The World Health Organization (WHO) issued emergency alerts Wednesday and Thursday over outbreaks of two types of influenza.
The first alert was issued following a laboratory-confirmed human infection of swine-origin H1N1 in the state of Parana, Brazil. The patient had underlying medical conditions and no history of exposure to pigs, and is only the eighth case of H1N1 found in Brazil since 2014 and the first of 2024.
WHO believes this case of H1N1 is “sporadic,” but stressed the “importance of global surveillance to detect virological, epidemiological and clinical changes associated with circulating influenza viruses that may affect human (or animal) health, and timely virus sharing for risk assessment.”
World Health Organization: H3N8 Avian Influenza Virus Kills First Human | @DailyCaller https://t.co/GAx8Icvqpv
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The second alert followed a report from Cambodia’s National Focal Point (NFP) of the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR) Secretariat confirming two cases of avian-origin H5N1. Both cases came from the Kampong Trabek district in Cambodia. Both patients were said to have been exposed to sick poultry, and no link between the two cases has been identified at this time.
Poultry-to-human transmission cases of H5N1 seemed to disappear from Cambodia in 2014 before resurfacing in 2023, when six cases were reported, WHO noted. H5N1 is the more severe of the two influenza subtypes, but both patients recovered from their infections. (RELATED: As If 2023 Couldn’t Get Any Weirder, Turns Out Your Favorite Bird Of Paradise Might End Humanity)
In July 2023, the United Nations and WHO issued a joint statement on the ongoing evolution of H5N1 and the risk of it jumping into the human population. The disease first emerged in the Guangdong region of China in 1996, and is now a global pandemic.