With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.

The case in Louisiana is the first human death from bird flu in the U.S. during this current outbreak, but there was a death in Mexico back in May 2024 in a patient with no known exposure to farm animals. The case, much like the patient in Louisiana, was in a person with other underlying conditions, though it’s not clear what those may have been.

A child in California is presumed to have H5N1 bird flu, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Experts weigh in on the risk of a potential virus mutation.

As The New York Times reported, a senior with underlying medical conditions was hospitalized and died from bird flu around the start of the new year. The older adult is believed to have contracted the disease from a backyard poultry flock and wild birds,

Two months shy of the fifth anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic, the US has recorded its first human death as a result of avian influenza H5N1 infection. The unidentified Louisiana man contracted the virus through contact with infected wild and domestic birds on his property