A person in Louisiana has been hospitalized with bird flu, in the first serious infection of the H5N1 virus in humans to be recorded in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English).
The agency detailed that the person was likely exposed to the virus through dead or dying poultry. It is the first time that a flock of poultry has been associated with a bird flu infection in a United States resident.
“While an investigation into the source of this infection is underway in Louisiana, the patient reported to the state is believed to have been exposed to sick or dead birds on his property,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, during a briefing Wednesday.
The case was reported as a presumptive positive case in Louisiana on Friday and later confirmed by the CDC.
Daskalakis detailed that the Louisiana Department of Health was conducting an investigation, monitoring the patient’s contacts for exposure and offering testing and antiviral medications as needed.
Noticias Telemundo reported the case on December 13, indicating that it could be the first in the state.
Daskalakis added that the CDC is working to better characterize the virus’s genome, which will help researchers understand if it has developed any concerning mutations that could allow it to spread from person to person. Until now, No human-to-human transmission has been documented..
Early indicators in the case of the Louisiana patient suggest that the version of the virus causing the infection is similar to the one that has been circulating in wild and poultry birds in British Columbia, Canada and Washington state.
In November, a British Columbia teenager was hospitalized after contracting the same genotype of the bird flu virus. Canadian health authorities were unable to determine the source of the teen’s infection.
This is the 61st human case of bird flu reported this year in the United States. Most cases have been mild and were found among farm workers exposed to the virus through contact with animals.
The CDC said the development does not change its assessment of the risk of H5N1, which the agency said still “low”.
The H5N1 virus began circulating widely among wild birds in the United States in 2022 and then spread to poultry farms and poultry. According to the CDC, at least 123 million birds have died or been slaughtered due to the virus from 2022.
This spring, bird flu began to spread among dairy cows, and since then, at least 16 states They have detected the virus in cows.
Research on dairy farms has shown that the virus can spread efficiently among mammals, and scientists have found that it is likely to spread among farm animals through raw, or unpasteurized, milk, because infected cows shed large amounts of the virus through their mammary glands.
Most of the 61 reported human cases of bird flu have involved farm workers who interacted with infected poultry or livestock. In previous cases, common symptoms have included conjunctivitis, coughing, and sneezing.
Although there is still no evidence that the virus spreads between humans, scientists are concerned about the possibility that it mutates and develops this capacity, which could trigger the next pandemic.
In the United States, there have so far been two cases in which health officials have not been able to determine the source of a person’s exposure to bird flu. One was a case in a child in California, reported in November. The other was in a hospitalized patient in Missouri who tested positive for H5N1 in August and recovered.
Daskalakis noted that the CDC considers the Louisiana case to be the first serious H5N1 virus infection because other conditions likely caused the Missouri patient’s hospitalization.
