As bird flu Georgia has become the latest state to detect the virus in a commercial poultry flock and on Friday halted all poultry sales to prevent further spread of the disease. Nationally, the price of eggs is on the rise—if you can even find them at your local grocery store.
Ongoing outbreaks in animals have also resulted in at least 67 human cases of bird flu, all but one causing mild illness. Earlier this month, a person in Louisiana died after being hospitalized with severe bird flu in December. This is the first recorded death in the country attributed to H5N1.
The United States has previously licensed three H5N1 vaccines for humans, but they are not commercially available. The government has purchased millions of doses for the national stockpile in case of need. But even as the outbreak spread, federal health officials under President Joe Biden were hesitant to send them in. Experts say the decision is risky, and for now, the risk of H5N1 is low. Developing a vaccine for farm workers and others at risk of infection would be a more targeted tactic, but even that may be premature. Now, with an impending change in federal health leadership and the start of Donald Trump’s second term, the decision rests with the new administration.
“Right now, from the point of view of severity and ease of transmission, it doesn’t seem necessary to develop a vaccine to protect humans,” said William Schaffner, MD, a physician and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. .
No person-to-person transmission of H5N1 has been detected so far, but health officials are monitoring the virus for any genetic changes that make it more likely to be transmitted between people. Most bird flu infections are related to exposure to animals. Of the 67 known human cases in the United States, 40 involved sick dairy cows and 23 involved poultry farms and culling operations. In the other four cases, the exact source is unknown.
In the United States, human cases have been mild, with many causing only conjunctivitis. In some cases, people have had mild respiratory symptoms. Except for the Louisiana patient, all those who tested positive for H5N1 recovered quickly and never required hospitalization. Although historically, H5N1 has been fatal in about 50 percent of cases. Since 2003, a total of 954 human H5N1 cases have been reported to the World Health Organization, about half of which have resulted in death. Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and China have reported the most human deaths from bird flu.
These numbers come with a few caveats. For example, many of these deaths have occurred in places where people live very close to sick poultry. “In that situation, the thinking is that they probably received a very high dose of the virus,” says Schaffner.
Additionally, the fatality rate—the proportion of infected people who die from the disease—takes into account only known cases, and some H5N1 cases undoubtedly go undetected in part because bird flu symptoms are similar to those of other viruses. is respiratory. In the United States, language barriers among farm workers, lack of testing, and reluctance of workers to report being sick are also factors. “We’re probably missing more cases than we detect, and we’re much more likely to detect a severe case,” says Shira Doron, chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Boston and a hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.
