If the case is confirmed by the CDC, it will be the 16th linked to the dairy outbreak.
A California dairy farm worker who had contact with H5N1-infected cows appears to have contracted the avian influenza virus, state health officials reported Thursday.
The person's illness is reported to be mild, with the only symptom being conjunctivitis (eye redness). This echoes the experience of other H5N1 human cases in this outbreak. The person is said to be staying at home and taking an antiviral flu medication.
Testing by a local health department indicated the person was infected with the outbreak virus. The result now awaits confirmation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If confirmed, the case will be the 16th human infection amid an unprecedented outbreak of H5N1 among US dairy cows. Fourteen of the previous cases also occurred in farm workers who had contact with infected animals. A single case in Missouri tested positive for the virus without any known animal contact, and the source of that infection remains unknown.
The new case, if confirmed, will also mark the first human case in California, the country's largest milk producer. The state is currently experiencing a stunningly swift virus spread through its dairy herds.
While the country's H5N1 dairy outbreak was first confirmed on March 25 by the US Department of Agriculture, California only identified infected herds at the end of August. But, since then, the virus has moved quickly, and the state has tallied 55 affected herds in a little over a month. The only state with a higher number of reported herd infections is Colorado, which has documented 64 amid relatively aggressive monitoring.