A 52-year-old female living in Quanzhou City in Fujian Province contracted avian influenza in mid-April and died in hospital 17 days later. This is the 90th case of H5N6 influenza on the Mainland over the past ten years. According to the ProMED posting, the patient had extensive exposure to backyard poultry.
The ProMED moderator noted that H5N6 isolates from human cases in China since 2021 belong to HA genetic clade 2.3.4.4b. The virus isolates from eleven recent cases 
denoted avian lineages with gene segments derived from H5N1 and H5N8 viruses. One virus demonstrated amino acid substitution associated with increased human cell receptor binding. The change was assumed to have occurred sporadically following infection.