Dr. Leana Wen said Sunday that the lack of testing for bird flu doesn’t mean that the virus isn’t alive in humans, and that she feels the federal government “should have learned our lesson from COVID” and should be proactive in making tests available for Americans — and not wait for labs to characterize the cases and their severity.
“I feel like we should have learned our lesson from COVID, that just because we aren’t testing doesn’t mean the virus isn’t there,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
“We should be having rapid tests, home tests, available to all farm workers, to their families, for the clinicians taking care of them, so that we aren’t waiting for public labs and CDC labs to tell us what’s bird flu or not,” she added.
The recent outbreak of bird flu stems from a mutation of the H5N1 virus that affects humans more easily, compared to past mutations of the virus that targeted birds and not mammals.
On Thursday, the CDC reported its first severe case of bird flu in the U.S. found in a patient in Louisiana who was infected from a backyard poultry flock. The Louisiana case was first confirmed by health officials Friday, adding to the total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States. Another severe case of H5N1 has been reported in a teen in British Columbia.
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According to the CDC, the mutations found in humans seemed to develop as the virus adapted to its host. The genetic changes in the H5N1 samples from the infected human were not present in the samples from the backyard poultry flock that infected the patient, suggesting that the concerning mutations had not developed until after the transmission of the virus. Federal health officials in the report said that spread between close contacts is more likely when these changes develop during the clinical course of a human infection.
“It’s someone who is severely ill. But not only that, researchers have isolated the virus in this individual who is sick in Louisiana, and they found that this particular strain of the virus appears to have acquired mutations that make it more likely to bind to airway receptors,” Wen said Sunday, adding that this mutation allows a person to have bird flu and seasonal flu at the same time.
Wen added that she believes the number of H5N1 cases currently reported in the U.S. is likely an undercount due to the lack of testing.
“We have outbreaks in poultry in all 50 states; 16 states have outbreaks in cattle. In California, in the last 30 days, there have been more than 300 herds that tested positive, and now we have 66 cases of bird flu in humans, and this is almost certainly a significant undercount, because we have not been doing nearly enough testing,” Wen said.
Wen on Sunday also urged the Biden administration to approve the H5N1 vaccine, which is already developed and contracted with manufacturers to make almost 5 million doses but awaits FDA authorization – a key difference from the beginning stages of COVID.
“There’s research done on it. They could get this authorized now, and also get the vaccine out to farm workers and to vulnerable people,” Wen said. “I think that’s the right approach, because we don’t know what the Trump administration is going to be doing around bird flu. If they have people coming in with anti-vaccine stances, could they hold up vaccine authorization? If they don’t want to know how much bird flu is out there, could they withhold testing? I mean, that’s a possibility.”
The push for immediate authorization of vaccines and additional testing is rooted in concern that the Trump administration could potentially delay vaccines.
“I don’t want to wait for the Trump administration to potentially hold up the vaccines saying that they want more evidence,” Wen said. “Look, evidence is always good and facts are always good. New research is always good. But you also have to weigh that against a potential catastrophe, as we could be having for bird flu, the way that we had for COVID.”
Some of President-elect Trump’s cabinet picks like Dr. Marty Makary, who is set to lead the FDA, Wen described as “very competent” and an “independent thinker who really listens to science and is willing to change his mind when there is new evidence that emerges.” There is more concern, however, over Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the controversial pick for Health and Human secretary who has spread false information on vaccines and autism.
“I’ve spoken to my colleagues in medicine and public health, and I think all of us share this concern, in particular about Robert F. Kennedy, the nominee to be the head of Health and Human Services,” Wen said. “Kennedy has espoused many views in the past that are anti-vaccine. In fact, he’s been one of the leading anti vaccine advocates in the country, if not in the world, over the last couple of decades.”
