A Washington state resident is believed to be the first person to die from a rare strain of bird flu, but state health officials said Friday the risk to the public is low.

India, Albania and Namibia have joined the list of countries imposing a total ban on poultry imports from Brazil, while Angola has opted for a more limited restriction, banning purchases solely from the State of Rio Grande do Sul, where an outbreak of avian flu was detected and contained.

The ban took effect on Friday after Brazil, the world’s largest chicken exporter, confirmed its first outbreak of bird flu on a poultry farm.

Following Friday’s announcements by the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry of Brazil, the situation is as follows:

Not importing Brazilian poultry meat at all are China, the European Union, Mexico, Iraq, South Korea, Chile, the Philippines, South Africa, Jordan, Peru, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Malaysia, Argentina, East Timor, Morocco, Bolivia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Albania, Namibia, and India.

Limiting purchases to areas other than Rio Grande do Sul are Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Bahrain, Cuba, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Angola.

Restricting their suspension to the municipality of Montenegro in Rio Grande do Sul: United Arab Emirates and Japan.

According to reports from Brazil, the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry have pledged to continue to liaise with the health authorities of the importing countries, providing all the necessary technical information on the case.

“The actions taken are aimed at guaranteeing health safety and the safe resumption of exports as soon as possible,” said the ministry while insisting that the consumption of poultry meat and eggs poses no risk to health.

-Agencies

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now working with California on a project that is offering gift cards to encourage people to get tested or vaccinated near farms with bird flu, the state says.

Some clinics in the state are giving $25 in gift cards to people in the community to get swabbed for a potential bird flu infection or to get a shot of the regular seasonal influenza vaccine. 

California is providing the gift cards at the clinics, which are run by the state’s vendor. The CDC also has a testing van from the agency’s Avian Flu Influenza Area Surveillance Testing, or AFAST project, offering testing at some of the sites.

“Funding for the gift cards comes out of California’s bird flu state emergency declaration funds. CDC does testing only and offers no incentives of any kind,” a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said in an email.

The effort runs contrary to rumors on social media that states have stopped testing symptomatic farmworkers for bird flu, at the behest of the CDC under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“There has been no change to our guidance for testing suspect cases, we are not aware of any symptomatic workers not being referred or tested for H5N1, and it is very unlikely that testing would be declined if H5N1 was suspected,” the California spokesperson said.

A CDC spokesperson also said their guidance had not changed. The agency continues to recommend people with symptoms seek testing from their doctor or local health department.

Authorities in neighboring Nevada told CBS News they are also continuing to offer testing and treatment to farm workers exposed to bird flu infections in their animals. In Idaho, another state that had seen bird flu infections in farms, authorities said they had not heard of symptomatic workers being discouraged from getting tested.

“We have no knowledge of this happening and have not heard any recent reports of symptomatic workers,” AJ McWhorter, a spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, said in an email.

Labs run by state and local health departments are usually the first to conduct initial testing for bird flu, before forwarding the samples on to the CDC for confirmation. Health departments typically announce those “presumptive” detections, even if they turn out later not to be confirmed.

In addition to testing people exposed to the virus on farms, California said it is also continuing to check whether other flu cases elsewhere in the state are being caused by bird flu.

“To date, all samples tested have been confirmed as seasonal subtypes H1 or H3, which rules out infection with H5N1 [bird flu]. The fact that no other human cases of H5N1 have been identified via subtyping efforts is reassuring,” the California spokesperson said.

Some of the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to support testing for the ongoing bird flu outbreak have been disrupted due to steep layoffs at the agency, multiple officials told CBS News Thursday, in the latest fallout from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cuts to the nation’s federal health agencies.

In one example, a planned FDA exercise with a network of veterinary testing labs around the country to ensure they are able to detect the virus in milk has been suspended, due to the elimination of the agency’s food safety lab in Illinois, two federal health officials said.

Officials had planned the exercise for 40 laboratories across the FDA-backed Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network, as well as additional government-backed and private labs, which are using different methods to test for the virus.

“Unfortunately, significant Reductions In Force (RIF), including a key quality assurance officer, at FDA’s Human Food Program Moffett Center has caused immediate and significant impact on the Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network,” read an email sent Thursday to members of the laboratory network, obtained by CBS News.

