Louisiana health officials announced the first known U.S. human bird flu death on Monday, January 6, 2025 — five years after Covid-19 reached America.
They didn’t identify the victim, only saying it was a person over age 65, who had been hospitalized “with severe respiratory symptoms.”
They added the victim “had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock” (see story here).
This isn’t by any means an isolated case of a human getting sick with avian flu. But Today, the online “print” version of NBC’s “Today Show,” reported that as of December 6, 2024, there had been no person-to-person transmission of the virus. People have been getting it from exposure to backyard chickens and other animals (see story here).
For that reason, public health officials still consider the risk of a human pandemic “low.” But a veterinary expert has warned, “The longer this virus circulates unchecked, the higher the likelihood it will acquire the mutations needed to cause a pandemic.”
Bird flu jumping to humans is worrisome because of its high mortality rate, although so far most cases from the current strain have been mild (see story here). The concern is it may mutate into a human pathogen that can spread through people-to-people contact, especially if it mixes with seasonal flus.
For now, virologists don’t know enough about H5N1, as the strain found in humans is known, “to confidently assess how likely it is to make that jump.” While to date human outbreaks have been small, because transmission required contact with infect poultry or birds, Wikipedia says (here) that, for various reasons, H5N1 “is regarded as the world’s largest pandemic threat.”
That’s probably why, along with soaring egg prices, the current outbreak among chicken flocks and cows is getting the extensive press coverage it is.