The CDC posted a bird flu update to the health agency’s website on Wednesday, the first since President Donald Trump took office. The report provides a snapshot of recent human cases of H5N1, including two people who were hospitalized after being infected by different means, bringing the national total to 70 cases and one death.
The new update, dated Feb. 26, includes recently confirmed cases in Nevada, Ohio, and Wyoming. The Nevada case is the most mild of the recently confirmed cases and involved a dairy worker whose symptoms included conjunctivitis (eye redness and irritation). That worker was infected by the dairy cows they worked with and experienced only mild symptoms before recovering, according to the CDC.
The two more serious cases involve being infected by birds, though under very different conditions. The case in Ohio involves a commercial poultry farm worker who was engaging in the systematic slaughter of birds on a farm with infected poultry. The poultry farm worker experienced respiratory symptoms and what the health agency calls “severe illness” and was hospitalized. That worker is now at home and recovering, according to the CDC.
The case in Wyoming also involves someone infected by birds, but the poultry in this instance was the backyard variety. That person was infected by dead poultry on their property known to have died of bird flu. The Wyoming patient initially tested negative for influenza viruses when upper respiratory specimens were tested but another test was done after that person was hospitalized and a lower respiratory specimen collected several days after the first test were positive for H5N1.
The case in Wyoming is someone who had “underlying health conditions that can make people more vulnerable to severe influenza illness,” according to the CDC, though it’s not entirely clear what that means. That kind of language was often used during the covid-19 pandemic to rationalize the over 1.2 million deaths experienced in the U.S. since 2020 as somehow acceptable.
The USDA reports over 19 million birds are on the premises of farms and other properties that have been confirmed to have bird flu in the past 30 days, including 87 commercial flocks and 51 backyard flocks.
The last update on the CDC’s website before Feb. 26 was dated Jan. 17, a few days before President Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20. Trump has been dismantling the U.S. federal government along with his billionaire buddy Elon Musk under the auspices of DOGE, and CDC has been the victim of massive cuts, including mass firings.
But the health agency currently notes that human-to-human spread still hasn’t been identified in any of the 70 cases confirmed and the risk to the general public is still considered low. Hopefully, it stays that way, as scientists worry that a mutation that would cause spread between humans would kick off a new pandemic.