News of the disruption to the FDA exercise was first reported by Reuters.

The effort “would have been critical to ensure confidence in the laboratory methods for food safety and animal health,” the email read. 

Labs are testing milk both to detect the virus in sick cattle as well as for food safety purposes, an official said. 

The department has laid off some 10,000 workers under a plan drawn up by Kennedy and the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting task force. The FDA lost around 3,500 full-time employees due to the layoffs, including staff supporting the agency’s food and drug safety inspectors.

“This overhaul is about realigning HHS with its core mission: to stop the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again. Despite spending $1.9 trillion in annual costs, Americans are getting sicker every year, and we must shift course,” an HHS official said in a statement.

The official said that HHS layoffs “focused personnel cuts on redundant or unnecessary administrative positions.”

“HHS also reduced its regional footprint by moving out of the highest cost cities, shuttering offices in Boston, Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle,” the statement said.

Other federal labs have been gutted due to Kennedy’s cuts, including U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labs investigating STD and hepatitis outbreaks.

Another disrupted bird flu effort was at the FDA’s San Francisco-area food safety testing lab, two officials said. 

That lab is responsible for food safety testing for both humans and animals, officials said. One official said the lab had been setting up to begin testing pet food for bird flu, as part of the agency’s regulatory response to outbreaks. 

Now the lab has been closed, with staff also completely eliminated as part of Kennedy’s cuts on Tuesday. It is unclear whether the agency’s remaining labs will be able to fill the gap.

Several multistate recalls of pet food for bird flu contamination have been announced by health authorities in recent months, after cats and other animals were sickened. The virus has been especially lethal to pet cats.

In the final days of the Biden administration, the FDA’s veterinary center called on pet food manufacturers to take additional steps to ensure their products were free of the virus.

Through the center, the FDA has oversight over the safety of drugs and food given to animals, including pets.

California has over 1,100 dairy farms, two-thirds of which have been impacted by the bird flu outbreak. A leading suspect is contaminated milking machines. Dr. Jon LaPook reports.

Experts looking for new ways to stop the spread of bird flu

Some lots of raw pet food sold in two states are being recalled after two indoor cats became ill with bird flu earlier this month and were euthanized due to the severity of their illnesses.

Officials in Oregon and Washington issued public health alerts late last week after tests confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the felines, which lived in different households in Multnomah County, Oregon. 

Both cats had eaten the same brand of raw pet food before becoming ill, according to the notices. The virus was found in both the cats and food samples, including unopened containers, they said. 

As a result, Wild Coast Pet Foods is recalling Boneless Free Range Chicken Formula Lot #22660 and #22664 with a best-buy date of December 2025. People with the recalled product should dispose of immediately and contact the place of purchase for a refund. 

“If you currently feed our chicken formula and are concerned, I recommend cooking until 165 degrees, replacing with a non-poultry formula or replacing with a gently cooked formula,” Tyler Duncan, founder of the company said in a statement posted on the company’s website. 

Wild Coast’s products are sold at retail stores throughout Washington and Oregon, with plans to expand to California, according to its website.

Cats and HPAI 

Domestic and wild cats are particularly sensitive to bird flu. Dogs can also contract HPAI, but usually exhibit mild clinical signs and low mortality compared to cats, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “At present, HPAI has not been detected in dogs in the United States, but there have been fatal cases in other countries,” the FDA stated.

The agency in January cited several recent investigations indicating the virus had been transmitted to cats through food, with more than a dozen cats killed or sickened by HPAI, most often by consuming unpasteurized milk or raw meats. 

The Oregon Department of Agriculture offers the following tips to protect pets:

• Do no feed your pet undercooked or raw meat, including uncooked or freeze-dried meat-based diets, treats or animal products.
• Do not feed your pet raw (unpasteurized) milk or colostrum.
• Stop pets from eating birds or other wild animals.
• Wash your hands after touching raw meat or interacting with poultry, livestock or animals outside your home.
• Consider changing clothing and shoes after interacting with animals or birds and before interacting with your pets.
• Contact your veterinarian if your pet appears sick and let them know of potential exposures.

