WATCH: Health officials announce a case of H5N1
CALGARY- Health officials say they have confirmed a case of deadly avian flu in Alberta.
A person who travelled to China in December returned to Alberta and had to be admitted to hospital on New Year’s Day. They died on January 3.
“This is a very rare and isolated case,” said Dr. James Talbot, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health. “Avian influenza is not easily transmitted from person to person. It is not the same virus that is currently present in seasonal influenza in Alberta.”
He adds that health care workers have offered Tamiflu to the victim’s family members as a precaution, but so far none of them have shown symptoms of H5N1.
“I expect that with the rarity of transmission and the additional precautions taken, there will be no more cases in Alberta.”
READ MORE: What you need to know about avian flu
Federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose added that the health system did “everything it could” for the individual.
“I want to reassure everyone that this is an isolated case,” she said in a news conference. “This case is not part of the seasonal flu.”
The Public Health Agency of Canada says the victim travelled with two companions on Air Canada flight 030 from Beijing to Vancouver on December 27, then transferred to flight 244 bound for Edmonton. Officials plan to contact everyone who was on the flights, but do not believe anyone else is at risk.
“I would like to commend the people at Alberta Health, at the hospitals involved, with public health, for their prompt action,” Talbot added. “In the middle of H1N1 season, it would have been easy to write this off as just an unfortunate consequence of the H1N1 season, but because of the vigilance, we were able to do this in what I think was a textbook manner.”
H5N1, commonly known as avian flu does not usually infect humans, targeting domestic poultry in parts of Asia and the Middle East instead. However, there were 38 human cases reported last year, resulting in 24 deaths.
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