The bird flu has been spreading rapidly among cows on a handful of dairy farms in California, Idaho and Utah. The virus, also known as H5N1, typically infects wild birds, but it spilled over to commercial poultry in 2022 before sickening cattle in March of 2024 . Since then, a handful of people who were exposed to sick animals contracted the avian virus.
The virus appears to be contained to farms, but there’s always a chance it could develop mutations that let it spread between humans. And if that happens, we may have another pandemic on our hands . “We’ve not seen human-to-human transmission to date and that’s a saving grace,” Dr.
Andrew Bowman , a veterinary epidemiologist at The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine, told HuffPost. Here’s what we know about the bird flu — and what it would take for it to start spreading in humans. What’s going on with the bird flu right now? In January 2022, health officials detected a H5N1 outbreak in wild birds — the first of its kind since 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control .
One month later, H5N1 hit a commercial poultry facility, infecting multiple turkeys. Since then, H5N1 has been detected in more animals , including cattle, goats, alpacas, and, most recently, a pig. The increase in avian influenza activity is due to a major outbreak occurring in wild birds that has been ongoing and has spilled into poultry farms and now dairy cattle,” Dr.
Amesh Adalja , an infectious disease expert.
