Human risk of contracting bird flu is very low, says the CDC
Those most at risk of contracting bird flu are people in close contact with infected animals, such as dairy or poultry workers.
At the height of annual flu season, U.S. health officials on Thursday said clinicians should more quickly ensure people who are ill don’t have bird flu.
While the risk to the general public remains low, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they want to do a better job of tracking flu types, so they can more quickly catch any cases of bird flu.
“What we need is to shift to a system that tells us what’s happening in the moment,” Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at CDC, told reporters Thursday morning.
Both bird flu and most cases of seasonal flu now circulating are considered type A flu. Commonly available tests can distinguish between types A and B, but not whether someone has seasonal flu, which is unpleasant but usually relatively harmless, or bird flu, also known as H5N1, which is new to the immune system and potentially more dangerous.
Under the new system, people tested for flu in hospitals across the country, especially those in intensive care, would also have their flu type tested to ensure they don’t have bird flu. Most hospitals have equipment in-house to sub-type the flu, Shah said. For those that don’t, officials are working to provide assistance.
Officials are particularly concerned about people who contracted bird flu with no obvious source of infection. Currently, officials don’t know how three of the 67 identified cases in the U.S. became infected, because they don’t work on farms or have direct contact with animals known to have bird flu. One of the most recent confirmed cases was a child ill with fever and conjunctivitis in San Francisco.
The new CDC approach is meant to better identify serious infections, as flu hospitalizations mount and winter respiratory virus season nears its annual peak, Shah said.
So far, Shah said, national influenza surveillance has collected 83,000 specimens. Of those, just 3 have come back positive for H5 bird flu.
“It’s small, but nevertheless significant,” Shah said. “We want to know that number as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile, over 100,000 people have been hospitalized with the annual flu so far this season and at least 9.1 million have been infected, according to CDC data. CDC expects more than 200,000 people will be infected by the end of the season.
