The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that a patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of H5N1 infection in Louisiana, marking the first known instance of a severe human illness linked to the bird flu virus in the United States.
While the United States government continues to monitor the spread of bird flu in the country, the Biden administration said it won’t order the stockpiling of a vaccine for humans. U.S. health officials stressed the chances of a human contracting the H5N1 variant of avian influenza remain very low.
The U.S. issued a federal order on Friday mandating that the national milk supply be tested for bird flu, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Reuters, as authorities seek to grapple with rapid spread of the virus among dairy herds.
A World Health Organization official on Thursday called for stronger surveillance in animals for evidence of infection with H5N1 bird flu in order to curb its spread.
Health officials have confirmed that the strain of bird flu that hospitalized a B.C. teenager in critical condition is related to the same virus causing outbreaks in the province’s poultry.
Farm workers who have been exposed to animals with bird flu should be tested for the virus even if they do not have symptoms, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.
The UK government said on Tuesday that cases of bird flu had been confirmed in commercial poultry at premises in Yorkshire, hours after it increased the risk level of the disease from medium to high.