WASHINGTON: Louisiana health officials on Monday reported the first human death in the United States related to bird flu, although they noted that the patient had underlying medical conditions and that the overall risks to the public remained “low.”
The patient, over 65 years old, had been hospitalized in the southern state since at least mid-December, when the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it as the first serious case of human infection with the H5N1 virus in the country.
“While the current public health risk to the general public remains low, people who work with birds, poultry or cows, or have recreational exposure to them, are at increased risk,” the Department of Health said. of Louisiana in a statement announcing the death.
It said the patient had “contracted H5N1 after exposure to a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds,” but had detected no further H5N1 infections or evidence of human-to-human transmission in the state.
The news comes just days after the federal government provided an additional $306 million to bolster H5N1 surveillance and research programs, amid some criticism of President Joe Biden's administration for its response to the latent issue.
The amount of bird flu circulating between animals and humans has alarmed scientists over concerns it could mutate into a more transmissible form, potentially triggering a deadly pandemic.
Since the beginning of 2024, the CDC has recorded 66 human cases of bird flu in the United States.
“We have a lot of data showing that this virus can be lethal, more lethal than many viruses we are concerned about,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University. AFP.
“For that reason, people have been quite alarmed by these outbreaks that have been occurring on farms and other places in the United States and have really been crying out for the United States government to do more,” he said.
Death “not unexpected”
The CDC said in December that the Louisiana patient's genetic sequencing of the H5N1 virus was different from the version detected in many dairy herds across the country.
And a small part of the patient's virus had genetic modifications that suggested it could have mutated within the body to adapt to the human respiratory tract.
However, such mutations are not the only thing that could make the virus more contagious or transmissible between humans, according to researchers interviewed by AFP.
H5N1 was first detected in 1996, but since 2020, the number of outbreaks among bird flocks has skyrocketed, while a growing number of mammal species have been affected.
“While tragic, a death from H5N1 bird flu in the United States is not unexpected due to the known potential for infection with these viruses to cause serious illness and death,” the CDC said in a statement.
The World Health Organization has recorded more than 950 human cases of bird flu since 2003 in 24 countries, including large numbers in China and Vietnam.
Nuzzo said the announcement of the American's death did not change his perspective, but he stressed his “great concern about the relatively uncontrolled spread of this virus and the urgency of doing more to prevent people from becoming infected.”
“This is a nasty virus that no one wants to get,” he said.
