California, the most populous state, declared an emergency over the H5N1 virus as it spread more widely in dairy herds and after it has infected dozens of farm workers this year.
Severe respiratory illness in the Louisiana patient shows increased health risks for people from the virus that previously caused eye redness, or conjunctivitis, in infected dairy workers.
CDC has confirmed 61 human cases nationally since April, mostly in workers on dairy farms where the virus infected cattle. Workers culling infected poultry also have tested positive.
The case is the first to be linked to backyard, non-commercial poultry, said Demetre Daskalakis, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, on a call with reporters.
“The mild cases that we’ve seen in the United States largely reflect that many of the individuals are getting infected by dairy cows and that’s very different than getting infected with infected birds,“ said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
CDC said partial viral genome data from the infected patient shows that the virus belongs to the D1.1 genotype, recently detected in wild birds and poultry in the United States and in recent human cases in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington state.
Bird flu has infected more than 860 dairy herds in 16 states since March and killed 123 million poultry since the outbreak began in 2022.
Four southern California dairies tested positive on Dec. 12, “necessitating a shift from regional containment to statewide monitoring and response,“ California Governor Gavin Newsom said in his emergency declaration. Earlier cases had been centered in the Central Valley in the middle of the state.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it has enrolled 13 states in a newly launched national bulk milk bird flu testing plan, representing nearly half of the nation’s milk supply.
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