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 is due to a mutation of the H5N1 virus that affects humans more mildly, as well as mutations of the virus that target 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.
According to CDCs, the mutations discovered in humans seem to expand as the virus adapts to their guest. The genetic adjustments in the H5N1 samples of the inflamed human were not provided in the samples of the flock of garden corral birds that inflamed the patient, which suggests that the applicable mutations evolved only after the transmission. of the virus. Federal officials of physical conditioning said in the report that the propagation between nearby contacts is more likely when these adjustments expand the clinical course of a human infection.
“He is the one who is seriously ill. But not only that, the researchers isolated the virus of this individual with poor health in Louisiana, and discovered that this specific strain of the virus seems to have acquired mutations that make it more likely to join Receptors in the respiratory tract, “Wen said on Sunday, adding that this mutation allows a user to have a pepper and seasonal flu 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 poultry outbreaks in the 50 states; 16 states have outbreaks in cattle. In California, in the last 30 days, there have been more than three hundred parvadas that have given positive, and now we have 66 cases of avian flu in humans. “And that is almost a significant sub -account, because we have not done enough tests,” Wen said.
On Sunday, Wen also suggested that the Biden administration approve the HFIVEN1 vaccine, which is already evolved and under contract with brands to make approximately five million doses, but is waiting for the authorization of the FDA, a key difference with respect to the rookies of the stages.
“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 rapid vaccine authorization and additional testing is based on fears that the Trump administration could maintain vaccine distribution.
“I don’t need to wait for the Trump administration to potentially block vaccines by saying they need more evidence,” Wen said. “Look, the evidence is smart and the facts are smart. The new studies are smart. But you also have to weigh that against a potential catastrophe, like we could do with bird flu, like we’ve done with COVID. “
Some of President-elect Trump’s closet members, such as Dr. Marty Makary, who is expected to lead the FDA, were described through Wen as “very knowledgeable” and an “independent philosopher who listens to science and is willing to replace his mind. “Notice when new evidence emerges. “
“I’ve talked to my colleagues in public medicine and fitness, and I think we all share that concern, especially about Robert F. Kennedy, the nominee for fitness and human services,” Wen said. “Kennedy has championed many anti-vaxxer perspectives in the afterlife. In fact, he has been one of the leading advocates of anti-vaxxers in the country, if that’s the world, for more than two decades. “