Shillong, March 30: Chile has detected the first case of bird flu in a human, the nation’s health ministry announced.
According to a statement released by the ministry, the case was found in a 53-year-old man who had severe influenza symptoms but was otherwise stable.
The authorities are also looking into how the infection spread and who else came into contact with the patient.
Since late last year, Chile has documented occurrences of the H5N1 bird flu in wild animals.
The government stopped exporting chicken as a result of recent incidents in industrial farms. Argentina has also reported industrial cases, but Brazil, the world’s largest supplier of chicken, is still unaffected.
The virus can spread from birds or marine mammals to humans, according to Chilean health officials, although there is no known human-to-human transmission.
Early this year, a 9-year-old girl in Ecuador became the first person to have the bird flu there. Notwithstanding the low likelihood of human-to-human transmission, according to international health officials, human bird flu vaccines have been developed.