A resident of southwestern Louisiana was hospitalized with what appeared to be the state’s first case of bird flu in a person, said state health officials. Sixty people in seven states have contracted mild cases of the viral disease this year, according to the CDC.
The Louisiana Office of Public Health said the hospitalized person “had exposure to sick and dead birds that are suspected to have been infected with H5N1,” the avian influenza virus.
Meanwhile, confirmatory tests failed to identify bird flu in a child “who became ill after consuming contaminated raw milk” in Marin County, north of San Francisco, said the county health agency. The child tested positive for the influenza A virus in the county’s public health laboratory. The state health department and CDC conducted additional tests “but due to low levels of viral RNA, they were unable to confirm whether the influenza A virus present was H5N1 [avian influenza] or seasonal influenza.”
Besides the human infections, bird flu has been identified in 845 dairy herds in 16 states since late March and it has killed nearly 123 million birds in domestic flocks since February 2022, including 10.9 million birds this month, according to USDA data.