Bird flu hasn’t gone anywhere, and it’s still sickening Americans. Health officials in Washington have confirmed that a resident contracted a nasty bout of H5N5 avian influenza—the first known case of its kind.
The Washington State Department of Health announced the case late last week. The victim is an older adult who was likely exposed to the virus through contact with their backyard chickens or wild birds. Though the variant may not have spread beyond this case, the resident remains hospitalized, according to health officials.
“Public health disease experts have not identified any increased risk to the public,” the health department said in its latest statement released over the weekend.
First of its kind
Health officials initially reported the case last Thursday, which involved a resident living in Grays Harbor County. The next day, they confirmed the variant as H5N5. Though H5N5 has been found in birds and other animals before, this is the first known report of human illness from the variant.
The person developed a high fever, confusion, and respiratory distress and was hospitalized sometime in early November. Aside from their older age, the person’s history of underlying health conditions may have contributed to the infection’s severity. The person owns a mixed backyard flock of domestic chickens that had previously come into contact with wild birds, which likely served as the source of exposure. But health and wildlife officials are still working to unravel the exact chain of transmission.
The ongoing danger of bird flu
While this might be the first time H5N5 has jumped into humans, bird flu in general has become a more pressing threat in recent years.
In early 2024, health officials announced the discovery of H5N1 cases in cows on several dairy farms in Texas and Kansas. Since then, H5N1 has repeatedly infected dairy cows, other mammals, and sometimes people. There have been at least 71 human cases of H5N1 in the U.S., along with one death. Just this past September, USDA officials reported yet another outbreak of H5N1 at a dairy farm in Nebraska.
Though the risks posed by H5N1 or other bird flu strains like H5N5 are low to the general public for now, these outbreaks are still highly concerning. The longer these flu viruses are able to circulate in mammals like dairy cows, the greater the odds that a strain will evolve to efficiently spread between humans. If such a strain could transmit easily from human to human while causing serious illness, that would set the stage for the next big pandemic.
This latest human case of H5N5 may just be a dead end. But eventually, we might not be so lucky.