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A person in Louisiana has been hospitalized with a severe case of the bird flu. It is the first known human H5N1 infection in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“While an investigation into the source of this infection in Louisiana is ongoing, it is believed that the patient that was reported by Louisiana had exposure to sick or dead birds on their property,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on Wednesday.
This is the first bird flu case in the United States ever linked to backyard, non-commercial poultry, according to Daskalakis. He added that the Louisiana Department of Health was also currently conducting an investigation into the infection.
The CDC reported that the patient in Louisiana was infected with the D1.1 version of the virus and it is working on additional genomic sequencing of samples from the patient in Louisiana. The B3.13 version of bird flu, the type detected in dairy cows, poultry outbreaks and other human cases, is of a different variety.
61 human cases of H5 bird flu have been reported in the United States since April. Reuters reports more than 860 dairy herds in 16 states since March have been infected with bird flu. The virus has also killed 123 million poultry since the outbreak began in 2022.
Earlier this month, scientists at Stanford University learned raw milk is a viable transmission route for bird flu viruses. They shared their findings in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.
“Overall, our study demonstrates that influenza viruses remain infectious in raw milk, where it could pose a significant human health risk,” they wrote.
Meanwhile, last week, four counties in England were declared Avian Influenza Prevention Zones.
“The introduction of an Avian Influenza Prevention Zone means regardless of the number of birds you keep, you are required to meet enhanced biosecurity requirements to protect your birds from this highly infectious disease,” Aled Edwards, Animal Plant Health Agency Head of England Field Delivery, said in a statement.
In 2020, Dr. Michael Gregor wrote a book in which he warned that bird flu hitting the chicken farming industry could take out half of the world’s population.
Then, in June of 2024, virologist Dr. Robert Redfield, a former director of the CDC, warned the world that a bird flu pandemic is coming. It’s “not a question of if, it’s more a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” he said.
“What is important to recognize about [H5N1] is that it has already been unprecedented,” Meghan Davis at Johns Hopkins University told New Scientist. “It has done things that highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses typically don’t do. So to have it enter the dairy cow population was really remarkable.”
Despite all of those warnings, the CDC said in a statement, “This case [in Louisiana] does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low.”.