Final Friday, US authorities mentioned a toddler in California had develop into the primary within the US to check optimistic for chook flu an infection. Well being officers supplied checks and preventive therapy to uncovered contacts on the kid’s day-care centre.
The kid had gentle signs and was mentioned to be recovering at dwelling following therapy with flu antivirals.
“Together with this most up-to-date case, 55 human circumstances of H5 chook flu have now been reported within the US throughout 2024, with 29 in California,” the US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention mentioned.
Van Kerkhove mentioned all however two of these had identified publicity to contaminated animals.
“We now have not seen proof of human-to-human an infection. However once more, for every of those human-detected circumstances, we need to see a really thorough investigation going down,” she mentioned.
“We’d like a lot stronger efforts by way of decreasing the danger of an infection between animals to new species and to people,” she added, notably via testing and correct protecting tools.
Van Kerkhove, who was the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, burdened the significance of getting ready “for when or if we will probably be in a scenario the place we’re in a flu pandemic”.
“We’re not in that scenario but, however we do want extra vigilance.”
