we've seen a major uptick in cases of the bird flu in recent weeks and now a new report from Newsweek reveals the CDC is on high alert and searching for pandemic red flags the cdc's last update shows there are 66 confirmed cases of bird flu in the US confirmed cases have also been detected in 915 Dairy herds and more than 129 million poultry joining us now for more primary care physician and public health specialist Dr saju Matthew uh Dr Matthew I know you're in Atlanta you're seeing uh uh different cases and and you're following this
like we are it feels like we hear about viruses all the time but these bird flu cases continue to pop up all across the country namely in California and places like that what should we know well you know Nick here's the deal so far most of the cases have been amongst poultry workers commercial Farm Workers and they are constantly exposed to the bird flu this one severe case in Louisiana is what's concerned Public Health officials like me because that is the first severe case of bird flu from dead birds in that patient's backyard so the
question now remains is the is the virus mutating so easily that it's penetrating the human body and next will there be a case of human to human or personto person transmission but I want to be clear the average risk for um a person in the community is still low if you're not working with wild birds or or poultry your risk for the bird flu should be low but we need to be absolutely sure that we are sequencing those viruses and paying close attention to the mutations and Dr Matthew you're used to viruses you expect a
virus to mutate over time you're just worried about the speed of it possibly and how it is spreading there are a number of ways to become infected a big concern is that that infection could occur uh through our food chain now according to the CDC the public health risk remains low like you said no infected birds or products will be entered into the commercial food chain uh when it comes to poultry though and eggs any chances uh that it could affect the things that families uh consume and are there any changes the fam should make
you know ultimately when you think about decreasing your risk the average risk for an average American family you want to make sure you avoid raw food you want to make sure that you are past izing your milk avoid raw milk and in the cases of the number of cats that have also gotten the uh the bird flu if you're a pet owner try to keep your cats indoors and again always make sure that it's commercial pet food and that we're all avoiding uh raw milk those are some of the steps that the average person can
take to decrease the risk Dr Matthew I know you practice Family Medicine what are you telling your patients who uh concerned parent comes in are like my kids's been coughing I'm really worried here what should people do I have a minute left and I'd like for you to give us something we can take away well here's the deal we have vaccines we have vaccines against RSV we still have this is still the time where you can get vaccinated against the flu covid-19 so if you're sick the most important thing is to obviously see a doctor
there are remedies there are antivirals for a lot of these viruses but I'm telling you right now in the emergency rooms we are being swamped by these four viruses mostly where mask if you're in congested spaces wash your hands and it's not too late to still get vaccinated Dr sju Matthew thank you so much for joining me this morning you bet thank you for watching go to newsnation now.com to find newsnation on your television provider and don't forget to click the red subscribe button below to get more of news nation's fact-driven unbiased coverage
