As a Canadian teenager’s condition worsened amid the first presumptive positive test for bird flu in that country in over a decade, health officials were struggling to answer a broader and potentially worrisome question: how the infection occurred.
None of the obvious connections to an H5N1 influenza case were in play, according to Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer in British Columbia, where the teen was admitted to B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver over the weekend with conditions that left them in critical condition. The patient was experiencing acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.
