First Bird Flu Death Reported in US

UPDATE Jan 6, 2025 5:08 PM CST

A patient hospitalized in Louisiana last month with severe illness caused by bird flu has become the first person in the US to die from H5N1. The Louisiana Department of Health reported the death Monday, saying the person "was over the age of 65 and was reported to have underlying medical conditions." Officials said the patient, who had the nation's first case of severe illness caused by bird flu, had been in contact with sick birds in a backyard flock, the Washington Post reports. The department said it had "identified no additional H5N1 cases nor evidence of person-to-person transmission." It said that due to "patient confidentiality and respect for the family, this will be the final update about the patient."

Dec 18, 2024 7:20 PM CST

A patient hospitalized in Louisiana is battling the nation's first severe illness caused by bird flu, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, after coming into contact with sick and dead birds on the person's property. That makes the case the nation's first of H5N1 bird flu tied to exposure to a backyard flock, the Washington Post reports. Louisiana health officials said the patient has underlying medical conditions and is over age 65. One health official told ABC News that the person is in critical condition with severe respiratory illness. The first 60 cases of bird flu illnesses in the US have been mild, a CDC official said, and all of those patients recovered.

In California, state officials declared an emergency Wednesday in the outbreak among dairy cattle. The virus has been found by the state agriculture department in 645 dairies, per the New York Times; about half of those were confirmed in the past month. Gov. Gavin Newsom called the declaration "a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak." Outside experts approved of the move as a proactive attempt to fight the outbreak. More than half of the confirmed human cases have been in California.

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The risk to the general population remains low, experts say, and there still have been no recorded cases of the virus jumping from person to person. But they warn that the longer the virus is around, the more likely it is that mutations could change that. "All these infections in so many species around us is paving a bigger and bigger runway for the virus to potentially evolve to infect humans better and transmit between humans," said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. (More bird flu stories.)