A girl in Wyoming was hospitalized with H5N1 chook flu, based on well being officers who say she was doubtless contaminated by dealing with sickened birds in a yard flock.
Based on an announcement from Wyoming’s public well being division, the girl is “an older grownup” and has “different well being circumstances,” which can have made her extra prone to the illness. She is being handled in one other state.
This marks the primary human case of chook flu in Wyoming and the seventieth human case in the USA since 2024. Though the U.S. Heart for Illness Management and Prevention’s web site lists solely 68 human instances on its web site, it doesn’t but embody this case or one other introduced earlier this week in a poultry employee from Ohio.
She can also be the fourth individual in North America to have been hospitalized with the illness. One individual in Louisiana died from the an infection.
It isn’t clear whether or not she was contaminated with the D1.1 model of the H5N1 virus, which is now widespread in wild birds, poultry and cattle herds in Nevada and Arizona — or the B3.13 model, which is related to the overwhelming majority of dairy herds.
Based on the usDepartment of Agriculture, 968 dairy herds have been contaminated throughout 16 states — this doesn’t embody the herd in Arizona that was reported earlier this week.
“Whereas this can be a vital improvement as chook flu exercise is monitored in Wyoming and throughout the nation, it isn’t one thing we imagine requires a excessive degree of concern amongst most Wyoming residents,” mentioned Dr. Alexia Harrist, state well being officer and state epidemiologist with the Wyoming Division of Well being.
H5N1 has been reported in wild birds in Wyoming. There have additionally been reported infections within the state’s industrial poultry and dairy cattle.
Harrist and the CDC say there isn’t any proof of human-to-human transmission of the virus, and the danger for most of the people stays low.
She advisable that individuals don’t eat uncooked or undercooked eggs, meat or different animal merchandise, that they keep away from contact with wild birds, and that they don’t contact sick or dying wild or home birds. She additionally mentioned folks mustn’t drink uncooked milk or uncooked milk dairy merchandise.
