French health authorities have reported the first known human case of the Shamonda virus, a pathogen that primarily affects livestock, involving a severely immunocompromised patient who died earlier this month.

The country’s health and agriculture ministries disclosed the development in a joint statement on Thursday, noting that the virus had circulated in Africa and Asia for several decades without previously being detected in humans.

Despite the reported case, the authorities said no public health risk had been identified at the time of the announcement.

They described the infection as an exceptional occurrence involving a patient with a severely weakened immune system who had been hospitalised for a serious medical condition.

The announcement marks the first documented detection of the Shamonda virus in a human, although the pathogen has been known to circulate among animals for decades.