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Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are recommending that hospitals speed up testing of people hospitalized with the flu for H5N1 bird flu.
Health care workers in hospitals are encouraged to perform additional tests on patients admitted with influenza A — ideally within 24 hours of admission — to determine whether they have bird flu, according to a CDC announcement issued on Thursday.
The advisory comes amid concerns that cases of H5N1 bird flu will sicken more people in the United States. CDC officials confirmed earlier this week that another child from San Francisco contracted bird flu last week, and earlier this month a 65-year-old man from Louisiana first person to die from the disease in the United States.
CDC Deputy Director Nirav Shah said the agency is not changing its guidance based on growing concern about the H5N1 bird flu virus. Instead, officials want to speed up an already slow system that risks falling behind amid a surge in seasonal flu cases.
More than 100,000 people have been hospitalized with the flu since October, according to CDC data. Officials said they expect more than 200,000 flu hospitalizations by the end of the winter.
There have been 67 confirmed bird flu cases in 10 states since March, with 40 of those cases linked to exposure from infected dairy cows. About two dozen of those cases have been linked to infected poultry and one to a flock of backyard birds.
CDC officials said there is still a low risk of getting H5N1 bird flu and a moderate pandemic risk stemming from the current age of the virus.
There are different types of flu, and H5N1 bird flu is caused by a type of influenza A virus, which is a category of flu that also includes most seasonal variants of the virus.
Currently, hospitals will occasionally test for the flu in patients who appear to have the virus. Most flu tests done in hospitals or other health care clinics can tell if someone has a seasonal strain of the flu, but they can’t detect bird flu.
Many hospitals will test for the H5N1 bird flu strain by sending bulk batches of influenza A samples to public health labs every few days, according to Shah.
“However, this system can take time, and sometimes when the results of the subtyping are ready, the patient may already be discharged,” Shah said.
Hospitals that have the equipment to test for the H5N1 avian influenza subtypes are encouraged to do so in house, as close to the time of admission as possible, especially for patients with influenza in intensive care units.
CDC officials said they are working with hospitals that cannot test for flu subtypes to connect them with public labs that can test flu samples in real time.
The new guidance is one of a few new efforts by the Biden administration to prepare for an H5N1 bird flu pandemic before President-elect Donald Trump takes office later this month.
Other efforts include the launch of the Ministry of Agriculture a national program to test for bird flu in untreated milk and 211 million dollars in new funding to deal with emerging infectious diseases.
