NEW YORK (AP) — On Thursday, health officials announced that there is currently no indication of bird flu spreading between individuals. This follows an investigation into a puzzling case of infection reported in Missouri.
The Missouri infection, discovered last month, is unlike the 30 other confirmed bird flu cases in the U.S. this year, which primarily involved farmworkers who had direct contact with infected animals, including poultry and dairy cows. In this particular case, the infected person did not have a known interaction with any sick animals.
“There is no evidence of person-to-person transmission,” stated Dr. Demetre Daskalakis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The health officials maintain that the only plausible explanation for this unusual case is contact with an infected animal, even though no such link has been established.
The H5N1 bird flu virus has been disseminating widely across the U.S., affecting wild birds, poultry, and other livestock. As its prevalence increases, the risks of human exposure, and potentially contracting the virus, also rise, according to health officials.
The most recent report included a total of 31 confirmed human cases, including two workers from a commercial egg farm located in Franklin County, Washington. Other cases have been identified across various states — 15 in California, 10 in Colorado, two in Michigan, one in Texas, and the aforementioned unusual case in Missouri. Symptoms among those infected have mostly been mild, typically presenting as redness in the eyes.
Details surrounding the Missouri case remain scarce. The affected individual had preexisting health conditions and was hospitalized at the end of August. Initial flu testing revealed a positive result for influenza A, a broad category of viruses, and subsequent tests detected partial genetic sequences resembling bird flu viruses found in U.S. dairy cows.
Given that the individual was not employed on a farm and had no known contact with infected animals, health officials initiated inquiries into the possibility that they may have contracted the virus from another person with an undetected infection. If validated, this would raise concerns about the virus evolving into a more significant threat to human health.
To explore this possibility, health experts conducted specialized blood tests on the patient, five healthcare workers involved in their care, and a person described as a “household contact.” During this time, the household contact experienced gastrointestinal symptoms but was not examined initially.
CDC officials reported on Thursday that the healthcare workers tested negative for signs of infection. Despite the patient and the household contact showing some signs of previous infection in one round of testing, they did not meet the World Health Organization’s established criteria for a bird flu case. Consequently, the household contact will not be counted in the U.S. tally of bird flu cases.
Since both the patient and the household contact fell ill simultaneously, health officials concluded that they were likely exposed together to an unidentified animal or animal product, dismissing the possibility of the virus being transmitted between them, as explained by Daskalakis.
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