The H5N1 bird flu situation in the US appears more fraught than ever this week, as the virus continues to spread rapidly among dairy cattle and birds, while sporadically jumping to humans.
On Monday, officials in Louisiana announced that the person who developed the nation's first serious H5N1 infection had died from the infection, marking the nation's first H5N1 death. Meanwhile, with no signs of slowing down from H5N1, seasonal flu is skyrocketing, raising fears that the different flu viruses could mix, exchange genetic elements and generate an even more dangerous strain of the virus.
But despite the seemingly feverish viral activity and fear, a World Health Organization representative noted today that the risk to the general population remains low — as long as one critical factor is missing: person-to-person spread.
“We are obviously concerned, but we are looking at the risk to the general population and, as I said, it still remains low,” WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris told reporters at a press conference in Geneva on Tuesday in response to questions about the USA dead. When updating risk assessments, you need to look at how the virus behaved in that patient and whether it passed from one person to another, which it didn't, Harris explained. “At this time we are not seeing any behavior that changes our risk assessment,” she added.
In a statement on the death late Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasized that no human-to-human transmission has been identified in the US. To date, there have been 66 documented cases of H5N1 infection in humans since early 2024. Of those, 40 were linked to exposure to infected dairy cows, 23 were linked to infected poultry, two had no clear source, and one case – the fatal case in Louisiana – was linked to exposure to infected backyards and wild birds.
