In a recent CNN article, health experts have raised alarms about the United States’ inadequate response to the looming threat of bird flu, specifically the H5N1 strain. Dr. Deborah Birx, former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, emphasized that the country has not learned crucial lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving it vulnerable to another potential health crisis.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump, said on “CNN Newsroom” with Pamela Brown, “We kind of have our head in the sand about how widespread this is from the zoonotic standpoint, from the animal-to-human standpoint.”
Among her key concerns are the lack of widespread testing, complications from seasonal flu and genetic mutation of the virus.
Dr. Birx highlighted the need for more extensive testing of farm workers, who are at higher risk of exposure to the virus. The current testing protocols are insufficient to detect and prevent the spread of H5N1, a situation that in the future may become more urgent.
A spokesperson for the CDC refuted her claim stating, “more than 70,000 specimens have been tested, looking for novel flu viruses; more than 10,000 people exposed to avian flu have been monitored for symptoms, and 540 people have been tested specifically for H5N1.” The spokesperson continued, “Additionally, CDC partnerships with commercial labs mean that H5N1 tests are now available to doctor’s offices around the country, significantly increasing testing capacity.”
Dr. Birx also pointed out that as the seasonal flu begins to circulate, there is an increased risk of co-infection with H5N1. This could lead to viruses swapping gene segments, potentially making the bird flu virus more capable of infecting humans. Already recent genetic analysis of samples from a patient in Louisiana, who was hospitalized with the first severe case of H5N1 in the US, showed that the virus likely mutated to become more transmissible to humans. Although there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission yet, the mutations are concerning.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged the risks but maintains that the threat to the general public remains low. The CDC has emphasized the importance of ongoing genomic surveillance in both people and animals, as well as containment measures for avian influenza outbreaks.
The World Health Organization doesn’t currently categorize the bird flu outbreak as a global health emergency. Those that do fall into this category include COVID-19, cholera, dengue, Marburg virus and mpox.
Health experts are urging the US to take more proactive measures to mitigate the threat of bird flu. This includes expanding testing, especially among high-risk populations, and enhancing surveillance and prevention strategies. The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic should serve as a wake-up call to address the potential dangers of H5N1 before it becomes a larger public health issue.
Yet Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America has stated that while we must remain vigilant, H5N1 has been infecting humans since 1997, and while it has had time to evolve, it still doesn’t easily jump from person to person. “I don’t think that this is the highest risk bird flu strain,” he says. “You can’t say the risk is zero. But of the bird flu viruses, it’s lower risk.”
