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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Friday issued a health alert for bird flu after a Texas dairy cow worker tested positive for the virus earlier this week.
The worker’s infection marked the second recorded case among humans of avian influenza, or A(H5N1), in the U.S., according to experts, and comes amid a spike in recorded cases in dairy cattle and chickens.
Days after the largest U.S. producer of fresh eggs paused production and slaughtered nearly 2 million birds after detecting the virus in its flock, experts from Texas’s top public health agency and the University of Texas’s Health Science Center spoke with the Landing about the state of the outbreak (spoiler: no cause for alarm just yet, Houston).
Check out their responses to Houston’s most urgent bird flu questions:
What is bird flu?
H5N1, The current strain of avian influenza spreading among dairy cattle and poultry, is a common virus that spreads easily among other non-human animals.
“H5N1 has actually been detected in all kinds of random animals,” said Dr. Michael Chang, an infectious disease specialist at the UT Health Science Center in Houston. “A lot of migratory birds like ducks and geese carry it and don’t get as sick. But when a chicken gets it, it gets really sick.”
How does bird flu spread to humans?
The only two recorded human cases of H5N1 in the U.S. were detected among dairy and poultry workers in close contact with infected animals. The average Houstonian probably does not have to worry about catching bird flu, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Chris Van Deusen explained.
For the rest of us, the probability of transmission is very low, Van Deusen said. His advice? “Avoid dead birds, especially ducks or geese, or other migratory birds.”
“Luckily, there’s no mutation that seems to make [H5N1] more transmissible amongst humans,” Chang echoed.
“In both the samples that have come from cows and from the human cases, there has not been an adaptation or a mutation in the virus that would lead it to be more likely to spread among people,” he explained. “So during this outbreak specifically, it doesn’t appear that there’s a big risk for rapid human transmission.”
Can you get bird flu from eggs?
Technically, yes. But your chances are extremely low, especially if you don’t like runny yolks.
“The response to avian flu in general and the food chain of production, like infrastructure for chickens, is really rapid. So there’s a low probability that a chicken contaminated with the virus will get into the food supply chain,” Chang said.
Milk from dairy cows is still safe to drink, too. “The milk we have in the U.S. that you can buy in a store is all pasteurized and pasteurization will kill the flu virus,” Chang said.
What are symptoms of bird flu?
Texas DSHS said in an April 1 release that patients presenting with eye redness, fever, cough, sore throat, or other symptoms associated with the typical flu after a confirmed close contact with a potentially infected animal should be screened for the virus.
“The symptoms in people are not always consistent,” Chang warned. “So we don’t always know.”
Why we did this story
Recorded cases of bird flu in dairy cattle and chickens have spiked across the U.S. in recent weeks. One of the two human bird flu cases was detected in Texas.
The largest fresh egg producer in the U.S. paused production at one of its Texas facilities and slaughtered nearly 2 million chickens after detecting the virus in the flock.
Infectious disease experts say the virus is not showing signs of mutations that would lead to rapid spread from animals to humans, or from one human to another. But they’re still keeping a close eye on the outbreak among livestock.
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