According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a worker in Colorado is the first person in America to test positive for avian influenza. He was helping cull or depopulate poultry that was thought to have H5N1, otherwise known as bird flu.
The worker shared that he only experienced fatigue for a few days, and his since recovered from the disease. He is being isolated and treated with the influenza antiviral drug, oseltamivir, which works to stop the spread of the flu virus within the body.
Since finding out, the CDC has shared that the health risk to the rest of the public is quite low, whereas the federal health agency has tracked over 2,500 people that have had exposures to H5N1 virus-infected birds, but this is still the only case in the United States that has occurred since.
However, influenza among poultry and wild birds has been on the rise lately, spreading quickly throughout the United States and across the globe. Back in January, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the United Kingdom confirmed the only other known human case of this type of bird flu as China reported its first human infection of another strain of bird flu, H3N8 back in April. According to a report in Reuters, the variant was found in a four-year old boy who had been in contact with crows and chickens that they raised in his home. He experienced a fever and other types of symptoms.
The U.S. outbreak has seen a loss of 35.5 million birds, which the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) has called the worse since 2015. The virus managed to infect both commercial and backyard birds in at least 29 states, and wild birds in 34 states.
In the last week of April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was notified of new flu breakouts in another six states. CIDRAP explained that the infection struck a rather large farm that housed 2.1 million poultry in Nebraska, as well as another 18,000 hens at a commercial farm in Pennsylvania.
Infectious disease specialist and professor of preventive medicine and health policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, William Schaffner, MD, said,
“The way to contain this flu is unfortunate. What you do is actually kill a lot of poultry in order to prevent areas from becoming hot spots for bird flu.”
The Risk to Humans Remains Very Low
According to Dr. Schaffner, thankfully these bird viruses don’t seem to attach to the cells in the upper airways, noses, and throats efficiently. And because they also don’t readily spread from bird to human, the viruses also don’t easily transmit from one person to the next either. Moreover, he added that consumers also don’t need to worry about getting these bird flus from eating or touching store-bought chicken and eggs.
Regardless, transmission is still possible, with the CDC sharing the figures that from 1997, over 880 people around the world have contracted HPAI, while around half of them died from the disease. Patients that contract this disease tend to suffer from mild upper respiratory tract symptoms, as well as lower respiratory tract disease, to severe pneumonia with respiratory failure, encephalitis – which is the inflammation of the brain, as well as multiple organ failure in worse cases.
Notably, most of the individuals that have gotten avian flu either live or work with poultry. The CDC explains, “Some people may have job-related or recreational exposures to birds that put them at higher risk of infection.”
Although public health officials aren’t overly concerned about the impact of the latest avian flu outbreak on humans, they are still on alert for possible mutations that could end up being more harmful to people. Back in 2009, during the H1N1 pandemic or swine flu outbreak that originated in pigs, scientists later found out that the flu was a recombinant form of flu strains from birds and humans. It was the different types of flu viruses that were mixed within pigs that caused the swapping of genes and gave rise to the variant that could infect human cells as well as reproduce.
Schaffner also said, “In this case, bird flu and human flu strains got together and exchanged genetic elements. The pig acted as a kind of test tube and produced a new flu that could spread to humans. This happens rarely, but the world’s influenza laboratory communities are constantly on the alert for that possibility.”
Health officials say that as a general precaution, people are told to avoid direct contact with wild birds and to only observe them from a distance. It’s important to remember that wild birds may be infected with bird flu viruses despite looking healthy and well.
Moreover, authorities in a variety of states – including the Illinois Department of Natural Resources – have issued warnings to the public to stop using bird feeders and bird baths until the spread of the avian influenza diminishes. People should also avoid poultry that either looks ill or has died, while also avoiding any contact with surfaces that look to be contaminated with feces from domestic or wild birds.
The CDC also says that since bird flu viruses are continuously changing, it will continue to monitor these viruses in order to observe any genetic or epidemiologic changes that suggest how they might end up spreading faster to and between individuals.
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