Four poultry workers in Colorado have tested positive for bird flu, health officials announced on Sunday. This brings the total number of cases in the United States to nine, with the first human case identified in a Colorado poultry worker in 2022. Eight out of the nine cases have been reported this year. The workers exhibited mild symptoms such as red and irritated eyes, fever, chills, cough, sore throat, and runny nose, but none required hospitalization.
The individuals were involved in culling poultry at a farm in northeast Colorado and had direct contact with infected birds. A fifth person showing symptoms is currently being tested, and results are pending. Despite the spread of a bird flu virus among mammals in numerous countries since 2020, health officials consider the risk to the general public low, emphasizing that the virus has not been transmitted between people.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has dispatched a team of nine experts to Colorado at the state’s request to aid in the investigation. Earlier cases this year involved dairy farm workers in Michigan, Texas, and Colorado. The virus strain found in the recent Colorado cases is similar to the type detected in previous U.S. instances, but further genetic analysis is underway for confirmation.
As of Friday, the H5N1 virus has been identified in 152 dairy herds across 12 states, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. More than 30 states have reported cases of H5N1 or other strains of bird flu in hundreds of commercial poultry flocks. Authorities are closely monitoring the situation due to the virus’s potentially lethal nature in earlier versions.
