Texas – The patient, who experienced eye inflammation as their only symptom, was tested for flu late last week, with confirmatory testing performed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the weekend.
The patient is being treated with the antiviral drug oseltamivir. The case does not change the risk for the general public, which remains low.
The person had direct exposure to dairy cattle presumed to be infected with avian influenza, Texas officials said Monday.
Thecase has alarmeddisease trackers monitoring for the worst-case scenario: human-to-human transmission of the pathogen, which has happened infrequently worldwide and typically among family members engaged in work with animals.
And it raises questions about whether this pathogen is now more easily transmitted among mammals.
But federal officials said the infection does not change the health risk assessment for bird flu among the U.S. general public, a risk that the CDC considers to be low.
However, people with close or prolonged, unprotected exposures to infected birds or other animals (including livestock), or to environments contaminated by infected birds or other animals, are at greater risk of infection.
In 2022, a person in Colorado tested positive for the same strain of avian flu.
The person had direct exposure to poultry and was involved in culling poultry that had presumptive H5N1 bird flu.
The person reported fatigue for a few days as their only symptom and recovered, according to the CDC.
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