United States: At the moment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is spreading health alerts regarding avian flu infection in a person. The affected person here is a cattle farmer in one of the large scale commercial dairy farms in Texas.
According to the risk alert launched on Friday, the estimated threat from the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Virus has not really heightened, so the current risk remains low.
Who is at great risk of infection?
People closely working or staying among sickened birds, cattle or other infected animals are the ones at higher risk for the disease spread and should apply more precautions, the CDC said.
The recent positive test was from a dairy farm worker stationed on a commercial dairy farm in Texas. The person was diagnosed with conjunctivitis (pink eye) in the last week of March and was just later infected with avian flu, which had been circulating in the cow dairy section and wild bird populations in the area, as al.com reported.
CDC said in its research that there has been no previous record of the virus from cows being passed on to people and that human-to-human transmission has not been identified either.
The patient provided the medical practitioners with a detailed description of the symptoms, some of which were not observed, but there was no necessity for admission into the hospital since they only opted for isolation and treatment.
It is the second person in the US to become infected with bird flu, the other patient being a person from Colorado who was exposed to infected poultry in 2022.
During these seasons, no health or deaths occurred in humans due to this infection.
Spreading bird flu in the US
Currently, bird flu is circulating among wild birds as well as poultry and backyard flock outbreaks in the US. It was discovered that the cows were infected in Texas, Kansas, Michigan, and New Mexico, and there was very likely a positive diagnosis in Idaho State, as al.com reported.
The movement of cattle infected in one state, has likely been a major cause of the spread of disease to other states said the CDC.
Presently, the CDC is working along with the US Department of Agriculture, Drug Administration, and state health departments to vigil those who came into infected animals.