A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian flu in Louisiana, United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Wednesday.

Authorities have recorded a total of 61 cases of avian flu infections in the U.S., but all other cases have been mild.

Details of the confirmed case, which occurred on Friday, have not been disclosed, and the patient’s prognosis is unknown.

Genetic sequencing revealed that the H5N1 virus in the patient belonged to the D1.1 genotype, which has recently been detected in wild and domestic birds in the U.S., as well as in people in Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

The D1.1 genotype differs from the B3.13, which was identified in dairy cows and has triggered some outbreaks in poultry and people with mild symptoms like conjunctivitis.

A few human cases in the U.S. have not come from contact with animals, but health authorities believe it is too early to suggest person-to-person transmission.

The CDC considers the risk to the general public to be low.

In March, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian flu or H5N1 was first reported in several states.

A 65-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested at a border checkpoint in Croatia after attempting to enter the country in his car with a deceased woman sitting as a passenger, police announced on Tuesday.

The man was detained in a routine check in late November in Gunja, a border area separating Bosnia from Croatia, the police told AFP. Suspicious because they saw “no consciousness or movement” from the passenger, Croatian officers called a doctor, who confirmed the death of the 83-year-old woman, also Austrian, according to her identification.

The woman’s relationship to the suspect is unknown. She had died in Bosnia, and the man intended to repatriate her body to Austria to “avoid the formalities related to transporting a corpse,” according to the police. Croatian media reported that the man was her legal guardian.

Once her death was confirmed, a funeral service took charge of the body.

Colombian authorities arrested two nationals accused of the illegal trafficking of migrants to the United States and of endangering lives due to the disappearance of a boat with 40 people aboard, U.S. Department of Justice officials reported on Tuesday.

Hernando Manuel de la Cruz Rivera Orjuela, 52, and Luis Enrique Linero Pinto, 40, both Colombian citizens, were arrested on December 13 in Colombia at the request of the United States for their alleged involvement in a “transnational human trafficking operation,” the department said in a statement.

According to the charges, the detainees were transporting migrants to San Andrés Island in the Caribbean, where they would then be taken by boat to Nicaragua. The goal was to reach the United States through Central America and Mexico.

The accused are said to have advised the migrants on how to reach San Andrés Island, where they personally received them, arranged accommodations, and “took them to the boats that transported them to Nicaragua so they could enter the United States illegally,” the statement reads.

“These defendants put several migrants on the boat that disappeared off the coast of Nicaragua in 2023,” said Deputy Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri, head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, as cited in the statement.

Both men are “directly and personally responsible for the illicit trafficking of migrants on that vessel,” according to the indictment dated October 23.