The first child to contract bird flu has been reported in California
The CDC has confirmed that a child has tested positive for bird flu, marking the 55th human case in the U.S.
Credit: Moving Animals
A child in California has tested positive for bird flu, health officials announced Friday, marking the first known case of the virus in a U.S. minor.
The child, who lives in Alameda County, had mild upper respiratory symptoms and was treated with antiviral medications, according to the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It is unclear where the infection originated, as the child had no known contact with an infected animal. Public health experts are investigating possible exposure to wild birds.
Other members of the child’s household have reported having similar symptoms, but tested negative for bird flu, according to the CDC.
“It’s natural for people to be concerned, and we want to reinforce for parents, caregivers and families that based on the information and data we have, we don’t think the child was infectious – and no human-to-human spread of bird flu has been documented in any country for more than 15 years,” said Dr Tomás Aragón, the state’s public health director.
Since 2021, the H5N1 strain has killed over 280 million birds and thousands of mammals across every continent except Oceania, affecting species from Antarctic elephant seals to zoo animals in Asia, in what the World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist Jeremy Farrar has described as an "animal pandemic."
In March of this year, H5N1 was detected in US dairy cows for the first time. Since then, it has spread to 616 confirmed herds across 15 states, with California, the outbreak's epicenter, accounting for 402 cases. The virus was detected in a pig for the first time last month.
The CDC confirmed the first U.S. human case of H5N1 in April, linked to exposure to infected cows. This latest case brings the total reported human infections in the U.S. to 55, with 29 located in California, the CDC said.
Although CDC state that the risk to the general public is currently 'low,' public health experts warn that each instance of the virus spreading increases the likelihood of it adapting to infect humans more easily.
On Sunday, days after the child tested positive for bird flu, the California Department of Public Health said the virus was detected in whole raw milk sold in the state. Officials announced that a sample of raw milk from Fresno-based Raw Farm from a store on November 21 tested positive for the virus. The company has issued a voluntary recall, and retailers have been notified to pull the product from their refrigerator racks, the department added.
Experts have urged public health officials to increase testing to better monitor the outbreak and to understand how the virus is evolving.
“We are not doing enough to make sure that we are protecting people from getting infected and certainly making sure that people who are infected get access to medicines that could potentially keep them from getting severely ill,” Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center and a professor of epidemiology at Brown University school of public health, told The Guardian earlier this month.
A Canadian teenager is currently hospitalized in critical condition with bird flu, according to health officials in Canada. It also is not clear how the teen became infected, as the patient had no known exposure to wild birds or farmed animals.
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