Cambodian MOH Announces 4th Human H5N1 Case of 2026 #19,125 With thanks for the head's up from  @E_A_Karlsson , we have the following announcement from Cambodia's Ministry of Health on their...

AFD Blog `Cambodian MOH Announces 4th Human #H5N1 Case of 2026' h/t @eakarlsson.bsky.social afludiary.blogspot.com/2026/04/camb...

@duckswabber.bsky.social @thijskuiken.bsky.social @marionkoopmans.bsky.social @angelarasmussen.bsky.social @jsiegers.bsky.social @fla-medic.bsky.social @who.int @fao.org

4th human #H5N1 case of 2026 in #Cambodia
A 66-year-old woman from Svay Rieng province, currently hospitalized and receiving treatment.

2026: 4 cases, 0 deaths
Since 2023: 38 cases, 15 deaths (CFR 39.5%)
Since 2004: 94 cases, 52 deaths (CFR 55.3%)

🧪🦠💉🥼🔬😷🐓

Cambodia Reports Third H5N1 Case This Year as Resurgent Virus Gains Ground PHNOM PENH — Cambodia has confirmed a new human case of H5N1 in a three-year-old boy in Oddar Meanchey, the country’s third infection this year, ...

Read more in the news: cambodianess.com/article/camb...

Cambodian MOH Announces 3rd Human H5N1 Case of 2026 #19,102 With thanks for the head's up from   @E_A_Karlsson , we have the following announcement from Cambodia's Ministry of Health on thei...

AFD Blog `Cambodian MOH Announces 3rd Human #H5N1 Case of 2026' h/t @eakarlsson.bsky.social afludiary.blogspot.com/2026/03/camb...

Apologies, find the corrected Press Release here

@angierasmussen.bsky.social @marionkoopmans.bsky.social @jsiegers.bsky.social @fao.org @who.int @fla-medic.bsky.social @duckswabber.bsky.social

Resurgence of Zoonotic Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus in Cambodia | NEJM In this report from Cambodia, 16 human cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection that occurred from February 2023 through August 2024 are described.

Since re-emergence, Cambodia has been detecting a reassortant #H5N1 virus circulating in poultry with periodic spillover into humans, often linked to close household exposure. Read more: www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Exposure context: reports of sick & dead chickens/ducks in the village. The child had played around poultry at home, including birds that were sick or had died. 🦠🐓😷🔬🧪💉🥼

3rd human #H5N1 case of 2026 in #Cambodia
A 3-year-old boy from Oddar Meanchey province, currently hospitalized and receiving treatment. 🔬🧪😷🐓🦠🥼💉

2026: 3 cases, 0 deaths
Since 2023: 37 cases, 15 deaths (CFR 40.5%)
Since 2004: 93 cases, 52 deaths (CFR 55.9%)

@avianbiology.bsky.social @who.int @fao.org @fla-medic.bsky.social @angierasmussen.bsky.social @thijskuiken.bsky.social @avianinfluenza.bsky.social

Cambodia confirms 2nd human #H5N1 case of 2026 in a 45-year-old woman from Banteay Meanchey province. Patient hospitalized and under treatment. 🥼🦠😷🔬🐓🧪💉

2026: 2 cases, 0 deaths
Since 2023: 36 cases, 15 deaths (CFR 41.7%)
Since 2004: 92 cases, 52 deaths (CFR 56.5%)
#AvianInfluenza #BirdFlu

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This five-day intensive program brings together early-career scientists and postgraduate students studying #influenza, #coronaviruses, #RSV, and other respiratory viruses. 🦠🐓🧪😷🥼💉🔬

Applications are now open for the 7th ISRV School of Respiratory Viruses, hosted by the School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong.
Program details: isrv.eventsair.com/7th-isrv-sch... Apply here: isrv.eventsair.com/Presentation...
Applications close: 30 April (UTC+8)
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👋

@michaelisonmd.bsky.social @mtosterholm.bsky.social @marionkoopmans.bsky.social @angierasmussen.bsky.social @jsiegers.bsky.social @filip-ectad.bsky.social @fao.org @who.int @duckswabber.bsky.social @fla-medic.bsky.social @thijskuiken.bsky.social

This is the first case this year (1 case, 0 deaths in 2026).

