America’s first bird flu de@th reported in Louisiana

The first person to have a severe case of H5N1 bird flu in the United States has d!ed, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.

This is the first human de@th from bird flu in the U.S.

The patient, who has not been identified, was hospitalized with the virus on Dec. 18 after exposure to a combination of backyard chickens and wild birds, Louisiana health officials had said.

The patient was over age 65 and had underlying medical conditions, officials said, putting the patient at higher risk for serious disease.

Louisiana health officials said that their investigation found no other human cases linked to this patient’s infection.

Flu experts have been warning that the H5N1 virus would bare its teeth as infections spread.

“We’ve been studying the family tree of this virus for 25-odd years, and this is probably the nastiest form of the virus that we’ve seen. So the fact that it finally did cause a fatal infection here is tragic but not surprising,” said Dr. Richard Webby, who directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Nearly 70 people in the U.S. have contracted bird flu since April, most of them farmworkers, as the virus has circulated among poultry flocks and dairy herds, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal and state officials have said the risk to the general public remains low.

The ongoing bird flu outbreak, which began in poultry in 2022, has killed nearly 130 million wild and domestic poultry and has sickened 917 dairy herds, according to the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.