‘This is how pandemics start’: H5 bird flu in Missouri patient with no known link to sick animals

Avian influenza began spreading in US dairy cattle last December. Since, over 200 herds across 14 states have become infected, none of which have been in Missouri. The state has reported H5N1 cases in wild birds and poultry however, a possible route of infection.

The main worry among experts is that an unexplained H5 infection raises the possibility of person-to-person transmission, something which the World Health Organization (WHO) warned would be of “enormous concern” due to its potential to trigger a global pandemic. 

“This is how pandemics start,” Kruitka Kuppali, a spokesperson for the Infectious Disease Society of America and former WHO medical officer, told The Telegraph.  “We need to scale up preparedness and response efforts.”

The 2009 swine flu pandemic was first detected in a similar way when two children in California with no known contact with pigs or each other were diagnosed with an H1N1 flu infection, previously circulating in swine.

Another theory is that the person consumed raw milk infected with H5N1, which has killed several barnyard cats who are thought to have consumed the liquid off farm floors in the US this year.

Around three per cent of the US public – some 10 million people – consume raw dairy, many of which think it’s a ‘superfood’, according to the National Institutes of Health, the US government’s primary public health research body.

“The obvious question I would ask is: Have you ruled out that they’re not someone who’s got a big tub of raw milk in their fridge? Because that just seems like such an obvious route for a cryptic infection,” Thomas Peacock,  an influenza virologist at the Pirbright Institute, told Stat News.