This year in the United States, 14 people have tested positive for avian influenza, or bird flu. Nine of those became infected after coming into contact with poultry, and four got the virus from exposure to dairy cows. The source of the remaining, most recent case remains a mystery.
'Right now, evidence points to this being a one-off case,' said Nirav Shah, the CDC's principal deputy director. Yet the case is troubling, because it raises the possibility of an alternate source of transmission, either from a person or an unknown source.
'Our influenza surveillance system is designed to find needles in haystacks,' Shah said. 'In this case, we found such a needle, but we don't know how it got there.' The Missouri case is the first to be detected through the country's national flu surveillance system.
With more animals harboring the virus, there is greater potential for human infection. It's not known whether that happened in the Missouri case, but it is one avenue health officials say they are investigating.
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