The CDC conducted a genetic analysis of an H5N1 bird flu sample from a person in Louisiana that shows the disease could be more transmittable to humans.
The person became infected with the “D1.1 genotype virus,” which closely resembles the virus “detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States and in recent human cases in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State,” according to the CDC.
The CDC said this person got this virus from exposure to “sick and dead birds in backyard flocks.” It was the first American case of someone getting bird flu who was exposed to a backyard flock.
“The changes observed were likely generated by replication of this virus in the patient with advanced disease rather than primarily transmitted at the time of infection. Comparison of influenza A(H5) sequence data from viruses identified in wild birds and poultry in Louisiana, including poultry identified on the property of the patient, and other regions of the United States did not identify these changes,” the CDC said.
The two samples the CDC used to test the bird flu sample were a nasal swab and a nasal/throat swab.
The CDC says that the risk of a bird flu outbreak among the American population is “low.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, who worked on President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 COVID taskforce, told CNN that there needs to be more “wider-spread testing of farm workers.”
“We kind of have our head in the sand about how widespread this is from the zoonotic standpoint, from the animal-to-human standpoint,” she said.
As of Friday, the United States has 65 confirmed cases of bird flu, according to the CDC.
Since the bird flu outbreak started in 2022, almost 123 million chickens have been killed, according to Reuters.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected]. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
