Right now, bird flu is affecting flocks in 12 states and in Canada, and two different strains are present — the H5N2 strain and the H5N8 strain. Neither strain has the genetic markers of strains that have spread to humans in the past, like the H5N1 strain, an official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told Reuters.
No humans have been infected with the bird flu since the outbreak started earlier this year. However, since the strains are new, it is unclear if they could mutate and spread to humans. “At this point we don’t know very much about these viruses,” Alicia Fry, MD, an official with the CDC, told Reuters. “It seems the risk for human infection is very low… [but] this is a rapidly evolving situation.”
The U.S. has dealt with bird flu transmission to humans in the past in 2002 and 2003, according to the CDC, but that was the H7N2 strain. The highly contagious H5N1 virus that originated in Asia has never been reported in people in the U.S.
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