America’s first bird flu death reported in Louisiana

The first person to have a severe case of H5N1 bird flu in the United States has died, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.

The first person to have a severe case of H5N1 bird flu in the United States has died, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. This is the first human death from bird flu in the US. The person, who was over 65 and reportedly had underlying medical conditions, was hospitalized with the flu after exposure to a backyard flock of birds and to wild birds. Louisiana health officials said that their investigation found no other human cases linked to this patient’s infection. Flu experts have been warning that the H5N1 virus would bare its teeth as infections spread. “We’ve been studying the family tree of this virus for 25 odd years, and this is probably the nastiest form of the virus that we’ve seen. So the fact that it finally did cause a fatal infection here is tragic but not surprising,” said Dr. Richard Webby, who directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Since 2003, there have been roughly 900 human bird flu infections reported globally, and about half of those people have died, according to the World Health Organization. That would give the virus a 50% case fatality rate, making it extraordinarily lethal – but experts don’t actually think it kills half the people it infects.