Illinois health officials taking bird flu precautions despite assessing no ‘active risk’ to humans

[February 17, 2025]  By Jade Aubrey and UIS Public Affairs Reporting (PAR)

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention says the risk of an outbreak of the bird flu in humans is low, although Illinois’ health department is preparing for the possibility.

On Friday, the Trump administration reportedly laid off 1,300 probationary employees of the CDC, which has led nationwide efforts to contain the bird flu. The layoff would affect 10% of the federal agency’s workforce.

This comes after the administration paused federal health agencies’ communications with the public on Jan. 21 for over a week. The pause prohibited the CDC from publishing their weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which included one of the three reports on the bird flu scheduled to be published the week of Jan. 21.

The CDC has been monitoring and responding to cases of infection since the first outbreak of a mutated strain of the virus in commercial poultry in the U.S. in February 2022 – though it’s unclear how recent leadership changes and staffing cuts will affect this monitoring.

New U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has indicated he will follow President Donald Trump’s lead on downsizing federal departments, meaning cuts to critical agencies that regulate public health and investigate new diseases could limit their ability to respond to a public health crisis.

While federal policy changes create uncertainty, the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health said this week said the virus is “not an active risk” to humans in Illinois because no human-to-human spread has been recorded. But the state has taken steps to limit its spread among animals.

No known human-to-human spread

Bird flu is the term being used for H5N1 avian influenza, the disease caused by infection with avian influenza Type A viruses. It naturally occurs in wild aquatic bird populations, but has spread to domestic poultry and other bird and animal species in the U.S.

It typically doesn’t infect humans. However, recent human infections have occurred after close or prolonged unprotected contact with infected sick or dead birds and other mammals. Currently, there are 68 reported cases of human infections, with one associated death. However, 41 of those 68 cases were transmitted from infected dairy cows.

According to IDPH, a person can be infected by breathing in the virus or touching something that has the virus on it and then touching their mouth, eyes, or nose.

So far, no human-to-human transmission of the bird flu has been recorded. IDPH Director Dr. Sameer Vohra said this could change if a person with the bird flu contracts another strain of influenza, like the seasonal flu. The two infections could mutate and create a new virus that humans might not have immunity to, and human-to-human infections would likely begin. If that happens, then the worry of a pandemic would come into play.

“And that’s why, both through our statements currently and the national CDC’s statements, we’re continuing to maintain that the risk to humans right now remains low,” Vohra said in an interview. “Our responsibility is protecting the health of our residents here in Illinois, with our partners in Ag and DNR (the departments of agriculture and natural resources), and doing everything that we can and using the tools at our disposal in preparation, in case we have a human case or see human-to-human transmission emerge.”

People infected may be asymptomatic or experience mild flu-like symptoms such as eye redness, fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle or body aches, headaches, fatigue, and shortness of breath to severe symptoms such as pneumonia. Less common symptoms of diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and seizures have been reported.

CDC data shows 909 human cases of bird flu have been reported worldwide since 1997, and the about half of them died. But not all cases of infection are likely to be reported or even noticed, as sometimes the virus doesn’t present any symptoms – meaning a true mortality rate is difficult to quantify.

The Illinois Department of Agriculture issued a 30-day suspension on the display or sale of poultry at swap meets, exhibitions, flea markets, and auction markets on Tuesday in attempts to reduce the spread of the virus.

Dr. Sameer Vohra speaks at an event in Springfield in May 2023. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)

In January, Illinois saw a relative increase in infection; Kakadoodle, a family-run farm in suburban Chicago, lost 3,000 chickens to the bird flu. The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago lost an infected flamingo and seal, while infections were reported in a wild goose in Tazewell County and a captive hawk in DuPage County.

Bird flu’s evolution
The 2022 outbreak of the virus sparked new monitoring immediately raised concerns because there were more than 378.5 million egg-laying chickens in the United States. The USDA said the bird flu is quickly taking over entire flocks when even one bird is infected, leaving farmers with no choice but to put whole flocks down. This is directly contributing to the recent increase in price and scarcity of eggs, which reached a record high in January.

According to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a little more than 23 million birds have been infected in the last 30 days as of Jan. 15, including 159 commercial flocks. Infections in small mammals and birds were first reported in late 2022. The first multistate outbreak of the infection in dairy cows was reported in March 2024 as the virus mutated, creating a new strain and showing its adaptability to living in different animal breeds. Soon after that, the first case of human infection was reported.

“We’ve been fortunate, currently, to have no human cases of the bird flu here in Illinois, and no cases of dairy cattle that have been positive,” Vohra said. “And one of the things that has been reassuring is that we have not had any human-to-human transmission nationally.”

Following the Trump administration’s communications pause, the CDC on Thursday published a report on the bird flu, which revealed the results of blood tests taken last September from 150 U.S.-based veterinarians who work with cattle. It found that three of the veterinarians tested positive for the virus without experiencing symptoms. Two of the infected veterinarians practiced in states with known infections in cattle, but the other infected veterinarians practiced in Georgia and South Carolina, two states with no known infection in cattle.

The report called for “the possible benefit of systematic surveillance for rapid identification of HPAI A(H5) virus in dairy cattle, milk, and humans who are exposed to cattle.”

Learning from COVID-19
Vohra said IDPH is implementing safety measures it learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the agency is working with local health departments and creating protocols for testing, treatment, quarantine, and isolation, as well as making sure health providers are stocked with the proper protective equipment, preventative medicine like Tamiflu, and rapid tests they would need if human transmission begin to occur in Illinois.

The department also recently created rapid tests that will be able to individually identify both strains of the bird flu. If a person tests positive for the bird flu on a rapid test currently used, the tests do not show a distinction between the seasonal flu and the bird flu. Vohra said a positive result on the new tests would show not only which strain of the flu the person has, but even which strain of the bird flu they’re infected with.

Because infections are detected at higher rates in the fall and spring seasons as birds migrate and spread the virus faster, state agencies have issued several guides for the general public on how deal with cases of the bird flu.

Tips include avoiding contact with any bird displaying signs of illness, keeping dogs, cats and other pets away from carcasses of birds, and thoroughly cooking game meat to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

To be most effective, treatment must be started within two days of the infection. IDPH urges anyone who starts to experience symptoms after contact with a sick or dead bird to immediately talk to a health care provider.

If working with or handling poultry, members of the public are encouraged to visit the USDA’s “Defend the Flock” program for tips on biosecurity practices.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.