A Canadian teen who contracted H5N1 bird flu in November has fully recovered after a long battle in the hospital, but genetic analysis of the virus in her body revealed “worrisome” mutations.
According to experts, these changes might allow the virus to target human cells and replicate more easily.
“It is worrisome because it indicates that the virus can change in a person and possibly cause a greater severity of symptoms than initial infection,” Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, told the L.A. Times.
This new detection “underscores the importance of ongoing genomic surveillance in people and animals, containment of avian influenza A(H5) outbreaks in dairy cattle and poultry, and prevention measures among people with exposure to infected animals or environments,” according to the CDC.
Despite this recent discovery, however, the CDC stated that the risk to the general public remains low.
Still, “We don’t know what combination of mutations would lead to a pandemic H5N1 virus and there’s only so much we can predict from these sequence data,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist specializing in emerging infectious diseases, said on X. “But the more humans are infected, the more chances a pandemic virus will emerge.”
So far, there have been 66 confirmed/reported human cases of bird flu in the United States. Most cases have occurred in California, which declared a state of emergency for bird flu a few weeks ago.
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