ST. LOUIS — As of Monday evening, there is only one confirmed human case of bird flu in Missouri. The single case is one of 15 reported nationwide since 2022. However, the recent Missouri case is unusual... because there is no known animal link to that case.
St. Louis County Department of Public Heath Interim Director of Communicable Disease Response Andrew Torgerson tells 5 On Your Side how people contract the virus: "They usually get it through contact with infected birds or in this outbreak, contact with infected dairy cattle."
Torgerson said the reported case does not have known animal exposure. The recent positive infection is not in St. Louis, which is why the state health department is investigating. The state is not saying where the positive case is from, but told 5 On Your Side it is testing several people who were around the infected person.
"The testing of sick people around a case is not in itself unusual," Torgerson assured.
"At the moment we don't have the evidence that it is of general public concern yet," explained Dr. Steven Lawrence, a Washington University Infectious Diseases Physician at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, "but I will say that everybody in this field who is following viruses and scientists and public health officials are very concerned about this because of these signals that we might be heading that direction with this virus."
That includes Mercy St. Louis' Chair of the Department of Medicine, Dr. Farrin Manian.
"I wouldn't hit the panic button yet, you know, I think to be honest, we're always worried about new types of viruses that can affect humans," Manian said.
Lawrence said the virus has existed for years. "It has been circulating around the globe in several places for about 27 years and more. Recently, in just the last year, it has started to change. The virus itself has now been able to infect other animals a little more easily than it had in the prior 25 years."
The CDC reports the current spread is most common in outdoor birds, but also cattle. Manian recommends avoiding sick mammals and birds, but if you have to have contact with them, "make sure you wear gloves and protective equipment including eye protection, because there is some evidence that in the humans that caught this virus many of them have infection of the of the eye, which is conjunctivitis."
There has been no confirmed cases of human-to-human transfer of bird flu, but physicians still want individuals with flu-like symptoms to distance and practice good hygiene to prevent any possible spread.