With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.

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 risk to the general population from H5N1 bird flu remains low, a World Health Organization spokesperson said on Tuesday, following the first death of a patient from the virus in the United States.