But we don't know what this means for humans. We don't know if they would play a role in transmitting the disease. We don't know how much virus the cats would excrete, how much people would need to be exposed to before they would fall ill.
But at the moment we don't know enough about the situation to tell whether or not the virus has changed in some way. And that's largely the reason the team has gone in.
I think really, (illness in) people like health-care workers and first responders would be our first indication that something is changing in the virus to make it more transmissible.
We don't have any information to suggest that this virus is more pathogenic or dangerous than other viruses.
We've never seen so many outbreaks of the same virus in so many different regions. Our concern obviously is that humans could potentially come into contact with birds infected with H5N1, which would mean populations worldwide are potentially at risk.
I'm not sure we've seen a cluster like this in terms of numbers and certainly it's a concern. Is the virus being transmitted more easily from birds to humans, or even from humans to humans? We need to put all the pieces together before we can come to conclusions.