NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials said Thursday that there’s no evidence bird flu is spreading between people after investigating a mysterious infection in Missouri. The illness reported last month was different from the 30 other bird flu infections in people in the U.S.
so far this year. Those cases have been in farmworkers who had contact with infected dairy cows or chickens. There was no known contact with an infected animal in the Missouri case, but health officials said Thursday that’s the only remaining explanation.
“There is no evidence of person-to-person transmission,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The H5N1 bird flu in the U.
S. among wild birds, poultry, cows and a number of other animals. Its growing presence increases the chances that people will be exposed, and potentially catch it, officials say.
The most recent of the 31 confirmed human cases are two workers at a commercial egg farm in Franklin County, in southeast Washington state. The rest: 15 in California, 10 in Colorado, two in Michigan, one in Texas and the unusual one in Missouri. Symptoms have been mostly mild, including eye redness.
Few details have been released about the Missouri case. The person had preexisting health problems and was hospitalized in late August. The patient was given a test for flu that was positive for influenza A, a broad virus category.
Further testing found partial genetic sequences similar to bird flu viruses from U.S. d.
