like bird flu As the virus rages among birds and dairy cattle across the United States, Georgia became the latest state to detect the virus in a commercial poultry flock and suspended all poultry sales on Friday. reduce further spread of disease. Even if you can find eggs at your local grocery store, egg prices are skyrocketing across the country.
Continuing outbreaks in animals also indicate that At least 67 people infected with bird fluall but one cause mild illness. Earlier this month, a person in Louisiana died after being hospitalized with severe bird flu in December. This is the first recorded death in Japan due to H5N1.
The United States has so far approved three H5N1 vaccines for humans, but none of them are commercially available. The government has purchased millions of doses of the vaccine for the national stockpile as needed. But even as infections spread, federal health officials under President Joe Biden have been hesitant to deploy medical personnel. Experts say the decision was based on risk and that the risk of H5N1 infection remains low at this time. Distributing vaccines to farmworkers and other high-risk populations would be a more targeted strategy, but even that step may be premature. With President Donald Trump beginning his second term and a change in federal health leadership imminent, the decision is up to the new administration.
“Right now, in terms of severity and ease of transmission, there doesn’t seem to be an urgent need for widespread vaccination to protect people,” said William Schaffner, a physician and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. says. .
So far, no human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has been confirmed, but health officials are monitoring the virus for genetic mutations that make it more likely to spread between people. Most avian influenza infections are associated with exposure to animals. Of the 67 known human cases in the United States, 40 are associated with sick dairy cows and 23 are associated with poultry farms and culling operations. In the other four cases, the exact source is unknown.
In the United States, human cases are mild, often causing only conjunctivitis. In some cases, people may develop mild respiratory symptoms. With the exception of the Louisiana patient, all those who tested positive for H5N1 recovered quickly and did not require hospitalization. However, historically, H5N1 has been fatal in about 50% of cases. Since 2003, a total of 954 human H5N1 infections have occurred. Reported to the World Health Organization And about half of them died. Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China have reported the highest number of human deaths from avian influenza.
There are a few caveats to these numbers. First, many of these deaths occurred in places where people lived in close proximity to sick poultry. “In that situation, we think it’s likely that they were infected with a very large amount of the virus,” Schaffner said.
Furthermore, the case fatality rate (the proportion of infected people who die from the disease) only takes into account known cases, and because the symptoms of bird flu are similar to other respiratory viruses, some cases of H5N1 are It is certain that it will not be detected. In the United States, language barriers among farmworkers, a lack of testing and workers’ reluctance to report being sick are also contributing factors. “We’re probably missing more cases than we are detecting, and we’re much more likely to detect severe cases,” said Dr. McConlogue, chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Boston. Yes, says Shira Doron, a hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.
