Russia has registered the first case of a strain of bird flu virus named AH5N8 being passed to humans from birds and has reported the case to the World Health Organization (WHO), the head of a health consumer watchdog said.
Outbreaks of the H5N8 strain have been reported in Russia, Europe, China, the Middle East and North Africa in recent months but only in poultry. Other strains – H5N1, H7N9 and H9N2 – have been known to spread to humans. The highly contagious strain is lethal for birds but has never before been reported to have spread to humans.