Since 2023 re-emergence: 35 cases, 15 deaths (CFR 42.9%)

Overall since 2004: 91 cases, 52 deaths (CFR 57.1%)

🔬🧪🐓💉🥼🦠😷

First human #H5N1 case of 2026 in #Cambodia: a 30-year-old man from Kampot province. Sequencing, virus isolation & animal investigations ongoing. Dead chicken at home before onset. Patient has since recovered. 🦠💉😷🐓🥼🔬🧪

Sequencing, contact tracing, and poultry investigations ongoing.

Planning is underway for the 2026 Metagenomic Virus Discovery workshop. Last years workshop was a great success with 22 participants representing 11 countries. If you would like to know more, get in contact with our organising committee at mvdworkshop2025@gmail.com

This isn’t about replacing classic #surveillance. It’s about upgrading it. Find smarter, safer ways to see what’s coming. Sometimes the first signal of risk isn’t inside the bird. It’s already in the air.

Traditional sampling is time-consuming, expensive, and carries real #biosafety and animal health risks. Environmental sampling, especially #air, can reduce handling, broaden detection, and act as an early warning system in one of the most critical human–animal interfaces.

Perhaps most important: Environmental sampling outperformed poultry swabs for detecting highly pathogenic #H5N1, including clades 2.3.4.4b and 2.3.2.1c. Translation: the market environment was positive for H5N1 on days when the birds we swabbed were “negative.”

What we learned:
- Environmental samples detected a wide diversity of viruses
- Air was the MVP: greatest diversity of poultry viruses.
- When we compared, the environment is highly similar to what we saw in poultry

Here’s the problem: markets are not static. They’re more like airport terminals for #poultry. Constant arrivals, constant departures, constant mixing. Swabbing a few birds is a snapshot. So we tried something obvious in hindsight: Stop interrogating individual birds. Start listening to the room.

In our recent @nature.com Communications study, we compared traditional #poultry swabs with environmental #metagenomics, sampling #air, cage surfaces, carcass wash water, and drinking water in two Cambodian live bird markets. 🦠😷🔬🧪🐓🥼

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The takeaway: H5 #avianflu isn’t slowing down. It’s accelerating. And each new clade is a reminder that surveillance, sequencing, and real cross-sector coordination aren’t optional, they’re the only way to keep up. 🦠🥼😷🔬🐓🧪

#H5N1 #influenza #avianinfluenza #birdflu

Nomenclature updates to the hemagglutinin gene clade designations resulting from the continued evolution of high pathogenicity avian influenza A(H5) virus clades 2.3.2.1c and 2.3.4.4 The evolutionary divergence of the A(H5) hemagglutinin (HA) gene of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) viruses (A/goose/Guangdong/96 lineage) was analyzed by phylogenetic and average pairwise d...

The WHO/WOAH/FAO H5 Evolution Working Group just released a major nomenclature update: 12 new H5 clades across 2.3.2.1 and 2.3.4.4, the result of a decade of relentless viral evolution stretching from Asia to Africa, the Americas, and even Antarctica. 🥼🔬🧪🦠🐓😷

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Go @eakarlsson.bsky.social knocking it out of the park at the @virus-metagenomics.bsky.social workshop at CERI in Stellenbosch.

Tomorrow evening we have our keynote lecture session from 16:00 in the Neelsie Cinema, Stellenbosch University. Dr Maja Vukovikj will be speaking about Africas ancient disease landscape and Dr Erik Karlsson will talk about metagenomics and high-risk interfaces tinyurl.com/ytj3sppm