Severe bird flu has been detected in a person in Louisiana, the outbreak’s first human case in the Deep South, federal officials said Wednesday. It has not yet been detected among humans in Georgia.
The Louisiana patient has been hospitalized and has the first severe case of bird flu since the ongoing outbreak began in the U.S. earlier this year, national health officials said Wednesday.
The patient had been in contact with sick and dead birds in backyard flocks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Agency officials didn’t immediately detail the person’s symptoms.
Previous illnesses in the U.S. had been mild with symptoms of conjunctivitis. But in other countries, the bird flu virus, also known as H5N1, has been associated with severe illnesses leading to death in about 50% of cases. The vast majority of U.S. cases in humans have been among farmworkers exposed to sick poultry or dairy cows.
So far this year, there have been 61 human bird flu infections reported in nine states, more than half of them in California.
Also on Wednesday, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to improve the state’s response to bird flu after the virus was found in cows in Southern California. As cases among farm cows have spread through the state, Newsom said, “This proclamation is a targeted action to ensure government agencies have the resources and flexibility they need to respond quickly to this outbreak.” California has already established the largest testing and monitoring system in the nation to respond to the outbreak.
CDC officials confirmed the Louisiana case on Friday, and published it on Monday, announcing on Wednesday that it was the first severe case.
Health officials say bird flu is still mainly an animal health issue, and the risk to the general public remains low. There’s been no documented spread of the virus from person to person.
There have been 120 cases of H5N1 confirmed in wild birds in Georgia since the current outbreak began in 2022, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
The virus has also been detected in three backyard flocks in the state. The most recent incident came days before Thanksgiving in 2023, when the virus tore through a commercial duck farm in Sumter County, southeast of Columbus. Georgia agriculture officials responded to the case and ultimately culled more than 30,000 birds to contain the spread.
Last week, the U.S. government ordered testing of the nation’s milk supply for bird flu to better monitor the spread of the virus in dairy cows. There have been no cases reported in dairy cattle in Georgia, but the state has not done widespread testing yet.
Georgia cows are being tested now only if they are being moved over state lines. As of early December, the state had tested about 850 cows that were scheduled to be transported across state lines.
In a Wednesday news conference, officials said testing of the nation’s commercial milk supply began Dec. 16 in 13 states, but Georgia is not yet among them. States participating as of Wednesday were California, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington.
An official participating in the joint HHS and USDA news conference on Wednesday said they are in the process of bringing Georgia into the milk supply testing program. He said the federal government is working to help the state obtain staffing and financial resources needed to do the extra testing. No timeline has been provided for Georgia’s milk testing program to begin, but federal officials have said it is a goal for all 48 contiguous states to participate.
The USDA also announced Wednesday that it now has seven trials underway for potential new vaccines to protect dairy cows against the bird flu virus.
In the meantime, the University of Georgia is among the research institutions helping the FDA to research whether it would be effective to increase time and temperature of pasteurization in trying to eliminate the virus in dairy milk.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
