United States: What may be the first two cases of human-to-human transmission of bird flu in the United States, a group of potential H5N1 cases in Missouri has increased to eight.
Any H5N1 infection in most of the cases has not yet been confirmed through antibody tests.
Following a hospitalization of a bird flu patient last month, State and federal health authorities first said that the patient could have exposed one house member and two hospital staffs.
As reported by HealthDay, but in fact Missouri has since identified four additional health care workers who, later developed mild respiratory symptoms, as reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a health alert issued on Friday.
‘A worker one of them fallen in the higher risk bracket which provided a blood sample for H5 antibody test,’ the agency said further. “Three of these workers are among 94 workers who were infected with the hospitalized case avian influenza A[H5] after implementing droplet precautions [low risk exposure]; blood samples for these who developed symptoms have been taken for H5 antibody at CDC.”
If H5N1 bird flu is diagnosed in any of these health care workers and associated with antibody testing shows that the virus may already be circulating among people. Globally, most infections have resulted from contact with infected birds.
Dr. James Lawler who co-directs the University of Nebraska’s Global Center for Health Security told the New York Times: “We should be very concerned at this point. “It’s not time to start hitting the panic button but that is something that most people should really be focusing on and probably should invest a lot of time into.”
Should instance of bird flu infection be established in this patient contacts, it would mean the virus is getting closer and closer to what would be a real pandemic virus, Lawler argued. “That is when Pandora’s box is open.”
There have been alteast 13 other confirmed cases of the human bird flu ad confirmed in this country since an outbreak in the dairy cattle first surfaced in the month of March. However, all of these cases were linked to infected dairy cows or poultry and meanwhile Missouri has not reported any infected herds and the hospitalized patient had no known contact with the cows and the birds.
The Missouri patient who had underlying medical conditions was first hospitalized in the month August and also tested positive for the bird fly virus. The person has since recovered the CDC said in a statement on the case.
In the beginning of this month CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah stated on a media call that none of the patient’s close contacts showed the signs or the symptoms of the illness and calling the case a possible “one-off.”
To try to recognize whether the bird flu is spreading between the humans and the CDC has almost drawn the blood samples from the Missouri patient and the household contact to test for the antibodies that could point to an H5N1 infection and still test the results could take the several weeks the agency noted.