People hospitalized for flu should be tested for bird flu within 24 hours, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday, in an expansion of the agency's efforts to tackle increasing infections in humans.

The CDC advises testing hospitalized flu patients for bird flu within 24 hours to prevent delays in identifying human infections. While the public risk remains low, nearly 70 Americans have contracted bird flu.

Two months shy of the fifth anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic, the US has recorded its first human death as a result of avian influenza H5N1 infection. The unidentified Louisiana man contracted the virus through contact with infected wild and domestic birds on his property