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But the study, whose publication was delayed by a pause in public communications by the agency, leaves key questions unanswered.
Two dairy workers in Michigan may have transmitted bird flu to their pet cats last May, suggests a new study published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In one household, infected cats may also have passed the virus to other people in the home, but limited evidence makes it difficult to ascertain the possibility.
The results are from a study that was scheduled to be published in January but was delayed by the Trump administration’s pause on communications from the C.D.C.
A single data table from the new report briefly appeared online two weeks ago in a paper on the wildfires in California, then quickly disappeared. That odd incident prompted calls from public health experts for the study’s release.
The new paper still leaves major questions unanswered, including how the cats first became infected and whether farmworkers spread the virus to the cats and to other people in the household, experts said.
“I don’t think we can say for sure if this is human-to-cat or cat-to-human or cat-from-something-else,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.