First person in US to develop severe bird flu illness hospitalized | Louisiana

The first person in the United States to develop severe illness from H5N1 avian influenza has been hospitalized in Louisiana, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed Wednesday.

Officials believe the person had contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. This would be the first time a person in the U.S. has been infected with bird flu from a backyard flock — which the CDC’s Demetre Daskalakis called “remarkable.”

The news comes as the US continues to expand its efforts to track bird flu infections amid a growing outbreak. There have been 61 confirmed and seven probable human cases of H5N1 in the United States.

States must now test milk in large quantities to understand the extent of the spread among dairy cows and identify new outbreaks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Dec. 6.

Labcorp also announced Tuesday that the first commercial test for H5N1 is now available to the public on doctor’s orders.

Another probable case of avian influenza in a person in Delaware was identified through routine flu surveillance in the first week of December, Tim Mastro, deputy communications director for Delaware Health and Social Services, said in a statement.

This person had no known contact with animals, Daskalakis said.

But “confirmatory testing at the CDC failed to confirm the H5 infection,” Daskalakis said, so the probable case is not included in the list of confirmed national cases.

H5N1 was discovered the week of December 7 at the only wastewater site in Delaware that monitors H5N1, near Georgetown, Delaware, the state’s poultry production center.

“No poultry or livestock have been detected in Delaware,” said Stacey Hofman, director of community relations for the Delaware Department of Agriculture.

“We know that H5N1 is in the Atlantic Flyway, and since there are currently large numbers of migratory waterfowl in Delaware, this is believed to be the cause of this discovery,” she said.

In humans, the confirmed case in Louisiana and the probable case in Delaware “do not change the CDC’s current risk assessment for the general population, which remains low,” Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters Wednesday.

But he added: “People who work with infected animals or are exposed to them recreationally are at higher risk of infection.”

Anyone who comes into contact with animals should take precautions, he said, including wearing a respirator and getting tested if symptoms occur.

The person in Louisiana contracted the same variant as the teenager in British Columbia, who remains in critical condition after six weeks of illness.

This variant, found in wild and domestic birds, is different from the variant common in dairy cows, officials said. Additional genomic sequencing of the virus is still underway at the CDC.

The person in Louisiana tested positive for influenza A for the first time, and when tested by the state laboratory as part of regular monitoring of positive flu tests, the sample was determined to be avian influenza.

The CDC would not say what symptoms the patient had or what type of support he needed during his hospitalization, citing concerns about the patient’s privacy.

But “the patient was actually hospitalized – he was seriously ill due to his flu infection,” Daskalakis said.

Louisiana public health officials are conducting a case investigation, monitoring potentially exposed contacts and offering testing and antiviral medications if needed, he said.

Previously, a patient in Missouri with underlying medical conditions tested positive for bird flu despite no known exposure and spent three days in the hospital.

There was no known human-to-human transmission of bird flu in the United States during this outbreak, Daskalakis said.

Although the U.S. has stockpiled millions of H5N1 vaccines, these vaccines have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Officials announced no changes to the U.S. vaccination strategy on Wednesday.