Pets with HPAI infections may experience fever, lethargy, low appetite, reddened or inflamed eyes, discharge from the eyes and nose, difficulty breathing, and neurological signs like tremors, seizure, incoordination, or blindness. If your pet has consumed this product and has any of these symptoms, contact your veterinarian immediately, The Washington State Department of Agriculture advised. 

The current human health risk is low, but people exposed should watch for symptoms like eye redness or irritation (conjunctivitis), cough, sore throat, sneezing, runny/stuffy nose, muscle/body aches, headaches, fatigue, fever, trouble breathing, diarrhea, nausea and/or vomiting, and pet owners or handlers showing these signs should contact their healthcare providers.

The Wild Coast recall is not the first of its kind, with Northwest Naturals recalling a batch of pet food in December after a cat died of bird flu in Oregon. 

That late 2024 action involved 2-pound bags of Feline Turkey Recipe raw frozen pet food, marked with best if used by dates of 05/21/26 B10 and 06/23/2026 B1. The product was sold in a dozen U.S. states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. It was also sold in British Columbia in Canada.

Ohio’s health department confirmed Saturday that a farmer in the state was discharged from the hospital after being sickened by bird flu, marking the fourth American to have been hospitalized with the H5N1 virus.

“The individual had respiratory symptoms. He was previously hospitalized and has since been released,” a spokesperson for Ohio’s health department told CBS News in an email Saturday.

Authorities in Ohio had previously refused to disclose the status of their bird flu case, which was first announced earlier this week in a man who had contact with sick poultry. 

News of the hospitalization comes a day after Wyoming announced the third U.S. hospitalization from bird flu, linked to exposure to an infected backyard flock. 

Wyoming’s health department declined Saturday to release details of the patient’s status, who is hospitalized in neighboring Colorado.

“We don’t typically provide information on patient condition due to privacy concerns,” spokesperson Kim Deti said in an email to CBS News. 

Deti said that the hospitalization in Colorado occurred within the last two weeks, “just a couple of days” after they had been exposed to sick poultry at their home in Wyoming’s Platte County.

The vast majority of human cases have been blamed on direct, often intensive exposure to sick cows or birds.

Data reported so far by the CDC from testing labs suggests that this winter’s record surge of influenza is being driven by seasonal strains of the virus, not human-to-human spread of a bird flu strain.

However, investigations of a handful of human bird flu cases in the U.S. have so far not been able to identify a source of how they may have gotten sick.

The first U.S. bird flu hospitalization was reported last year in Missouri, though health officials think the patient tested positive while hospitalized for other reasons, not bird flu. A second hospitalization was later reported in Louisiana, in a patient who died from the virus.

Which bird flu strain sickened the new cases?

It is unclear which strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus caused the Ohio and Wyoming cases. Answering that question has been a focus of experts and health officials for previous cases, as they track the evolution of the virus.

Federal authorities usually take samples of the virus and analyze them for worrying mutations that might raise the risk of the virus spreading between humans or causing more severe disease. 

A spokesperson for Ohio’s health department said that information was not immediately available. Wyoming has also not confirmed the genotype of their case, though the state’s veterinarian says flocks in the county where the patient lived recently tested positive for the B3.13 strain of the virus.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether that had occurred for these cases.

Many human cases of bird flu in the U.S. to date have been in dairy workers after working with sick cows infected by the B3.13 strain of the H5N1 virus. 

Scientists suspect that B3.13 is less severe for humans. Until recently, it had been the only bird flu strain detected spreading between dairy herds and into some nearby poultry farms.

But a new strain called D1.1 has grown to dominate the spread between wild migratory birds in recent months. That strain has also contributed to a surge of spillovers from wild birds to poultry flocks that have driven up egg prices nationwide.

D1.1 was also behind the first confirmed U.S. fatality from bird flu, in the Louisiana patient. A child in Canada was also hospitalized with D1.1 last year.

D1.1 has also spread at least twice now in recent weeks from birds to dairy herds, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed Friday, dashing hopes that the spillover which started the B3.13 dairy herd outbreaks in late 2023 was a one-off.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed a third U.S. bird flu hospitalization, Wyoming’s health department said Friday, after a woman was admitted to a healthcare facility in neighboring Colorado. 

