B.C. Children’s Hospital says a 13-year-old girl with avian flu was discharged Tuesday after weeks in hospital.
The patient was taken to a pediatric intensive care unit with respiratory failure and pneumonia on Nov. 8, and health officials said she tested positive for H5N1 a day later.
A recent medical journal chronicled the teen’s hospitalization in Vancouver, which involved tracheal intubation and supplemental oxygen.
Her family says in a statement that the experience has been “life-changing” and that they are grateful to have their daughter home.
Close to 80 poultry farms in B.C. have experienced avian flu outbreaks since the middle of October, according to the B.C. Poultry Association.
They are asking for privacy as they “heal and rebuild” their lives after the traumatic experience.
The teenager, who has a history of mild asthma and an elevated body mass index, was the first human case of H5N1 in Canada. Health officials have said they don’t know how she got infected.
A provincial health spokesperson said Thursday they typically refrain from releasing information about patients but recognize “there has been an extraordinary amount of attention and interest from across North America” in this case.
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control said it was comparing the genetic features of the local teenager’s avian flu case with that of a patient in Louisiana hospitalized with a severe case of avian flu who died earlier this month.
Clinical microbiologist Dr. Agatha Jassem, co-program head of the virology lab at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory, says they want to understand how the viruses in the two cases are related to each other, as well as to viruses circulating in birds.
This will help to assess how easily it adapts and transmits between animals and humans. Both cases are related to viruses detected in wild birds and poultry. While there is no evidence of human-to-human infection in either, it’s something experts are keeping an eye on.
Jassem says the U.S. patient shared one of the three genetic mutations identified in the Canadian case, which infectious disease specialists have said could make it easier for the virus to spread from person to person.
The lab is testing samples collected on different days with a variety of methods to determine how the mutations affect replication of the virus in human airways.
