A MAN in Louisiana has been hospitalised with the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu, health officials have said.
This is the first “severe” case of bird flu reported in the US where the virus has spread rapidly through cows this year.
In nearby Canada, a healthy teenage boy remains in intensive care after contracting the same strain in October.
At least 61 human cases in the US have been recorded so far, mostly from people who worked with cows.
Most of these people only reported mild symptoms, including conjunctivitis and sore throat.
The new US case, like the one in Canada, is believed to have caught the virus directly from birds, not through infected cattle.
The man, who is said to be over the age of 65, likely picked up the bug from sick birds in his backyard, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a statement published yesterday.
No further details on his symptoms have been revealed, except that he is “severely ill” with the bug.
Backyard flocks can be infected by wild birds flying over via their infected dropping.
This is the first time a person has contracted bird flu from a backyard bird in the US, the authorities said.
However, the CDC has not yet changed its overall assessment that the risk to the public from bird flu is low.
“A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected,” they said.
“Avian influenza A(H5N1) virus infection has previously been associated with severe human illness in other countries during 2024 and prior years, including illness resulting in death.
“No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected.
” This case does not change CDC’s overall assessment of the immediate risk to the public’s health from H5N1 bird flu, which remains low.”
Symptoms can vary depending on the strain, but most infections lead to a flu-like illness with fever, body aches, cough, sore throat and runny nose.
Other symptoms can include conjunctivitis, which causes red, sore eyes that produce discharge.
Experts fear the bug, which has infected at least 904 people and killed 465 across the world since 2003, could mutate to spread from human to human, triggering another pandemic.
Recently, scientists discovered H5N1 is just one mutation away from developing the ability to transmit person-person.
Meanwhile, genetic analysis of the virus that infected the Canadian teenager revealed mutations that make it easier to infect humans.
In a bid to bolster the country’s defences, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has secured H5 jabs to be rolled out in the event of any such outbreak.
Last month, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed cases of H5 bird flu at a poultry farm in Yorkshire, England.
The department said all poultry would be humanely killed and a protection zone set up to cover 3km around the site.
However, it has not yet been detected in humans in the UK.
The British government recently announced that it had procured five million doses of an H5 vaccine, in case the virus does indeed start to spread between humans.
By Isabel Shaw, Health Reporter
The H5N1 bird flu is running rampant in wildlife around the world and is now spreading in cows.
In recent months, it infected people in Canada and the US leaving them severely unwell.
This increase in transmission has given the virus lots of opportunities to mutate – a process where a pathogen changes and can become more dangerous.
Scientists fear it’s only a matter of time before one of these mutations makes it better at spreading among mammals – and potentially humans.
Experts recently discovered H5N1 is already just one mutation away from developing the ability to transmit person-person.
Some experts believe the virus could already be spreading among some animal species.
So far, there is no evidence that H5N1 can spread between humans.
But in the hundreds of cases where humans have been infected through contact with animals over the past 20 years, the mortality rate is high.
From 2003 to 2024, 889 cases and 463 deaths caused by H5N1 have been reported worldwide from 23 countries, according to the World Health Organisation.
This puts the case fatality rate at 52 per cent.
Leading scientists have already warned an influenza is the pathogen most likely to trigger a new pandemic in the near future.
The prospect of a flu pandemic is alarming.
Although scientists have pointed out that vaccines against many strains, including H5N1, have already been developed, others are still in the pipeline.
