A surprising detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza in a Texas man has health authorities wondering whether he got it from a mammalian or avian source.
With the second human bird flu case in the United States in the past two years and the pandemic still fresh in the public’s memory, concern is rising over the potential for avian influenza to be a public health problem in America.
Bird flu, a longtime pest for the world’s poultry industry, is now crossing over to other animals, including livestock and humans. In March and April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported bird flu detections in dairy herds in Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, and Texas. That followed news of a goat in Minnesota contracting the disease in March.
On April 1, a man in Texas came down with a case of bird flu that he possibly got from a cow. If so, it would be the first transition of the disease from a mammal to a human detected by public health authorities in the United States
For now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the risk to Americans is negligible and isolated almost exclusively to people who work with live birds or animals.
“This infection does not change the H5N1 bird flu human health risk assessment for the U.S. general public, which CDC considers to be low,” Jason McDonald, a spokesman for the CDC, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“However, people with close or prolonged, unprotected exposures to infected birds or other animals (including livestock), or to environments contaminated by infected birds or other animals, are at greater risk of infection.”
Zoonotic Risks
Bird flu, or avian influenza, constantly raises difficult questions about zoonotic—animal to human—disease transmission.
The disease, classified into the categories of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and low pathogenicity avian influenza (LPAI), has caused sporadic issues with poultry farming for decades.
However, veterinarians recognized a marked increase in the spread of bird flu and its effects in the past 30 years.
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