Mexico denies one death from bird flu; emphasizes that there are no health risks

The Mexican Government denied this Thursday that a man had died from bird flu in the country, as stated on Wednesday by the World Health Organization (WHO), which it accused of issuing a “pretty bad” statement in which it reported the first human death in the world due to the AH5N2 virus.

“I can point out that the statement made by the World Health Organization is quite bad, since from the outset it talks about a fatal case, which was not the case, he died from another cause and without a ruling having been made, and only marginally. says that the risk in this case is low,” declared the Secretary of Health, Jorge Alcocer.

At the Government’s morning conference, the official maintained that the 59-year-old man referred to by the WHO died on April 24 from complications derived from diabetes and kidney failure, but not from the AH5N2 virus.

The head of the Ministry of Health (SSa) stated that this Thursday there would be a meeting with the international organization “to clarify” the statement that announced the man’s death “as the first human case confirmed in a laboratory of influenza virus infection.” AH5N2 reported globally”.

“This is a note that must be taken with caution because it is not precise,” commented Alcocer.

The official acknowledged that “the cause” of death “has not been specified, but basically it is kidney failure and respiratory failure that occurred in a matter of hours.”

The victim, according to information from the WHO, would be a man from the State of Mexico who died when he received care at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER), in the south of Mexico City, after days of having fever, difficulty breathing, diarrhea, nausea and general malaise.

After his death, “basically what was taken were samples and in one of the samples the AH5N2 virus was found, which is linked to avian flu,” said the Secretary of Health.

“In this case it could be an epidemiological warning, in the case of the actions that are taken for workers who care for birds and who work with them, (but) this patient did not have any of this, he came from the State of Mexico because of those manifestations of another type,” he argued.

The secretary maintained that “so far there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission,” and that the patient “has no history of family contact” or his close environment that would explain the infection.

He also stated that the Epidemiology Directorate has evaluated “all these contacts.”

“Therefore, and I point out, there is no reason to avoid eating chicken or its derivatives or to be concerned about this,” he said.

Hours earlier, the WHO had a seminar in Geneva, where specialists asked for an alert regarding possible new cases after the case in Mexico, although they stressed that the risk of contagion in humans remains low.