United States: Another health worker in United States is facing the severe symptoms of bird flu who was earlier exposed to that Missouri patient who tested positive for the bird flu, developed some kind of respiratory symptoms but wasn’t tested for the flu that’s what the health officials reported.
The news is rekindling worries of person-to-person transmission of the H5N1 bird flu strain.
As the information provided by HealthDay, a week earlier, the CDC reported that another health care worker who treated the bird flu patient showed mild respiratory symptoms but had no influenza infection.
However, a contact of the Missouri patient who also got infected did not get tested for the flu at the time he or she fell ill. Live television interviews should be carried out to get more information about the events that led to the spread of the virus as the household contact had gastrointestinal symptoms which are indicative of flu infection according to CDC.
“During the follow-on investigation of contact, Missouri reported of one more health care worker contact who presented with mild respiratory illness and did not receive influenza testing as the illness had resolved at the time of investigation,” the CDC said in the latest weekly flu outlook.
The bird flu patient, who had had no contact with poultry or dairy cows, was first admitted in August and had a positive test for the bird flu virus. This is a person with comorbidities, and the CDC stated in a press release about this particular case that the individual has since recovered.
But on an earlier media call this month, CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah said that the patient’s close contacts reported no signs of symptoms, which made the case a possible ‘one-off’.
Since then, three contacts have been identified who had the symptoms of illness, but it is not even sure if they were infected with the bird flu. To attempt to answer that question, the CDC disclosed that it has taken blood samples from the Missouri patient and the household contact. It will diagnose itself through serological test, this is a test to show antibodies that might hint toward an H5N1 infection. Nevertheless, test results could take several weeks the agency pointed out.
In the recent statement made by the CDC, the second health care worker was not tested for influenza since the illness had cleared before the investigation.
The second health care worker will be offered the same blood test to determine if that same person has the antibodies for the blood test to determine if that person ha the antibodies for the bird flu virus.