A second person in Missouri who wasn't exposed to either poultry or dairy cows has been infected with bird flu, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
This person shared a home with a patient who was first hospitalized with bird flu in August, but antibody tests have since shown that symptomatic health care workers who cared for the patient were not infected with the H5N1 virus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its latest bird flu update .
As for the household contact of the original hospital patient, the investigation has shown that the fact "that these two individuals had identical symptom onset dates support a single common exposure to bird flu rather than person-to-person spread within the household," the CDC noted. "To date, human-to-human spread of H5 bird flu has not been identified in the United States," the agency added. "CDC believes the immediate risk to the general public from H5N1 bird flu remains low, but people with exposure to infected animals are at higher risk of infection.
" Indeed, the number of human cases of bird flu connected to livestock is rising rapidly in the United States. California confirmed 15 human cases of bird flu this week, while Washington state has reported two poultry workers who are infected and five others presumed to be positive. Except for the two people in Missouri, all infections so far have been linked to exposure to infected poultry or cattle.
Investigators do not know how the Missouri patient and the h.