Bird flu: Woman tests positive just days after 11-year-old girl died from illness

A 53-year-old woman has reportedly tested positive for bird flu amid a 'worrying' global outbreak, the announcement only comes one day week after girl died of virus in Cambodia

A woman in China has tested positive for H5N1 avian flu (

Image: ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

A woman has reportedly tested positive for bird flu just days after an 11-year-old girl died from the disease.

The latest case of H5N1 was detected in a 53-year-old woman from Jiangsu province in eastern China, according to BNO news agency.

She reportedly developed symptoms in late January after being in contact with poultry.

The reports come just over a week after the death of an 11-year-old Cambodian girl from Prey Veng province in southeastern Cambodia, shortly after tests confirmed that she had avian influenza type A H5N1.

Experts said this resulted from animal-to-human transmission rather than human-to-human.

This comes after an 11-year-old Cambodian girl died from the virus (

Picture:

ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

But virologist Erik Karlsson, who works at the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge in Phnom Penh, confirmed that samples taken from the girl showed clear changes in the virus that made it more transmissible.

Speaking to Nature.com, he said: "The virus belongs to clade 2.3.2.1c, which is an endemic strain in the region.

"This is the same strain that caused a number of human infections in 2013 and 2014 in Cambodia, and has been detected intermittently in poultry since then, including chickens on farms. live bird markets."

Speaking after the death, a senior World Health Organization official said the recent global spread of the virus and human infections was "worrying".