Bird flu has been found in a person in Missouri, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The adult, who had never been near chickens or milking cows, was taken to the hospital on August 22 and is now better.
More and more people are worried that bird flu could spread to people. This is the first case of infection in a person in the U.S. who didn’t work with chickens or cows.
The CDC said that most people are still not at high risk.
According to the CDC, the H5 influenza virus has spread to at least 196 groups of dairy cows in 14 states. In 48 states, outbreaks have been found in birds. According to the CDC, the person in Missouri is the 15th person to have been infected with H5 in the U.S. since 2022. Fourteen people who work with chickens and milk have been sick since the beginning of 2024. Most of them had weak flu-like symptoms, like fevers or stuffy noses. A lot of people have had pink eye or conjunctivitis.
Missouri hasn’t heard of any H5 infections in dairy cows. It has been found in some commercial chickens, backyard groups, and wild birds.
An expert in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, Dr. William Schaffner said, “The question now is: How did this patient get the infection?” “We need a very, very thorough investigation.”
It doesn’t look like the H5N1 virus, which is spread by dairy cows, has been going from person to person. Schaffner said that the sample from the Missouri patient would have to be looked at in a lab to see if the H5 virus has changed in any way that makes it easier to spread to people.
“This will be of enormous interest,” he told me.
In a separate statement, Missouri health officials said there have been no signs of flu activity that isn’t normal in people. For example, there hasn’t been an increase in visits to the emergency room or the number of cases of flu found in laboratories in the state.
State health officials in Missouri said in the report that a sample from the patient was sent to the Missouri State Public Health Laboratory. The sample was sent to the CDC to be checked out further.
Officials in Missouri said the adult patient has other health problems and tested positive for influenza A. The patient’s close friends have not been found to have passed on the virus.