A second person in the U.S. has been infected with bird flu linked to dairy cows, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported Wednesday.
The individual, a farmworker who had regular exposure to infected livestock, had mild symptoms and has recovered, the department said.
“The current health risk to the general public remains low,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said in a press release.
“We have not seen signs of sustained human-to-human transmission at this point.
This is exactly how public health is meant to work, in early detection and monitoring of new and emerging illnesses.”
The individual was being monitored for symptoms following exposure to infected dairy cows, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement.
The person developed conjunctivitis, or pink eye, and a sample taken from the eye tested positive for the virus.
This is the second instance of a person developing pink eye from a bird flu infection.
That was also the only symptom seen in theTexas dairy worker who was diagnosed in March in the first documented case of the virus spreading from dairy cows to a human.
The CDC said that it’s sequencing samples taken from the Michigan worker to determine if the virus has mutated in ways that could allow it to spread more easily between people.
