The first known human case of H5 bird flu in Vietnam since February 2014 was identified as a five-year-old girl in northern Phu Tho Province, Nguyen Luong Tam, deputy director of the Department of Preventive Medicine under the Ministry of Health, said on Thursday.

A report by the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology on October 17 showed that the child tested positive for avian influenza A(H5) virus.

Deputy director of the institute Tran Nhu Duong said that upon identifying the case, the agency sent a mobile prevention team to the area in Phu Tho where the patient lives in order to conduct epidemiological investigations.

The team took 65 samples from the patient’s distant and close contacts, whose test results showed that they were all negative for avian influenza A virus.

Duong stated that there appears to be no risk of the disease having spread in the local community.

Vietnam has recorded 128 cases of human H5 infection, including 64 deaths, from 2003 to present.

Despite its low prevalence in humans, H5 is still common in poultry populations across the country, according to the Department of Animal Health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The department forecasts that the risk of avian flu spreading to humans will increase in the near future due to changing weather patterns which seem to favor the development of avian influenza viruses.

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