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Health officer reports San Francisco's single H5N1 case; department steps up enhanced surveillance
Summary
San Francisco public-health officials reported one confirmed H5N1 infection in a city resident and said intensive contact tracing and serology found no evidence of person-to-person spread; the department described ongoing enhanced surveillance and preparedness planning.
San Francisco's health officer briefed the Health Commission on the local and national status of avian influenza (H5N1), including one San Francisco case confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and no evidence of onward person-to-person transmission following an extensive investigation.
The case: On Jan. 9, 2025, the SFDPH Public Health Laboratory identified an influenza A specimen that CDC subsequently confirmed as H5N1. The specimen came from enhanced surveillance testing of respiratory samples that had tested positive for influenza A. Health Officer Dr. Susan Phillip told the commission the case was a child who lives in the city, experienced a short febrile illness with conjunctivitis and recovered within about a week. Genetic sequencing at CDC linked the virus to genotype B3 associated with the California dairy-cow outbreak.
Why this matters: Most U.S. H5N1 infections have been associated with agricultural exposure or consumption of unpasteurized milk; the absence of detected person-to-person transmission, limited clinical severity to date in most U.S. cases and the extensive negative testing…
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