On Mar. 27, 2023, the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China reported a confirmed case of human infection with avian influenza A(H3N8) virus ‘H3N8 bird flu’ on Mar. 27, 2023.

The patient was an adult with multiple underlying medical conditions from Guangdong Province who became ill on February 22, 2023, was hospitalized with severe pneumonia on Mar. 3, 2023 and later died on Mar. 16, 2023. This was the third human infection with H3N8 bird flu virus and first fatality ever reported.

H3N8 viruses were first detected in wild birds in the 1960s and have been detected in other animals. H3N8 viruses have been sporadically detected in poultry in China and some have been found to be genetically closely related to the human cases reported in 2022.