Federal officials are preparing for the possibility of additional human cases of bird flu,testing components to create a vaccine after a Texas dairy worker was infected with the highly virulent virus, even as they stress theUnited States remains far from needing to activate a full-blown emergency response
Two candidate vaccine viruses— essentially the building blocks manufacturers use to produce a vaccine — appear well matched to protect against the H5N1 strain circulating among dairy cattle and birds, according to federal health officials.It’d probably be weeks to months before those shots could first be made available if needed, according to a Health and Human Services official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.
Top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is well poised to detect if a person has H5N1 through the agency’s regular surveillance for seasonal flu at more than 100 public health labs in all states as well as enhanced monitoring put in place in 2022 for anyone who has been exposed to birds infected with that strain.
“CDC and the whole U.S. government is taking this situation very seriously,” CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in an interview. “We had not seen avian flu in cattle prior to last week. That is new. It’s a reservoir for virus to circulate and potentially, change.”
The development underscores critical questions about whether the country is equipped to handle an influenza outbreak after the coronavirus pandemic, the worst global health crisis in a century, exposed the weaknesses in the nation’s public health infrastructure and decimated the public’s trust in key federal agencies.
More than half a dozen federal officials say their job is to prepare for the worst but said risk to the general public remains low. H5N1 was first identified in geese in China in 1996, but outbreaks in the past haven’t led to an explosion of cases in humans.