WEDNESDAY, Nov. 13, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Amid an ongoing outbreak of bird flu in American dairy herds and poultry flocks, Canadian officials have announced that a teen in British Columbia has been hospitalized in critical condition with what is believed to be bird flu.
It’s not clear how the teenager picked up the H5N1 virus because the patient is not known to have any contact with infected animals, officials noted. They added that this is the first human case of the virus reported in both the province and Canada.
“The positive test for H5 was performed at the BC Centre for Disease Control’s Public-Health Laboratory,” Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer of British Columbia, said in a statement. “Samples are being sent to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg for confirmatory testing.”
“This is a rare event, and while it is the first detected case of H5 in a person in …