Four years ago, as attention locked onto COVID-19, another virus began circling the globe. A major outbreak of a new strain of bird flu — formally named Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 — has since killed millions of wild birds and infected poultry, dairy cattle, domestic cats and a small number of humans.
In the United States, four people have contracted the virus. The most recently confirmed case, a dairy worker in Michigan, was the first to experience flu-like respiratory symptoms. For now, federal health officials have deemed the virus a low risk to public health, while launching new studies and monitoring the virus’s spread.
