Bird flu: transmission to humans is a concern – 04/05/2024 – Balance and Health

Bird flu, officially called highly pathogenic avian influenza, has increasingly spread to mammals, raising concerns about transmission to humans. The most affected species is foxes and the United States is the country that reports the highest number of infected mammals.

Cases of the disease in mammals have been detected mainly in Europe and the Americas. The virus has also infected hundreds of species of wild and captive birds.

The U.S. government in late March reported cases of the disease in dairy cows in Texas and said one person who had contact with the cows was infected.

The contagion of a highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza (IAAP) by cows would have occurred through wild birds, several of which were found dead on the outskirts of a Texas farm, they reported at the time.

This is the second human case of bird flu (H5N1) in the United States and the first linked to exposure to livestock. There was a previous case in 2022 in Colorado of a person who had direct exposure to farmed poultry.

Avian influenza (H5N1) “is a type of influenza virus that usually infects wild birds and can be transmitted to domestic birds and other animals. It occasionally infects people, and transmission from one person to another is extremely rare”, according to the Texan entity.

In October last year, bird flu was detected for the first time off the coast of Antarctica. The planet is experiencing the worst bird flu epidemic in history, and many experts feared that, sooner or later, it would reach the Antarctic continent.

In Antarctica, the virus threatens some varieties of penguins that do not live elsewhere and therefore have never developed immunity against this pathogen. Researchers discovered around 35 dead penguins on the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic on January 19. Samples taken from two of the dead penguins tested positive for the avian virus.