"Scientists of the Vector Center have isolated genetic material of this type of avian influenza from seven employees of a poultry farm in the south of the Russian Federation, where an outbreak was registered among the bird population in December 2020," TASS quotes her.
According to her, the new causative agent of avian influenza A (H5N8) can be transmitted from birds to humans.
She said that the virus has overcome the interspecies barrier.
At the same time, Popova stressed that today this variant of the influenza virus is not transmitted from person to person.
“All people, all seven people I’m talking about today, feel good, their clinical course was very easy,” said the head of Rospotrebnadzor.
In mid-October it was reported that an outbreak of bird flu had been identified in the Tomsk region.
Also, the diagnosis of "bird flu" was confirmed in the Muslyumovsky and Drozhzhanovsky regions of Tatarstan.