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A person in Texas has tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza A virus (H5N1), also known as bird flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed. This individual, who was exposed to cattle that were believed to be infected with the virus, reported eye redness—a sign of conjunctivitis—but no other symptoms. The patient is being treated with antiviral medication and is recovering.

Avian flu has been ripping through farmed poultry and wild bird populations around the world in recent years. It has also infected mammalian species ranging from foxes, bears, and seals to cats and dogs. And in recent weeks, infections have been found in cattle in six U.S. states: Kansas, Texas, Michigan, New Mexico, Idaho, and Ohio.* There is no evidence of human-to-human transmission so far, and the CDC says the risk to the public remains low.

The new human case is the second known to occur in the U.S. The first was in 2022, when a person in Colorado tested positive for the virus via a nasal swab after having direct contact with infected poultry. That patient reported mild fatigue and later recovered. Previous cases of avian flu in humans were deadly, but they involved a different form of the virus than the one that is currently circulating.

Scientific American talked to Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, about the latest human case and the risk to human health more broadly.

How worried should we be about the human bird flu case in Texas?

First of all, there’s some clarification here. Neither of these two cases [in the U.S.] has been an actual influenza infection, as you think of a respiratory infection. They both have been basically either a nasal swab detection, for the previous one, or in the case of this one, a conjunctivitis—an eye infection. So this isn’t classic influenza at all.

The first one was just someone who was tested routinely. They were working in a barn, depopulating the birds that were dying from flu, and they had some mild symptoms, and they just got tested. They don’t know if the symptoms were related to it, and it could have been that the virus was just picked up in the nose because of just inhaling it in. The second case is a case of conjunctivitis. So that’s not, again, unexpected in that there are receptor sites in the eye for influenza viruses.

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