No, Texans Don’t Need to Panic About Bird Flu—Yet

After a Panhandle man tested positive for a “highly pathogenic avian influenza”—a.k.a. bird flu—last week, it’s understandable for Texans to foster concerns about the potential onset of another pandemic. But federal and state health authorities, as well as infectious disease doctors, have emphasized that the risk remains low.Primarily, that’s because the virus, known as H5N1, which has been circulating worldwide since at least 1996, hasn’t yet demonstrated the ability to jump from one person to another. The Texan who contracted the latest strain of the pathogen worked with a population of dairy cattle that were known to have recently been infected. He is only the second person confirmed to have bird flu in the United States, following a case two years ago in Colorado.“There’s no immediate…

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