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Bird Flu Update: CDC Says It’s Searching for These Pandemic Red Flags
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed it is monitoring for a number of red flags that suggest bird flu could become the world’s next pandemic.
Why It Matters
The first severe human bird flu case in the United States was reported in Louisiana earlier this month.
Genetic analysis found the virus had mutated, making it more easily transmissible to humans, the CDC said.
The agency called the mutations “concerning’ and “a reminder that A(H5N1) viruses can develop changes during the clinical course of a human infection.”
What To Know
The CDC told Newsweek Monday that while bird flu’s current risk to the general public remains low, the agency is carefully monitoring for several red flags that could indicate that the virus could be on the verge of becoming a pandemic.
Those red flags include any outbreaks of bird flu that are spread from person-to-person, as well as evidence that the virus has mutated, making it easier for it to spread between humans.
“Identifying epidemiologically linked clusters of influenza A(H5N1) human cases might indicate the virus is better able to spread between humans,” a spokesperson from the CDC A(H5N1) Bird Flu Response team told Newsweek via email.
Increased cases of humans catching bird flu from animals may also indicate the virus “is adapting to spread more easily from animals to people,” they added.
“CDC is searching for genetic changes in circulating viruses that suggest it could better transmit between humans,” the spokesperson said.
The CDC warned that any of those factors could “raise CDC’s risk assessment for the public.”
Human-to-human bird flu infections are rare but have occurred in other parts of the world.
However, none of the U.S. cases show evidence of human-to-human transmission. They all occurred in isolation, after exposure to infected animals.
“Thus far these types of mutations have been identified infrequently and have occurred in the context of prolonged infection of individual patients, and not at the time of initial exposure to the influenza A(H5N1) virus circulating in animals,” the spokesperson said.
The CDC says it has been actively monitoring thousands of reports of avian influenza infections in humans globally since 1997 to record cases and watch for concerning signs that bird flu is becoming more transmissible.
The spokesperson added that the CDC is also working with multiple state partners to search for evidence “suggestive of person-to-person spread of influenza A(H5N1).”
The recent case in Louisiana falls into the red flag category, the spokesperson said.
However, the CDC said that the case would be more worrying if the mutations had been found in the birds or at an earlier stage of infection, when the patient is more likely to unknowingly spread the virus.
While the Louisiana patient is the first severe case in the U.S., there have been more than 60 mild human cases reported in the U.S. this year.
Experts say the rise in cases is due to soaring bird flu infections in wild animal populations, which in turn have “put more humans at risk.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told CNN that “the pandemic clock is ticking” and urged officials to examine what they learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and use it to prepare for the next pandemic.
Where Are There Confirmed Cases of Bird Flu?
Around 65 bird flu cases have been recorded in 10 states: California, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.
California, which reported 37 cases, declared a state of emergency in response to the outbreak.
In the CDC’s most recent update on December 24, the agency said the infection has been detected in 10,917 birds across 51 jurisdictions.
How Do You Catch Bird Flu?
The vast majority of human cases of bird flu manifest from people being exposed to infected animals.
Typically, wild birds spread the virus to domestic animals, including poultry and dairy cattle.
People then catch the virus while dealing with the infected animal, its feces, or its saliva.
When an infection is confirmed within a commercial poultry population, the affected animal or animals are often culled to stop the spread.
What People Are Saying
Osterholm told CNN: “The USDA has basically dropped the ball, big-time. I think it was out of fear to protect the industry. And they thought it was going to burn out, and it didn’t.”
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator under the first Trump administration, said on CNN that the CDC hasn’t learned the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: “We’re not testing enough. And we know from other viruses that a lot of the spread can be asymptomatic. So, we kind of have our head in the sand about how widespread this is from the zoonotic standpoint, from the animal to human standpoint.”
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during Donald Trump’s first term, wrote on X that if H5N1 develops into a pandemic, the U.S. “will have only itself to blame. Agricultural officials did just about everything wrong over last year, hoping virus would burn out and it didn’t.”
A CDC A(H5N1) Bird Flu Response spokesperson said: “We are seeing more H5 bird flu in wild birds worldwide resulting in outbreaks in other animals, including U.S. dairy cows, and that has put more humans at risk.”
What Happens Next
The U.S. has two H5N1 vaccines ready if the virus starts spreading more easily but the vaccines cannot be used used until they’re approved by the FDA.
The CDC and its partners in the U.S. government are planning for a vaccine program in case of a potential pandemic or wider outbreak.
The CDC and other international public health agencies have developed H5 candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs), which are almost identical to avian flu, which the agency said “could be used to produce a vaccine for people, if needed, and ongoing analyses indicate that they would provide good protection against avian influenza A(H5N1) viruses currently circulating in birds and other animals.”
However, the CDC said there are no “imminent plans to start offering vaccine to the public or specific populations.”
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