US Reports First Bird Flu Death In Over A Year — And It Came From a Surprising Source

A person from Washington state died on Sunday after reportedly contracting the bird flu from infected cattle.

Yakima County Health Officials said the deceased person had pre-existing health conditions and was hospitalized after exposure to avian influenza at a dairy farm with infected cattle, the Associated Press reported Monday. This marks the first confirmed death from the disease in the U.S. since early 2025.

“The Yakima County resident who was hospitalized with severe illness after contracting avian influenza (bird flu) following exposure at a dairy with infected cattle died on November 1, 2026,” the Yakima County Health Department told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “The Yakima Health District offers its heartfelt condolences to the individual’s family, friends, and loved ones during this difficult time. The individual had underlying health conditions.”

“Out of respect for the family’s privacy, the Yakima Health District is not releasing their name, gender, or age,” the department added.

Officials in the largely rural Washington state county did not release additional details about the person who recently died but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the person was infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus, the AP reported.

Yakima county officials reported that 33 dairy herds have recently tested positive for H5N1 and three human infections have been linked to exposure at a dairy facility, the outlet found.

The CDC declared avian flu to be a national public health concern back in 2024. Since that year, more than 70 humans have been infected by the virus to date according to the CDC.

Since the CDC’s declaration, the first reported U.S. bird flu death was an elderly person in Louisiana who succumbed to the virus in January 2025. The second death was from another Washington resident who died in November 2025 from a rarer strain of the virus known as H5N5, the AP reported.

This most recent death in Washington is now the third recorded death from avian flu. While dairy and poultry farmers are more at risk from contracting the virus, there is no known person-to-person spread and the risk to the general public is low, the CDC said as of Oct. 15.

The agency analyzed the genetic sequence of the virus from the recently deceased person and did not find anything that would make the virus spread more easily or cause more severe illness, a CDC spokesperson told the AP on Monday.

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