United States: The California Department of Public Health CDPH reported today that tests conducted showed a child from Alameda County was suspected to have avian flu.
The child had mild upper respiratory illness and never came into contact with infected animals.
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Last weekend, the Canadian officials disclosed an H5N1 infection in a previously healthy teenager from British Columbia, who remains in a critical state in hospital.
Similarly, the case is confirmed: the California case would be the second in the United States this year in an individual with no contact with ill farm animals.
The first was from a patient in Missouri who returned positive for a respiratory virus panel during the late days of August while admitted to the hospital, cidrap.umn.edu reported.
In a direct serologic test that was conducted on the identified household contact, it was revealed that that particular contact was most probably infected with the virus at the same time.
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The disease also comes during a sharp increase in poultry outbreaks in states that are in the Pacific flyway when the birds that spread the virus are moving southwards.
Moreover, California continues to fight the virus at dairy farms in Central Valley.
New tests performed four days later for avian flu were negative, while other tests showed that the child was positive for other respiratory viruses, which might be the cause of the child’s flu-like illness.
The samples have been forwarded to the US CDC to undergo confirmatory tests. If confirmed, the illness would be the state’s approximate 27th and its first that did not originate from sick animals on dairy or poultry farms, cidrap.umn.edu reported.
CDPH, local health officers, and the CDC are trying to identify where the child contracted the disease and whether the child came into contact with wild birds.
Oakland is located in Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay area, but officials there said there are no commercial dairy herds in the county.