In the United States, the first death from bird flu reported in Louisiana: gunshots

The H5N1 avian flu virus has infected more than 65 people in the United States during the current outbreak. Callista Images/Getty Images .

. Callista Images/Getty Images

The United States has recorded the first death of a person infected with bird flu.

The patient was a southwest Louisiana resident who was hospitalized last month with the nation's first known serious case of bird flu.

On Monday, the Louisiana Department of Health said the person had died from the illness, but shared few other details due to patient confidentiality rules.

The patient was over 65 years old and had underlying medical conditions.

The patient contracted the disease after being exposed to “a combination of a non-commercial backyard flock and wild birds,” according to a press release. A “thorough public health investigation” found no other cases of H5N1 in any person or evidence of human-to-human spread.

More than 65 people have caught bird flu during the current outbreak, mainly as a result of close contact while working with infected dairy cattle or poultry.

Although these cases have largely led to mild illness, other strains of avian flu have historically proven quite deadly in humans. Of more than 950 cases reported to the World Health Organization, about 50% resulted in death.

“We have over 20 years of data showing that this is a pretty nasty virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “I am not counting on future infections being completely benign.”

In November, a 13-year-old girl in British Columbia, Canada, was hospitalized with bird flu. How she caught the virus is unclear. But her illness was so severe that she needed extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) to keep her alive.

This case highlights that it is “very difficult to predict who will become seriously ill after an infection,” Nuzzo said. “We should not ignore this latest death in Louisiana because the patient had underlying health conditions.”

Genetic sequencing from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that the H5N1 virus responsible for these two serious illnesses belongs to the D1.1 genotype. Although it is a different genetic lineage from the virus infecting dairy cattle, it is still part of the same strain circulating globally in wild birds and U.S. dairy herds, technically known as of clade 2.3.4.4b.

The virus appears to have acquired worrying mutations during the Louisiana patient's illness.

The same thing may have happened in Canada. In both cases, however, there is no indication that other people were infected.

In a statement on the Louisiana death, the CDC reiterated that the risk to the general public is still considered low, saying there are no “virological changes of concern actively spreading in wild birds, poultry or cows that would increase the risk to human health.” “

The outbreak among dairy cattle recently led California to declare a state of emergency and has kept public health officials on edge because of the increased risk of the virus spreading to humans.

Their advice is to avoid contact with wild birds, poultry and rodents and to wash your hands after touching droppings or objects that may be contaminated with saliva or mucus, such as bird feeders.

Pets can also catch the virus, particularly through consuming raw meat or raw milk, which can also harbor high loads of the virus.

Edited by Jane Greenhalgh

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