The first U.S. bird flu death has been reported. Louisiana health officials announced the death Monday of a person who had been hospitalized with severe respiratory symptoms.

A Louisiana resident infected by H5N1 bird flu has died, state authorities there reported Monday, marking the first U.S. death from the disease. The patient, a person older than 65 years with preexisting conditions,

The death in Louisiana — involving a person with underlying health conditions — is the first human case in the United States linked to exposure to backyard birds, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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.

The other 65 known cases in the U.S. have all had been mild, though a 13-year-old girl in Canada with H5N1 also had severe illness.

The patient, who was older than 65 and had underlying medical conditions, was hospitalized Dec. 18 in critical condition with severe respiratory illness.

The Louisiana Department of Health said on Monday that a U.S. patient hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu had died, the country's first death from an outbreak of the virus that has sickened dozens of people and millions of poultry and cattle.

The LDH revealed that the patient was over age 65, had underlying medical conditions and contracted bird flu after exposure to both wild birds and a non-commercial backyard flock.