How a 4-year-old child in Bengal became India’s second case of bird flu among humans

In January, a four-year-old girl from West Bengal’s Malda district, who was recovering from a respiratory infection, fell ill.

Her parents took her to a local paediatrician in Kaliachak on January 26.

On February 1, she was admitted in the paediatric intensive care unit in a Malda hospital after she developed respiratory distress, high-grade fever and intense stomach cramps.

A day later, she tested positive for the influenza B virus and adenovirus. It took her the whole month to recover and get discharged.

But within days, the symptoms reemerged. She was then referred to Kolkata’s Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital for respiratory distress.

This time, her nasal swab tested positive for influenza A virus and rhinovirus. The sample was referred to Pune’s National Institute of Virology, which detected the avian flu virus – the H9N2 subtype of influenza A virus – in her.

Avian influenza generally infects poultry and birds. Some cases of avian influenza have been reported in humans, though it is a rare occurrence.

This is the second such case from India. The first was reported in 2019, when a 17-month-old boy tested positive in Melghat, a tribal hamlet in Maharashtra’s Amravati district.

The two cases have not led to any human-to-human infection.

But is there a potential risk of an outbreak? Experts Scroll spoke to said...

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