was the case in Thailand and Indonesia.
The good news is that it seems the bird flu outbreak has not spread – there have been no new reports of human infection or suspected human infection with bird flu since December 6th, when eight people had became ill. A veterinarian died, as did two of his brothers. Bird flu infection cannot be specified for one of the brothers because samples were never taken. The veterinarian had been involved in the culling of sick birds.
Some experts believe that a sick person is more likely to pass the infection on to a blood relative rather than an in law if both are in close and continuous physical contact with him/her.
Experts fear that the H5N1 bird flu virus strain, the one everybody is worried about, could eventually mutate and become more easily human transmissible (pass more easily from human to human). At the moment it is not a disease humans catch easily, not even from birds. Although tens of millions of birds around the world have died as a result of bird flu infection, so far 140 humans have officially died. It is extremely rare for one human to infect another human.
Written by – Christian Nordqvist