Mexico Confirms First Human Fatality from H5N1 Avian Influenza

A three-year-old girl has died from the virus, with authorities reporting no further infections and assessing low risk of human-to-human transmission.

• Mexican officials have reported the country's first human death from H5N1, involving a three-year-old child from Durango who succumbed to respiratory complications.
• Contact tracing of 38 individuals linked to the case returned negative results, with authorities deeming the risk of further human transmission to be low.
• Globally, the H5N1 virus continues to spread widely among wild birds and mammals, including species such as dairy cows, with nearly all infected birds dying from the disease.
• The virus, first identified in 1996, has seen an exponential rise in outbreaks among birds since 2020, raising concerns about its potential to mutate and increase transmissibility.
• This marks the second reported human fatality in North America this year, following a death in the United States in January 2025, where approximately 70 human cases have been documented.

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