United States: The third case of bird flu in a farm worker was reported in Michigan; they contracted the illness from sick dairy cows, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Thursday.
According to the information, none of the cases was scientifically connected with another one.
More about the news
This is the second farmworker in Michigan in seven days to receive a diagnosis of the disease. A dairy worker in Texas has also been infected, and the date was found in March. In a peculiar finding, the previous cases only recorded one common symptom, which is pinkeye eye or conjunctivitis, NBC News reported.
However, the last case is different in that the patient had other symptoms related to the upper respiratory system, such as a sore throat, cough, and congestion.
What have the officials stated?
In a media briefing on Thursday, a CDC official, Dr. Nirav Shah, who is the principal deputy director, mentioned that it was yet inconclusive that the virus in question, an H5N1 A strain of influenza, was spreading from one person to another. However, the risk was observed among people with respiratory infections.
He added, “Simply put, someone who’s coughing may be more likely to transmit the virus than someone who has an eye infection like conjunctivitis,” as NBC News reported.
Tests are being conducted by CDC
A sequencing test is being done on the samples that the CDC has received from the patient to determine how these changes would result in transmissibility in a way that is not possible from the virus mutating in this case. The sort of information could be prepared in a few days, but that has not happened.
The last patient had eye complaints, including eye itch and eye tears, but the nature of the ailments is unclear whether the patient was affected by pinkeye. As in the previous scenario, the patient was given Tamiflu and asserted to be recovering, but it turned out to be deteriorating.
According to the chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, the infected Michigan workers were not in possession of protective wearables, or PPE, during the time they got infected.
Moreover, Bagdasarian announced in a press release that “With the first case in Michigan, eye symptoms occurred after a direct splash of infected milk to the eye. With this case, respiratory symptoms occurred after direct exposure to an infected cow,” NBC News reported.