On Monday, June 17th, Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), predicted that the next pandemic could be triggered by bird flu. This alarming forecast comes as the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the first human death from bird flu in Mexico, and the virus has been detected in cattle across the United States.
Redfield emphasized the potential severity of a bird flu pandemic, noting that its mortality rate could range between 25% and 50%, significantly higher than the 0.6% mortality rate of COVID-19. “It’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Redfield stated in an interview with NewsNation.
The CDC reported three recent cases of bird flu in farmworkers, marking the third diagnosis since March. These cases, which included symptoms like a cough and pink eye, were not related and did not indicate human-to-human transmission. Researchers have identified that five amino acids must change for the bird flu virus to attach to human receptors and spread between humans, a mutation that has not yet occurred.
Despite these warnings, the federal response has faced challenges. Many dairy farmers have declined to test their cows, leaving gaps in data needed to track and control the virus’s spread. The CDC and USDA are working to enhance surveillance and testing, but only a small fraction of the nation’s nine million dairy cattle have been tested. To date, 94 herds across 12 states have tested positive for bird flu.
Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams highlighted the need for more comprehensive testing and surveillance. “We failed through two administrations to develop and implement an effective surveillance strategy with COVID, and we are repeating the same mistakes with this virus,” Adams warned.
In response to these challenges, the CDC is implementing new guidelines to ensure clinical laboratories send samples from people with suspected novel influenza infections to state health laboratories for further testing. The Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra, has urged state leaders to increase monitoring efforts among dairy farmers to protect workers and detect the virus early.
The risk to the general public remains low, but the CDC is focusing on preventing cases in populations at higher risk of infection. Former Trump administration coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx stressed the importance of understanding the baseline incidence of infections among dairy cows and humans to prepare an effective response.
As the situation evolves, public health experts continue to monitor the virus closely. “I’ve been dealing with this virus since 2003, and on multiple occasions thought, well, this is it, it’s going to go, and then it didn’t,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “That doesn’t mean it won’t go now, but it also means be careful.”
