“We are not aware of reports that any of this individual’s close contacts have developed any symptoms,” Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told STAT News. “The fact that there are not other samples cooking right now is reassuring… [but] We are still out there looking, to be very clear. Our antennae are up.”
Prof Sam Scarpino, a professor of the Practice in Health Sciences and Computer Science at Northeastern University, added that the list of symptoms is reassuring. Conjunctivitis is a common symptom of bird flu in people, because our eyes actually contain “bird-flu-friendly” receptor cells.
“Reports from Texas suggest the individual had direct contact [with] infected cows and has minimal symptoms aside from eye inflammation. This is great for the patient, ie no pneumonia, and suggests the virus isn’t readily able to move from person-to-person,” he said on X.
Prof Scarpino added that he would be more concerned if this case had come via a pig, which are known to be “evolutionary laboratories” for flu, because they contain both avian and human cell receptor types in their airways and lungs – raising the prospect for viruses to merge into something new.
Avian flu is known to occasionally jump to people, but usually via birds directly. Three cases have been reported in Cambodia so far this year, and a 21-year-old student died last week in Vietnam. In total, almost 900 people have caught the virus in 23 countries since it was first detected in 1997, with just over half of these cases fatal.
Although outbreaks in flocks of poultry result in culling on a huge scale in an attempt to minimise the spread, it looks like this will not take place for cattle. The CDC has so far told the farmers with implicated herds to destroy the milk produced by infected cattle, though it is thought that the pasteurisation process could also kill the virus.
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