Public concern over bird flu ratcheted up this week as the H5N1 virus continued its sweep through the nation’s dairy and poultry farms and the first American was hospitalized with a severe infection.
Federal officials reported Wednesday that an older person in Louisiana was “severely” ill after being infected by poultry from a backyard flock. The person, who was not identified by name, is one of 61 people identified infected in the U.S. so far this year.
In other countries, bird flu has killed about half of those known to be infected , but here in the United States there have been no deaths and only mild illnesses until this week.
The Louisiana patient was the first American confirmed to be sickened by a backyard flock. The strain of H5N1 bird flu that infected that patient is different from the one that has infected cattle, poultry and farmworkers for most of this year, CDC said, though it is similar to one found in wild birds and in a person infected in Washington State and a teen in British Columbia.