First person tests positive for bird flu without clear exposure to sick animals

First person tests positive for bird flu without clear exposure to sick animals Show Caption Hide Caption Bird flu’s ‘low risk’ to public, experts say. Despite a number of farm workers catching bird flu across the U.S., experts say there’s low risk to the general public with a few exceptions. A Missouri resident has tested positive for bird flu even though there is no evidence the person came into contact with an animal infected with the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a Friday evening news release. Acquiring the virus without animal contact raises safety concerns because it may be an indication that the potentially quite deadly virus could develop the ability to transmit from human-to-human, although the CDC still considers such a risk “low” at the moment. The others, who were all described as having “mild” symptoms, had worked on farms known to have H5N1-infected cattle or poultry. The person, who has not been identified, was hospitalized Aug. 22 and treated with an anti-viral medication after a flu test turned positive. When that test didn’t match the seasonal flu, it was sent for further testing and the H5N1 result was confirmed Thursday, the CDC said. Public health officials have been concerned about bird flu, because it has been lethal in about half of the people known to have contracted it worldwide. Understanding the origin is crucial for understanding the threat, if any, that the virus poses to the general public, said Dr. Jesse Goodman, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University and a former chief scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. If the person is infected with the same strain as the other people, there has to be a chain of transmission, either from the sick animals or from another infected person, Goodman said. Lisa Cox, a spokesperson for the Missouri health department, said in an email that the Missouri patient’s contacts remained asymptomatic throughout the observation period, so they did not pass the virus on to anyone else. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said he thinks the Missouri patient most likely caught a different strain of the virus after coming into close contact with an infected migratory bird. Late summer is when many birds are migrating, he said, so “this is the season we’re going to see that virus moving.” Osterholm said he doesn’t know if the patient has a feeder or was exposed to one, but “that’s the kind of exposure that would not be uncommon.” So far, humans have not shown high susceptibility to the H5N1 virus, said Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease expert who directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The only people who’ve fallen ill so far were those on farms exposed to very high levels of virus, which penetrated deep into their lower respiratory tract. Perhaps the person in Missouri, whom state officials described as having an “underlying medical condition,” was particularly susceptible to such a lower respiratory tract infection, he said. People, even those who have had the seasonal flu or who get annual vaccines, have no immunity to H5 flu viruses, and thus they could become quite ill if infected, Offit said. CDC closely monitors data from influenza surveillance systems, particularly in states with known animal outbreaks. Just this week, Goodman, co-wrote an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association calling for more investment in public health, including in a vaccine strategy, to address H5N1 both in the U.S. and abroad. “The time to prepare for a potential infectious outbreak is before it occurs, because when it occurs it’s too late,” he said. “Hopefully, it doesn’t turn into a public health threat and I think that’s most likely, but we need to pay attention. Not enough information has been made public about the Missouri patient to understand how concerning the situation is, Offit said. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/09/06/missouri-patient-infected-bird-flu/75109758007/