The patient was experiencing “flu-like symptoms” and had “health conditions that can make people more vulnerable to illness,” Wyoming’s health department said. She was likely exposed to the H5N1 virus through direct contact to an infected poultry flock at her home.

“Our staff has followed up with other people who had contact with the flock and the patient, and will continue working with state and national experts to monitor the situation carefully for Wyoming,” Dr. Alexia Harrist, Wyoming’s state health officer, said in a statement.

It is unclear how many people in Colorado may have been exposed to the bird flu case while traveling in the state. A spokesperson for Colorado’s health department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The patient was a resident of Wyoming’s Platte County, the state’s health department said. The Wyoming Livestock Board recently confirmed three backyard flocks infected by the virus, including in Platte County.

Those flocks were infected by B3.13, state veterinarian Hallie Hasel tells CBS News. It is unclear whether the human bird flu patient in Colorado was also infected by B3.13. 

A spokesperson for the CDC, which usually studies and sequences worrying bird flu cases, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Health experts had thought that B3.13 strain might be less severe for people infected. That is different from the D1.1 strain that was behind a bird flu death in Louisiana last month and a hospitalization of a child in Canada last year. 

The first U.S. bird flu hospitalization was reported in Missouri last year, sickened by B3.13, but health officials at the time said that person was likely hospitalized for other reasons and had incidentally tested positive for the virus.

The hospitalization comes just days after bird flu cases were also confirmed in people in Nevada and Ohio. 

The Nevada patient was not hospitalized and only had mild symptoms, local health officials have said. Ohio’s health department has not commented on the status of their bird flu case, despite repeated requests.

Health and agriculture departments also announced Friday another raw pet food recall linked to spread of the virus to cats in Oregon, and a second spillover of the D1.1 virus from birds into cows in Arizona.

Before Friday’s case, there had been 68 human cases of bird flu confirmed by the CDC. Most have been linked to direct exposure to sick animals, though investigators have been unable to identify a source for three cases so far.

The uptick in bird flu cases comes amid an ongoing surge of seasonal influenza that is at record highs nationwide in emergency rooms and hospitals, above peaks seen during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

Data from testing laboratories suggests it is the usual seasonal variants of the virus driving the surge, not human-to-human spread of a bird flu strain.

The CDC said Friday that those seasonal strains of the virus had driven influenza levels to some of the highest peaks in years, marking the first “high severity” season declared by the agency since 2017. 

A dairy worker in Nevada has been confirmed to be infected by a new bird flu strain found to be spreading among cows in the state last week. 

That strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus, called D1.1 by scientists, is different from a previous variant called B3.13 which had infected at least 40 dairy workers in the U.S. to date.

D1.1 was also behind a fatal case in Louisiana in a person who was hospitalized last year, raising concerns that the strain might lead to more severe disease in humans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 14 other cases last year have also been linked to D1.1 from birds, which did not result in hospitalization.

B3.13 has led to only symptoms of conjunctivitis — or pink eye — in many cases and research suggests it is less severe for humans than other bird flu strains.

So far, health authorities in Nevada say the dairy worker, who tested positive after working with sick cows in the state’s Churchill County, had only pink eye as their symptom and is now recovering. 

“There is currently no evidence of person to person spread of this virus. Close contacts of the infected person and other workers exposed at the farm are being contacted and monitored for symptoms and are being offered personal protective equipment (PPE), testing and antiviral medication,” the Central Nevada Health District said in a statement.

Owen Truesdell, a spokesperson for the health district, said there is currently no evidence of other dairy workers showing symptoms.

“Please note that this is an evolving situation and we will continue to communicate with reporters and the public when relevant new information is learned,” Truesdell said in an email.

Health officials have said for months that while the spread of the virus in animals warrants stepping up precautions for workers dealing with sick cows and birds, the risk to the general public remains low. 

“This case involving cow-to-human spread of H5 in a person with higher-risk occupational exposure does not change CDC’s risk assessment, which remains low for the public but is higher for people with occupational or recreational exposures,” a CDC spokesperson said in a statement.

Virologists have said that multiple key mutations would need to change in the virus before it could easily spread between humans, beyond the occasional dead-end spillovers seen so far from animals into humans.

