The health care system has stockpiles of medicine and has worked out “a lot of the kinks” since the Covid pandemic. But experts still have some concerns about a bird flu outbreak.
Four years after a new coronavirus swept through New York in what was called a once-in-a-century event, public health officials are beginning to prepare for the possibility that a far worse pandemic is on its way.
The bird flu virus, H5N1, is not spreading among people. But the city is already preparing as if it could.
It is considering plans to set up isolation and quarantine hotels. One New York City hospital system is taking steps to start testing its sewage for the virus, so that it will know if bird flu is silently circulating among patients and staff.
But some epidemiologists worry that once again, the public health response in New York will be too sluggish in the early phases, should an epidemic break out in the city.