This cold and flu season has been especially tough. Influenza A has placed more than 20,000 people in hospitals nationally, according to the Center for Disease Control and Infection (CDC) and the flu as a whole has placed more than an estimated 160,000 in the hospital.
There’s also a new flu virus that has drawn attention nationally: bird flu.
Bird flu, commonly referred to in the medical community as avian influenza or H5N1, is a virus that has started to affect humans and has caused a small number of hospitalizations and deaths. It’s part of the reason why prices for eggs are currently through the roof, too. The journey that the virus took to infect humans starts with wild flocks of birds in North America that have infected poultry flocks. It has also gone from wild birds to cows. As of Feb. 28, more than 12.4 million chickens and turkeys have been destroyed due to the virus, according to the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
There have been 70 confirmed cases of bird flu in humans that have resulted in one death. Of the 70 cases, one of them occurred in Ohio.
“Most of those people, especially in 2024, were really having very mild symptoms,” says Dr. Claudia Hoyen, the Director of Infection Control at University Hospitals. “They actually would have never guessed they had bird flu. And so they were having maybe a little fever, mostly conjunctivitis, some sore throat.”
While the numbers so far for bird flu are low, it is still recommended for people to stay vigilant. Whenever a new illness pops up, there’s cause for concern, and bird flu is no different.
*Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity*
Cleveland Magazine: What’s the biggest difference between the common flu and bird flu?
Dr. Hoyen: Right now, for the general public, influenza A is much more of a problem. And it's actually the thing people should be worried about. And it’s not too late to get your flu vaccine because in a few weeks, we're going to start seeing [influenza] B. At this point, the flu A and the flu B that are out there are very well situated to cause very bad diseases in people and sometimes kill them. Most of the cases of the bird flu that we've seen, there's only been one death and only four hospitalizations of the people who we've known that have had it. And when you think about the fact that people are interacting with these dairy cattle and all these birds, there have probably been more people who've had it and just never got tested.
CM: At this point, there hasn’t been known human-to-human transmission of bird flu. Is that something you view as possible?
DH: It could happen because now we've got bird flu at the same time that we have human flu. Is there a chance, an unlucky chance that they could exchange that information and we could be somewhere with an issue? Yes, it's a possibility. But it's not at a point where I think we need to panic. We don't think it's happened to date, but we do need to be vigilant, and we can't let our guard down so that if that unfortunate thing were to happen, that we would be at the ready with the things that we need to keep people safe.
CM: How does bird flu compare to the swine flu (H1N1) outbreak from roughly 15 years ago?
DH: I think we would have to see how it plays out. That swine flu strain that we saw, we, within several months, got the vaccine up and running. I remember people getting the H1N1 vaccine. The [swine] flu that people had, the influenza that they had was more GI-focused. So, the influenza virus can cause upper respiratory stuff. It can cause, as I said, conjunctivitis. It can cause your throat to hurt, pharyngitis, you can get pneumonia. But also sometimes, the strain has more of a predilection to give people nausea and vomiting. And so that's what we saw mostly in 2009.
CM: When should people really become concerned with bird flu?
DH: I think we still need to be worried. If you find a dead bird in your backyard, don't go out there and handle it. Probably call the city or the county or whoever. If you do handle some sort of an animal or something, you're going to want to do really good hand washing. We can't forget about it because it's clearly here. But as we're interacting with each other right now, we don't need to be worried. And again, if we do think we start seeing human-to-human, then I think that we will be at a different kind of alert level than we are right now because then we know that it can spread and it can spread far and wide and can cause a lot of issues depending on how it clinically rolls out in terms of what types of symptoms do people have.
CM: Is there anything else people need to know?
DH: People still need to be worried about influenza A and influenza B. And we need to be worried about where we are now, where we're going to be next fall and next winter with those still encouraging people to use common sense, good hand hygiene. If you're sick, please stay home. Vaccines are recommended for everyone for the flu, six months and up. And it's not too late to get vaccinated because we're still expecting some flu B. Those are the things that we need to be doing to keep all of us as healthy as we can be so that if something unforeseen happens, we're all in a good place.
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