An analysis published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday found that one “mammalian adaptation” had been found in the virus from the D1.1-infected cows in Nevada last month, but said there was “no evidence of onward transmission among humans.”

Will vaccines work for D1.1?

While the seasonal flu vaccine is not designed to boost protection against H5N1, there are different kinds of vaccines that health authorities have prepared for a potential bird flu pandemic.

Health authorities routinely test those pandemic vaccines against the bird flu virus to see if new strains have evolved to escape the protection from those shots.

Previous testing by the CDC with D1.1 strains spreading in wild birds have found that the pandemic vaccines stockpiled by the U.S. government should still offer protection, two health officials told CBS News. 

Dr. Richard Webby, head of a World Health Organization influenza collaborating center at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, said those tests were done using antibodies after infection.

“It is anticipated that vaccination will induce an even better response,” said Webby in an email.

Why aren’t we vaccinating for bird flu?

Under the Biden administration last year, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response moved to prepare enough vials to vaccinate 2.4 million people if needed — but so far those doses have not been distributed for use.

Officials said at the time that there was not yet a need to roll out the immunizations, citing the largely mild symptoms in infected workers and lack of human-to-human spread.

Virtually all U.S. human cases of bird flu have been linked to direct contact with sick animals, often during intensive exposures like caring directly for sick animals or culling large flocks of infected birds. That includes the person who died in the Louisiana case, who had direct contact with sick birds.

But there have also been three cases over the past year with an “unknown” exposure, where investigators were unable to track down a likely explanation for how people got sick. 

More clues to one of those bird flu cold cases could come this month, when the CDC is expected to have results from a study looking at blood samples that might reveal missed infections among contacts of a child sickened in San Francisco.

“No additional cases have been identified and there remains no evidence of human-to-human transmission,” a spokesperson for San Francisco’s Department of Public Health said on Jan. 24.

President Trump has selected Gerald Parker, a veterinarian and former top-ranking federal health official, to head the White House’s pandemic office, two U.S. officials tell CBS News. 

Congress created the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As part of one of the lessons learned from the outbreak, the office was intended to formalize the so-called czar roles that had led efforts across the federal government to prepare and respond to pandemic threats.

Parker was previously the associate dean for Global One Health at Texas A&M University. “One Health” refers to the study of how health threats in animals and the environment are closely linked to human health concerns, including how dangerous viruses and bacteria often emerge in animals before spreading to humans.

Spokespeople for the university and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

He has served under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, and was recently head of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity under the Biden administration. This office was charged with crafting recommendations for new rules governing research that could create riskier pathogens.

Parker has worked for the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security.

“I’ve not been a fan of every choice that Donald Trump has made. And I’ve been very critical of many of them. This one is a very good choice,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House COVID-19 response coordinator under President Biden. 

Jha said he had consulted with Parker many times, describing him as widely known within the public health community as “deeply knowledgeable, serious, not particularly partisan, but really just very focused on important issues.”

One of the first challenges Parker will have to tackle is the unprecedented spread of bird flu around the country. 

In recent months, variants of the virus have decimated the poultry and dairy industries, driven up egg prices and led to concerns about spillovers into humans, including one death in Louisiana. 

Under the Biden administration, the office was charged with coordinating the mammoth response operations at HHS agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has struggled to investigate and stomp out spread of the virus in farms.

“There are very few public health experts who have that breadth of knowledge around One Health and have dealt with animal health. And so, I think that is an advantage he has over many other people,” said Jha.

Other challenges loom on the immediate horizon, including the U.S. response to a new outbreak of an Ebola virus in Uganda that has faced delays due to the Trump administration’s sweeping pauses on foreign aid and shutdown of U.S. Agency for International Development missions.

Parker’s selection for the role suggests that President Trump is not planning to do away entirely with the office, a possibility he had raised during his campaign. 

Some Trump advisers had suggested that the office might be reorganized into the National Security Council, instead of operating as a standalone team.

One current health official voiced concern over whether Parker’s team would be adequately staffed for the breadth of work awaiting him, as he starts at the White House this week.

“I do know that by picking Gerry Parker, I think at least the Trump White House is signaling they’re going to take biological threats seriously and they’re going to have a serious person at the helm,” said Jha.