A person from Louisiana, in the United States, has had to be hospitalized after suffering a severe case of bird flu. He is the first patient with a serious prognosis due to this disease in the country, as reported this Wednesday by the health authorities.
The case was detected on Friday and it is a patient who was exposed to dead poultry or sick in a private home, as confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Authorities maintain an ongoing investigation into this episode.
The federal agency added that the patient in question represents the “first case of H5N1 avian influenza in the United States that has been linked to exposure to a backyard flock,” as poultry raised in domestic spaces is called. Since April of this year, A total of 61 human cases of avian flu have been detected in the US, none of them due to contagion between people.
The CDC recalls that a sporadic case of severe avian influenza in humans is “not unexpected,” and has even led to fatal illnesses in the past, but emphasizes that in the United States the immediate public health risk from H5N1 “remains low”. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised this Tuesday to 76 the total number of reported cases of bird flu in humans so far in 2024, the majority in the North American country.
He stressed that the risk for the general population of becoming infected is low. The risk of contagion for workers in the livestock sector and other people exposed to infected animals is low to moderate.
The WHO has also recalled that advises the preferential consumption of pasteurized milkafter contamination with the virus in a sample of raw milk sold to the public was confirmed in November. The entity confirmed that so far no person-to-person transmission has been detected.
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