A critic of the U.S. response speaks out, and USDA tries to ‘corner the virus’

STAT Seth Berkley, the former head of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, gave voice last week to a point of view STAT has been hearing for a while about the U.S. response to the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in dairy cows. “It’s been shocking to watch the ineptitude,” Berkley, an American currently living in Switzerland, said at an event on the future of vaccines held in London. Berkley was talking, among other things, about the surveillance being done to try to get a handle on how widespread the outbreak has actually become. It has been nearly three months since the virus was first identified in cattle, and the country is no closer to an answer to that question. As of Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had confirmed infections in 102 herds in 12 states; Iowa, one of the latest states to report infected herds, announced it had found two more that haven’t yet made it to the USDA list. To date three people — all farmworkers — have contracted the virus from cows.