by Cats who became infected with bird flu may have been able to spread the virus into the same household and vice versa, according to data that appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but then abruptly disappeared. The data seems to have been wrongly posted, but contain crucial information about the risks of bird flu for people and pets.
In one household, an infected cat may have spread the virus to another cat and a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by the New York Times. The cat died four days after the symptoms started. In a second household, an infected dairy farm seems to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then fell ill two days later and died on the third day.
The table was the only mention of bird flu in a scientific report that was published on Wednesday that was different to air quality and the forest fires in Los Angeles County. The table was not present in an embargo copy of the newspaper that was shared with news media on Tuesday and is not included in the versions that are currently available online. The table appeared briefly around 1 p.m., when the paper was first posted, but it is unclear how or why the mistake could have occurred.
The virus, called H5N1, is mainly adapted to birds, but it has been circulating in Zuivelvee since the beginning of last year. H5N1 has also infected at least 67 Americans, but does not yet have the ability to spread easily among people. Only one American, in Louisiana, has so far died from an H5N1 infection.
The report was part of the prestigious morbidity and mortality of the CDC weekly report, which had regularly published every week since the first episode ten years ago. But a prohibition on the agency had stopped the reports until the Wildfire report was published on Wednesday.
Experts said that the finding that cats could have passed on the virus to people was not completely unexpected. But they were alerted that the finding had not yet been released to the public.
“If there is new evidence about H5N1 that is stopped for political purposes, it is simply completely confused with the responsibility of the government, namely protecting the American people,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center in The Brown University School of Public Health.
It was important that the CDC immediately published the full data and the context in which they were collected for other scientists to assess, she said.
Scientists have known for a long time that cats are very sensitive to the virus. According to the US Department of Agriculture, at least 85 domestic cats have been infected since the end of 2022. But there had not been previously documented cases of cats that pass on the virus to people.
“Given the number of cats in the US and close contact with people, there is definitely a need to understand the potential risk,” said Dr. Diego Diel, a veterinarian and virologist at Cornell University.
Although cats can be infected when they hunt for infected wild birds, cases started to rise among domestic cats in the United States last year when the virus spread by dairy farms. On many farms, dead cats were the first signal that cows were infected. Various recent cases in cats with pets are also linked to polluted raw pet food or raw milk.
H5N1 is often fatal in cats, which can develop severe neurological symptoms.
Historically, H5N1 mainly has hit birds. But in recent years, new versions of the virus have been able to infect a wide range of mammals, including wild and domestic cats, seals and dairy cows. Infections in mammals offer the virus more options for evolving in ways that can make it possible to infect people more easily.
