The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that a man in Texas has caught a “highly pathogenic” bird flu that has spread to milking cows in five states.
A statement from the CDC on Monday said that the overall risk to public health from the strain is being played down by the government.
According to the CDC, the risk of getting sick from H5N1 bird flu is still low for most people in the U.S., even with this infection.
State health officials said the Texan who got sick, who hasn’t been named, had mild symptoms. The authorities did not say how the person got in touch with the sick animals.
The CDC said that people who are close to or have long-term, unsupervised contact with infected birds or other animals (including livestock) or who are in places that have been contaminated by infected birds or other animals are more likely to get sick.
A study from the CDC found that from 2013 to 2022, more animals and people around the world got bird flu.
Recently, dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, Idaho, New Mexico, and Michigan got bird flu. This is the first time the virus has been found in cattle in the U.S., according to the CDC.
The ability of bird flu viruses to spread to livestock would be a big change from how they usually spread, which is through direct touch with infected birds. According to the CDC, bird flu viruses have rarely been able to successfully spread to mammals.
Federal officials said that the first infection in the cattle may have come from dead wild birds that were found on the land. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that most of the cattle have better and very few have died.
The person from Texas became the second person in the U.S. to get infected since 2022. A prisoner in Colorado who was on a work program at a chicken farm got the Type A H5N1 virus after killing infected birds. This was the first time the virus was found in a person. The man didn’t get very sick and got better.
Experts are worried about a bird flu that changes and can spread in more ways, including, and this is the worst case, from person to person.
They told health care workers in Texas “to be vigilant for people with signs and symptoms of avian influenza,” especially those who work with animals.
