The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitals treating people for the flu should test them for avian influenza within 24 hours.

CDC officials say medical professionals are seeing more patients whose illness cannot be traced back to an infected animal or bird.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that hospitals speed up testing people who are hospitalized with the flu for H5N1 bird flu. Health care workers in hospitals are urged to perform additional testing on patients hospitalized with influenza A — ideally within 24 hours of admission — to determine