Aged over 65 and suffering from other pathologies, he is in “critical condition” and “suffers from a severe respiratory illness”, Louisiana health authorities detailed to AFP. The other infected people had mild symptoms.
A “low” risk to public health
For several months, the United States has been facing an epizootic – the equivalent of an epidemic in animals – of avian flu. Several elements suggest that “avian flu is knocking on our door and could trigger a new pandemic,” Meg Schaeffer, epidemiologist at the American SAS institute, recently told AFP.
However, American health authorities assured Wednesday that their assessment of the risk presented by avian flu for public health was not changing and remained “low”. “No spread of avian influenza (subtype) H5 from person to person has been detected,” they said. Other serious cases of avian flu in humans have already been detected in other countries, they recall. This was particularly the case of a teenager hospitalized in November in the Canadian province of British Columbia (west).
The Louisiana patient had contact with sick and dead birds in a barnyard, the CDC said. Genomic sequencing showed that the H5N1 virus that infected him was the same type that infected people in the US state of Washington and neighboring Canada, as well as wild birds and poultry in the United States. This version of H5N1 is different from that detected in cattle as well as in mild human cases and some other poultry.
How will this epidemic be handled by the Trump administration?
The avian flu virus is circulating in the United States in poultry farms and has been spreading in unprecedented ways since March in cow herds. In late October, a pig on an Oregon farm that also housed poultry and livestock tested positive for H5N1, although it did not show signs of illness. This growing number of mammals infected with the disease worries experts who fear that high circulation could facilitate a mutation of the virus which would allow it to pass from one human to another.
The recent detection of avian flu in people with no known contact with an infected animal reinforces concerns in this regard. At least three people have been infected in recent months with the H5N1 virus in the United States without knowing the origin of their contamination: a child in California, an adult in Missouri and probably another individual in Delaware, the CDC said on Wednesday.
While traces of the virus have been detected in raw or unpasteurized milk, the US Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday a new plan aimed at strengthening surveillance in this area.
There is uncertainty over how President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will approach the outbreak. The Minister of Health chosen by Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy Jr, is notably a notorious supporter of raw milk.
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