(SRN NEWS/AP) -The first U.S. bird flu death has been reported — a person in Louisiana who had been hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms.
State health officials announced the death on Monday, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed it was the nation’s first due to bird flu.
Health officials have said the person was older than 65, had underlying medical problems and had been in contact with sick and dead birds in a backyard flock. They also said a genetic analysis had suggested the bird flu virus had mutated inside the patient, which could have led to the more severe illness.
Few other details about the person have been disclosed.
Since March, 66 confirmed bird flu infections have been reported in the U.S., but previous illnesses have been mild and most have been detected among farmworkers exposed to sick poultry or dairy cows.
A bird flu death was not unexpected, virus experts said. There have been more than 950 confirmed bird flu infections globally since 2003, and more than 460 of those people died, according to the World Health Organization.
The bird flu virus “is a serious threat and it has historically been a deadly virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “This is just a tragic reminder of that.”
Nuzzo noted a Canadian teen became severely ill after being infected recently. Researchers are still trying to gauge the dangers of the current version of the virus and determine what causes it to hit some people harder than others, she said.
“Just because we have seen mild cases does not mean future cases will continue to be mild,” she added.
In a statement, CDC officials described the Louisiana death as tragic but also said “there are no concerning virologic changes actively spreading in wild birds, poultry or cows that would raise the risk to human health.”