United States: As H5N1 bird flu spreads among California dairy herds and southward-migrating birds, health officials announced six more human cases of infection Friday: Five are in California and one in Oregon- marking the state’s first.
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A seventh probable California case has been identified and is awaiting confirmation from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, all the reported cases are described as mild, and each case appears to have resulted from contact with infected livestock or poultry.
In California, for instance, the infections were among workers in the dairy industry. In Oregon, the patient was a poultry worker.
Rising cases in states
California’s state epidemiologist Erica Pan said that when five cases were announced on Friday, this may have sounded like it exploded or accelerated, medicalxpress.com reported.
The CDC had confirmed three cases on Wednesday after California’s reporting deadline. The other two were declared on Thursday – a day California doesn’t release data on the cases.
There was also a holiday on Monday, which contributed to delaying the reporting.
According to him, “I would still call these sporadic animal or human infections, and there’s still no evidence of any human to human.”
“These are all workers who are at risk of exposure based on their their work exposures,” he added.
In the Oregon case, the disease was contracted from a reported outbreak of infected commercial poultry operations in Clackamas County.
The agency noted that the person has been treated with an antiviral medication called Oseltamivir. The health agency also advised the use of the antiviral medication to other members of the family or people who stayed with the patient, medicalxpress.com reported.
Since March this year, the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that fifty-two people have contracted H5N1. Thirty samples were obtained from dairy cattle and 21 from poultry.
For one more case in Missouri, the source of infection is still unknown.