Chinese woman first to die from new Bird-Flu strain

A woman in China has died of the H10N8 strain of bird flu, the first ever reported human case of the virus, the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday. The elderly woman died from the virus on December 6, six days after contracting the illness, the WHO said in a statement. The H10N8 virus has been detected in birds since 1965 in at least seven countries, including China, it said. The specific source of the woman’s infection was not known, although both wild birds and poultry were known to carry the virus, and the patient had visited a live bird market four days before becoming ill, the WHO said. There currently is no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the new H10N8 virus, Chinese authorities say. China is at the beginning of its traditional influenza season, and the country long has had problems with bird flu. The H7N9 strain of avian influenza emerged this year in China and has infected at least 139 people in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, killing 45 of them. Experts say there is no evidence of any easy or sustained human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 strain. But a scientific analysis of probable transmission of the H7N9 virus from person to person, published in August, gave the strongest indication yet that it can at times jump between people and therefore could potentially cause a human pandemic.