Trump's drive to reshape government threatens bird flu response
As avian flu drives egg prices to record levels and increasingly poses a risk to humans, moves by the White House to cut spending and restrict communications have hobbled public health officials’ response.
As avian flu drives egg prices to record levels and increasingly poses a risk to humans, moves by the White House to cut spending and restrict communications have hobbled public health officials’ response, with the new administration yet to outline a clear strategy on how it plans to stem the spread of the virus.
State and local public health officials have gone weeks without regular updates on avian flu from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after President Donald Trump froze nearly all external communications from the agency, said a person familiar with the situation. It wasn’t until this week that some of those communications began to resume, the person said.
Widespread funding cuts across the government and new restrictions on funding for National Institutes of Health grants have also created uncertainty among infectious disease researchers and local health officials, who are unsure about what resources they will have to work with going forward. Meanwhile, cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development have limited monitoring of the virus overseas.
“When you add that uncertainty, it plays into what health departments can do when their entire funding situation is at risk,” said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “It makes it even harder to do more when you don’t think you’ll have the resources or they might get pulled out from under you.”
At the same time, key positions in the Trump administration central to responding to the threat of a pandemic have remained unfilled. And the secretaries running the Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments weren’t confirmed until this week, though bird flu was one of the first items on Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins' agenda after her confirmation.
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