Albertan killed by avian flu: officials

First fatality in North America

An Albertan has become the first person in North America to die from the rare H5N1 virus, also known as avian or bird flu.

The victim died on Jan. 3, about a week after returning from a trip to China to visit family, the Public Health Agency of Canada announced Wednesday.

Dr. James Talbot, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, is confident the virus will not spread. The victim’s family is showing no symptoms and the bird flu virus, unlike other types of flu, is extremely difficult to pass from human to human.

Talbot declined to provide any details about the patient’s identity, including age, gender or hometown, though he said the victim began experiencing symptoms of “fever, malaise and headache” on Dec. 27 flights from Beijing to Vancouver and Vancouver to Edmonton.

He said the victim, who does not live in Edmonton, checked into an undisclosed hospital Jan. 1 and died two days later in an intensive care unit.

“One of the unusual features of this case was that at no time did they have a cough or respiratory type symptoms. For some H5N1s, that is a typical course and they tend to deteriorate pretty rapidly,” Talbot said.

“The diagnosis at time of death was meningoencephalitis, which is an inflammation of the brain and linings that cover the brain. That is one of the ways H5N1 patients die.”

Specimens were found to be negative for the more common flu strains.

The National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg then became involved, confirming Tuesday the existence of North America’s first case of H5N1.

Talbot said Alberta health officials initiated a “close contact followup” immediately after learning that the victim had developed a serious illness in China. Everyone who had been in contact with the deceased was monitored closely for symptoms and offered the antiviral drug Tamiflu.

Health workers wore protective clothing and gloves while treating the victim, he said.

“As a consequence of the fact it is very rare to see transmission and that we took extra precautions and no one is symptomatic, I am confident there will be no transmission within the province of Alberta,” Talbot said.

“In the middle of the H1N1 season, it would have been easy to write this off as an unfortunate consequence of the H1N1 (outbreak), but because of our vigilance we were able to (handle) this in what I think is a textbook manner.”

About 640 cases of H5N1 worldwide have been confirmed in the last decade, the majority in Asia.

H5N1 is different from more common flu strains in that it is harder to transmit among humans, but also tends to be more severe. The World Health Organization says it has a mortality rate of about 60 per cent.

The most common way to contract the illness is close contact with infected birds.

Talbot said it is a mystery how the Albertan contracted the illness, since the victim stayed within the Beijing area and did not visit any high-risk sites.

“It’s one of the things that will be of intense interest to international authorities and of course the Chinese government,” he said.

Health officials said they will be contacting passengers on the same flights as the victim (Air Canada 030 and 244), but believe it is unlikely anyone else was infected.

Dr. Gregory Taylor, deputy chief public health officer for the Public Health Agency of Canada, said there is no evidence yet of H5N1 being spread on an airplane.