California public health officials have identified a possible case of bird flu in a child in Alameda County, they said Tuesday morning.
If confirmed, it could be the first bird flu case in the Bay Area, but the California Department of Public Health cautioned that it was isolated.
The child initially tested positive for the virus, has experienced mild respiratory symptoms and is recovering at home, according to the agency.
State health officials said the child’s positive test showed a low-level detection of bird flu, indicating that person would not likely infect someone else. None of the child’s relatives tested positive.
Subsequent testing on the child four days later showed negative results for the bird flu, so the state is sending the case to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more testing. Additional tests on the child were positive for respiratory viruses that could have been the cause of their symptoms, CDPH said.
The child had no known contact with an infected animal, but public health officials said they are looking into possible exposure to wild birds.
“It’s natural for people to be concerned, and we want to reinforce for parents, caregivers and families that based on the information and data we have, we don’t think the child was infectious — and no human-to-human spread of bird flu has been documented in any country for more than 15 years,” CDPH Director Dr. Tomás Aragón said in a statement.
Although human-to-human spread of bird flu is very rare, state public health officials said they are notifying others who had contact with the child, including caregivers and families at the child’s day care, and offering preventive treatment and testing out of an abundance of caution.
Since early last month, there have been 26 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the state, according to CDPH — all of those were from direct contact with infected dairy cows.
KQED’s Keith Mizuguchi and Jared Servantez contributed to this report.
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