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House Cats With Bird Flu Could Pose a Risk to Public Health

This is a MedPage Today story. More than 80 domestic cats, among many other types of mammals, have been confirmed to have had bird flu since 2022 -- generally barn cats that lived on dairy farms, as well as feral cats and pets that spend time outdoors and likely caught it by hunting diseased rodents or wild birds. Now, a small but growing number of house cats have gotten sick from H5N1, the bird flu strain driving the current U.S. outbreak, after eating raw food or drinking unpasteurized milk. Some of those cats died. The strain of bird flu currently circulating has not adapted to efficiently spread among people. And there have been no known cases of cat-to-human transmission during the current outbreak of H5N1. Still, there's always been the risk that cats, which are arguably only semi-domesticated, could bring home a disease from a midnight prowl. "Companion animals, and especially cats, are 100% a public health risk in terms of the risk of zoonotic transmission to people,"...
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Topics

  • Bird Flu
  • Bird
  • Flu
  • Public Health
  • Cats

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