{"id":6228,"date":"2024-04-02T19:48:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T00:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=6228"},"modified":"2024-04-02T19:53:13","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T00:53:13","slug":"how-prepared-the-u-s-is-for-a-bird-flu-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/04\/02\/how-prepared-the-u-s-is-for-a-bird-flu-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"How prepared the U.S. is for a bird flu pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Washington Post<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Federal officials are preparing for the possibility of additional human cases of bird flu<\/a>,testing components to create a vaccine after a Texas dairy worker was infected with the highly virulent virus<\/a>, even as they stress theUnited States remains far from needing to activate a full-blown emergency response<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two candidate vaccine viruses\u2014 essentially the building blocks manufacturers use to produce a vaccine \u2014 appear well matched to protect against the H5N1 strain circulating among dairy cattle and birds<\/a>, according to federal health officials.It\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s\u00a0regular surveillance for seasonal flu\u00a0<\/a>at more than 100 public health labs in all states as well as\u00a0enhanced monitoring\u00a0<\/a>put in place in 2022 for anyone who has been exposed to birds infected with that strain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCDC and the whole U.S. government is taking this situation very seriously,\u201d CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in an interview. \u201cWe had not seen avian flu<\/a> in cattle prior to last week. That is new. It\u2019s a reservoir for virus to circulate and potentially, change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The development underscores critical questions about whether the country is equipped to handle an influenza outbreak after the coronavirus<\/a> pandemic, the worst global health crisis in a century, exposed the weaknesses in the nation\u2019s public health infrastructure and decimated the public\u2019s trust <\/a>in key federal agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than half a dozen federal officials say their job is to prepare for the worst but said risk to the\u00a0general public remains low.<\/a>\u00a0H5N1 was first identified in geese in China in 1996, but outbreaks in the past haven\u2019t led to an explosion of cases in humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Post 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\u2014 essentially the building blocks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6229,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6228\/revisions\/6229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}