Overview
- The deceased was an older Grays Harbor County resident with underlying conditions who had been hospitalized in King County since early November.
- Testing at UW Medicine identified the virus as H5N5, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the result.
- Health authorities describe this as the first recorded human infection with this specific H5N5 variant worldwide.
- Environmental sampling detected avian influenza in the patient’s backyard flock environment, pointing to exposure from domestic or wild birds.
- No other linked human infections have been found, the public risk is assessed as low, and the CDC counts roughly 71 U.S. human bird-flu cases since 2024 with this being the second reported H5N5 death in the U.S. in that period.