United States: Seven people developed swine flu-like symptoms after exposure to a confirmed case of the H5N1 virus pregnancies, which caused some authors to believe that the virus transmits from human to human for the first time in the United States.
The health authorities continue working to determine that there was transference of the virus between human beings. The group consists of potential cases of patients who were positively tested with H5N1 last month and were later admitted to the hospital.
More about the news
Among the confirmed cases are several healthcare workers and one of their household members, CDC said in the statement.
Health officials in Missouri reported that six healthcare workers contracted mild respiratory illness similar to avian flu after treating the index patient, telegraph.co.uk reported.
Of these, only one was swabbed for influenza using PCR, and all the tests were negative.
Five other healthcare workers’ symptoms subsided before testing could be done on them. They have a database of volunteers who have donated blood samples to the CDC to be tested for the presence of H5N1 antibodies – a sign that the virus had infected the subject at some point.
Contact with sick patients
On the whole, at least 94 healthcare workers were exposed to a sick patient, representatives of Missouri state told.
This is in spite of previous reports of human-human transmission of H5N1, although they are very rare, and there have been concerns from those observing the US outbreak.
More about H5N1
H5N1 is a highly pathogenic avian influenza that has killed up to 55 percent of infected poultry and has been circulating in US dairy cattle since December last year.
More common in birds, the virus has affected more than 200 herds of cattle in the country, which shows that the virus is gradually improving its ability to infect mammals.
Independent experts have been calling on US authorities to keep the spread of H5N1 quiet for a longer period of time – so that it cannot mutate and ‘leap’ at people and start adapting to infect them.