2nd Michigan farmworker diagnosed with bird flu, CDC says

A second person in Michigan has been diagnosed with bird flu, and only the third human case associated with an outbreak in U.S. dairy cows.

According to the CDC, the person is a dairy farm worker who had exposure to infected cows, making it a probable cow-to-person spread.

The CDC said this is the first human case of H5 in the U.S. to report more typical symptoms of acute respiratory illness associated with the influenza infection.

Watch our coverage below from the first case in Michigan to be discovered

According to the CDC, none of the cases are associated with the others, and the risk to the general public remains low. They said it does not change their human health risk assessment because all three sporadic cases had direct contact with infected cows.

The CDC said the diary worker at the farm reported symptoms to local health officials, including a cough without fever and eye discomfort. The patient was given antiviral treatment with oseltamivir, is isolating at home, and their symptoms are resolving, the CDC said.

They also said there is no indication of person-to-person spread.

In the first case, the male worker had been in contact with cows at a farm with infected animals. A nasal swab tested negative, but an eye swab was positive for bird flu, indicating an eye infection.

The first worker developed a “gritty feeling” in his eye earlier this month but it was a “very mild case," said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive. He was not treated with oseltamivir, a medication advised for treating bird flu, she said.

In late March, a farmworker in Texas was diagnosed in what officials called the first known instance globally of a person catching this version of bird flu from a mammal. That patient reported only eye inflammation and recovered.

Since 2020, a bird flu virus has been spreading among more animal species — including dogs, cats, skunks, bears and even seals and porpoises — in scores of countries.

The detection in U.S. livestock earlier this year was an unexpected twist that sparked questions about food safety and whether it would start spreading among humans.

That hasn't happened, although there's been a steady increase of reported infections in cows. As of Wednesday, the virus had been confirmed in 51 dairy herds in nine states, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Fifteen of the herds were in Michigan.