Maryland state and local surveillance of the bird flu has been increasing in recent days after preliminary testing of a commercial poultry flock in Delaware produced a “presumptive positive” result. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first fatal case of bird flu in a human.
On Monday, the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s State Veterinarian, Dr. Jennifer Trout, sent out a letter to the state’s poultry producers urging “rigorous biosecurity measures” at their farms, and stating that any unexplained deaths of birds in their flocks should be reported to the department.
In Montgomery County, Sean O’Donnell, deputy chief for public health services in the county, told WTOP that bird flu is not new. A version of bird flu has been present for 25 years, but “like COVID, that we’ve had recently, it has developed variants.” Most recently, “In 2024, that variant spread to cows and, in fact, between cows,” he said.
O’Donnell said the threat that bird flu presents to humans is still considered relatively low, given that “people are mostly getting sick from direct exposure to either dairy cows that are infected or sick poultry, and generally, those are in the large poultry farms where they’re becoming exposed.”
When it comes to bird flu in cattle and the concern over milk production, O’Donnell said, “So far, there have been no detection of virus in dairy herds or milk products in the state of Maryland.”
O’Donnell also said Maryland bars the sale of raw milk for human consumption, and that earlier in 2024, the state’s Department of Agriculture and the Maryland State Department of Health “jointly instituted a statewide order that now requires mandatory testing of regulated raw milk” in order to prevent the potential for the spread of the virus.
“There is no evidence of sustained human-to-human H5N1 virus transmission in any country, and limited, non-sustained, human-to-human H5N1 virus transmission has not been reported worldwide since 2007,” according to the CDC.
O’Donnell said a lot has been learned from battling the spread of COVID.
“We’ve learned how to protect ourselves from the disease through the use of distancing, through the use of masks and other PPE,” he said. “Again, this is not a time when we’re telling people they need to panic about these things, these precautions are in place to try to prevent serious illness.”
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