A third human case of bird flu has been linked to the ongoing outbreak in cows on U.S. dairy farms — and this one came with respiratory symptoms, such as cough, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported May 30.
Officials first became aware of bird flu spreading among U.S. dairy cows in March, and since then, the viral disease has been detected among cattle on farms in nine states. The type of bird flu spreading is known as H5N1, which has sporadically infected individual humans in the past but has never spread widely from person to person. However, these rare human infections can sometimes be fatal, and there's concern about the virus picking up the necessary mutations to spread easily through the populace.
