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The U.S. may be missing human cases of bird flu, scientists say

By Will Stone Thursday, May 2, 2024 • 10:01 AM EDT Officially, there is only one documented case of bird flu spilling over from cows into humans during the current U.S. outbreak.

"I think based on how many documented cases in cows there are, probably some decent human exposure is occurring," says Dr. Andrew Bowman, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at The Ohio State University. However, there still remain "serious gaps" in public health officials' ability to detect bird flu among those who work with cows, a task made all the more difficult by the fact that some cases may not be symptomatic, says Leibler. "We know when it hits the poultry farms because the birds die, but the pigs may or may not manifest severe illness," he says, "The virus can just churn, make many copies of itself and the probability of spilling over to those workers is much greater."

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