JANUARY 6, 2025:
NEW YORK (AP) — The first U.S. bird flu death has been reported — a person in Louisiana who had been hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms.
Louisiana health officials announced the death on Monday (Jan. 6, 2025).
Health officials have said the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. They also said a genetic analysis had suggested the bird flu virus had mutated inside the patient, which could have led to the more severe illness.
They have disclosed few other details about the person.
Since March, 66 confirmed bird flu infections have been reported in the U.S., but previous illnesses have been mild and most have been detected among farmworkers exposed to sick poultry or dairy cows.
A bird flu death was not unexpected, virus experts said. More than 460 people have died from versions of the H5N1 bird flu virus since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.
The bird flu virus “is a serious threat and it has historically been a deadly virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “This is just a tragic reminder of that.”
Nuzzo noted a Canadian teen became severely ill after being infected recently. Researchers are still trying to gauge the dangers of the current version of the virus and determine what causes it to hit some people harder than others, she said.
“Just because we have seen mild cases does not mean future cases will continue to be mild,” she added.
In two of the recent U.S. cases — an adult in Missouri and a child in California — health officials have not determined how they caught the virus. The origin of the Louisiana person’s infection was not considered a mystery. But it was the first human case in the U.S. linked to exposure to backyard birds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Louisiana officials say they are not aware of any other cases in their state, and U.S. officials have said they do not have any evidence that the virus is spreading from person to person.
The H5N1 bird flu has been spreading widely among wild birds, poultry, cows and other animals. Its growing presence in the environment increases the chances that people will be exposed, and potentially catch it, officials have said.
Officials continue to urge people who have contact with sick or dead birds to take precautions, including wearing respiratory and eye protection and gloves when handling poultry.
DECEMBER 28, 2024:
UNDATED (AP)- A genetic analysis suggests the bird flu virus mutated inside a Louisiana patient who contracted the nation’s first severe case of the illness, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.
Scientists believe the mutations may allow the virus to better bind to receptors in the upper airways of humans — something they say is concerning but not a cause for alarm.
Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease researcher, likened this binding interaction to a lock and key. To enter a cell, the virus needs to have a key that turns the lock, and this finding means the virus may be changing to have a key that might work.
“Is this an indication that we may be closer to seeing a readily transmitted virus between people? No,” Osterholm said. “Right now, this is a key that sits in the lock, but it doesn’t open the door.”
The virus has been causing sporadic, mostly mild illnesses in people in the U.S., and nearly all of those infected worked on dairy or poultry farms.
The Louisiana patient was hospitalized in critical condition with severe respiratory symptoms from bird flu after coming in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. The person, who has not been identified, is older than 65 and has underlying medical problems, officials said earlier this month.
The CDC stressed there has been no known transmission of the virus from the Louisiana patient to anyone else. The agency said its findings about the mutations were “concerning,” but the risk to the general public from the outbreak “has not changed and remains low.”
Still, Osterholm said, scientists should continue to follow what’s happening with mutations carefully.
“There will be additional influenza pandemics and they could be much worse than we saw with COVID,” he said. “We know that the pandemic clock is ticking. We just don’t know what time it is.”
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