CDC confirms first severe human case of bird flu in U.S.
An individual in Louisiana has the first severe illness caused by bird flu in the United States, federal health officials said Wednesday.
The patient, who is hospitalized, had been in contact with sick and dead birds in backyard flocks on their property, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. It’s the first case of H5N1 bird flu in the United States that has been linked to exposure to a backyard flock.
The Louisiana Health Department announced over the weekend that it had detected its first presumptive positive human case of bird flu in a resident of southwestern Louisiana who was hospitalized. The state provided no additional details.
The case was confirmed by the CDC on Friday. In a briefing Wednesday, Demetre Daskalakis, a top CDC official, said preliminary genetic sequencing indicates the virus belongs to a version of bird flu recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States and in recent human cases in British Columbia and Washington state.
That version, or genotype, is different from the one that has been detected in dairy cows, some human cases and some poultry outbreaks in the United States, he said. The patient had no exposure to dairy cows, and state officials are monitoring contacts and offering antivirals if needed.
Officials declined to share details about the person’s symptoms and timeline of their illness for privacy reasons. The Louisiana Department of Health did not immediately respond to an email sent over the weekend.
Public health officials are watching this case carefully because in all of the other approximately 60 cases of bird flu illness in the United States, patients have experienced mild illness, such as pink eye, or mild respiratory symptoms. They have all fully recovered, Daskalakis said. A teen in Canada was hospitalized with an H5N1 infection, and in that case, officials have not been able to identify the source of exposure.
In the past 25 years of global experience with the virus, of the more than 900 cases of H5N1 infection in other countries, infection has been associated with severe illness and – in about 50 percent of cases – death, officials have said.
“The demonstrated potential for this virus to cause severe illness in people continues to highlight the importance of the joint coordinated U.S. federal response,” Daskalakis said at a news briefing.
No person-to-person spread of H5N1 bird flu has been detected in any of the cases. The CDC said the latest case does not change the agency’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from bird flu, which officials said remains low.