A worker at a chicken farm in Guadalajara has become Spain’s first recorded case of bird flu, the Health Ministry showed Monday after a veterinary magazine reported it. Animal Health. The case was confirmed by the National Center for Microbiology on September 27 and has a very favorable evolution. He has not shown any symptoms and became negative shortly after the test in which he was positive.

According to Health, the case was identified during control tests carried out as a precaution to employees of farms where avian influenza outbreaks had been registered. On this occasion, the farm recorded an outbreak among the birds on September 17. The worker remains isolated at his home and his only close contact was negative in the PCR tests carried out.

Europe has suffered for a year its biggest bird flu (H5N1) outbreak on record, according to a report published this Monday by the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC). The document has not included cases identified in Guadalajara and highlights that the risk to the population is “low, but slightly higher for people working in direct contact with infected birds.”

Spain has notified the ECDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) about the case. To date, only the UK has recorded cases of bird flu of the type circulating in humans on European soil, in 2021, which also has a good evolution. Another case was identified with similar results last year in the United States. Health reports that “contagion [del virus] Bird-to-human transmission is considered a rare phenomenon and human-to-human transmission is extremely rare.”

The current outbreak of bird flu has spread to much of Europe via migratory birds, causing dozens of outbreaks in poultry farms, with huge economic losses to the sector. According to the ECDC, the geographic expansion of the outbreak was “unprecedented” and reached from the Svalbard Islands (in Arctic Norway) to southern Portugal and eastern Ukraine, affecting 37 European countries.

Mortality among birds is up to 60% and regulations require the slaughter of all specimens from farms where cases are identified, among other measures. According to Health, so far 79 outbreaks in wild birds and 36 in poultry farms have been detected in Spain.

48 million birds slaughtered

ECDC data for the rest of Europe brings to 2,467 outbreaks registered in poultry farms in Europe and 3,573 in wild animals. More than 48 million birds had to be euthanized. The agency cautions that, although extremely rare, influenza viruses in animal species can infect humans sporadically and have the potential to severely affect public health, as was the case with the avian flu epidemics in Egypt and China or with the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009.

“It is critical that physicians, laboratories and health professionals, in both the animal and human sectors, collaborate and maintain a coordinated approach,” said ECDC Director Andrea Ammon in a statement. This has highlighted the need to maintain vigilance to identify influenza virus infection “as soon as possible” and to carry out risk assessments and public health measures.