Researchers at the Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation in Nutley have joined the fight against the bird flu, researching how the virus functions and how it reacts to certain drugs. Using a similar technology developed in 2020 to quickly detect the novel coronavirus, CDI researchers are now testing for cases of bird flu in people.
“At the peak of the pandemic, we were getting hundreds, if not thousands of virus samples in a week, and we didn’t have time to be able to use high-throughput sequencing,” said Dr. David Perlin, the CDI’s chief scientific officer. “We needed a more rapid analysis.”
Now, Perlin said Hackensack Meridian Health patients showing flu-like symptoms are tested to see what strain of flu they have. Of the thousands of tests performed by HMH this season, he said, just three of them have been considered atypical flu strains, and none of them tested positive for avian flu.
The outbreak has killed millions of egg-laying chickens nationwide and at least 100 wild birds in New Jersey. There have been no reported cases in the state in people, dairy cattle or poultry.
Dr. David Cennimo, an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Rutgers, said most people shouldn’t worry about contracting bird flu.
“These cases have, at this point, been confined almost exclusively to people who had occupational contact with the virus,” he said. “So they were caring for birds and flocks that wound up infected, or they were dairy workers and the cows were infected.”
There are no reported cases of the virus spreading from humans to other humans, although a mutation in the virus could cause that to happen in the future.
