United States: Stating that this poses a question mark for researchers, the U. S. health officials said on Thursday that they are still unaware about how the bird flu was contracted by a Missouri patient, and that the case may just as well be an isolated quirk.
As bird flu remains active in the killing fields of dairy cow herds and poultry flocks, the Missouri case has opened new issues of human transmission of bird flu. However, officials said on Thursday that there are no indications that other individuals are infected and the danger to the community is not high.
As reported by HealthDay, “At this time,” he said, “Point to this as a one-off situation,” said CDC’s Principal Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah to the newsmen during the media briefing as quoted by the Associated Press.
For the record, Missouri was recently identified last week as being affected but the health departments have remained very tight-lipped about the case citing patient confidentiality.
The person experienced chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and weakness; the person was hospitalized on August 22 for other clinical factors associated with the person’s pre-existing conditions, said Dr. Aditya Shah.
Flu diagnosis was negative but the result returned positive for influenza A follow-up test determined that the virus belong to a group of viruses associated with birds.
Since tests showed that the patient had a very low viral copy number overall and officials could not specify which one it was, further genetic sequences matched those of the virus in the U. S. dairy cows according to CDC officials.
“Finally, in a full sequence it may not be technically possible”, Shah said.
The patient had no history of exposure to dairy cows or any birds and animals involved in bird flu epidemic. The person also told Missouri health officials that they did not drink raw milk or other raw milk products, Shah also noted.
This is the 14 human illnesses due to H5 [ bird flu] reported in the United States during 2024 and the first case of transmission of H5 without avian contact,” the CDC said in a statement it issued when the Missouri case was first reported.
Also all the past US infections which were among the young people who worked around the cows and the poultry and so this latest case raises concerns about the disease transmission.
Also here the bird flu has been detected in almost in over 200 dairy herds in the 14 states but not in the Missouri which is according to the CDC and the bird flu been found in the commercial and the backyard flocks and in the wild birds.