In recent months, it has become harder to track the spread of bird flu on farms, creating a danger to public health, according to Amesh Adalja, a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports the virus has affected well over 150 million poultry in commercial and backyard flocks in the United States. And 17 states have reported outbreaks in dairy cows.
But since President Trump took office, Adalja tells Food Tank, the flow of information on the virus has slowed. “What we’ve seen is a real dearth of information coming from the federal government in terms of the avian influenza outbreak on poultry farms, on dairy cattle farms. We’re sort of blind.” This, he says, makes it harder to monitor and respond to outbreaks.
Although the current risk of the virus to humans is low, as reported by the CDC, the spread to humans and other mammals is concerning to Adalja. The more times the virus is able to infect these other species, “it will start to mutate, to be able to thrive in a mammalian organism.” This jump is what gives a virus the potential to become the next pandemic. “That’s what we worry about,” he says.
Adalja notes that there are steps that can be taken now to prevent and control the spread of the disease, including diagnostic testing, vaccine development and stockpiling for humans and animals, and the use of personal protective equipment by the farmers and farm workers who come into contact with infected animals most frequently. But, he tells Food Tank that despite the many tools within reach “they’re not being used optimally—and they’re not being used optimally by choice.”
Learn more about why public health experts are concerned about the spread of bird flu—and what can be done—in a new piece on Forbes by clicking HERE.
And watch or listen to the full conversation with Amesh Adalja on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear more about how federal funding cuts are making it harder to prevent and contain bird flu, why politics are getting in the way of pandemic preparedness, and why a coordinated global response is so important to protecting people everywhere.
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Photo courtesy of Brett Jordan, Unsplash
