Multiple health agency websites on HIV, contraception taken down to comply with executive orders
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(WASHINGTON) — Government agency webpages about HIV, LGBTQ+ people and multiple other public health topics were down as of Friday evening due to President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at gender ideology and diversity, equity and inclusion.
Some of the terms being flagged for removal include pregnant people, chestfeeding, diversity, DEI and references to vaccines, health and gender equity, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity.
Entire databases have also been temporarily removed.
Researchers confirmed to ABC News they were scrambling to collect and archive as much data as possible from the sites before they were taken down.
Some pages might be returned to public view after the language is reviewed and removed, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC said, though it’s not clear which pages.
Removed pages included key CDC information on the rate of HIV diagnoses, breakdowns of infections by race and gender and the probability of HIV transmission by various forms of sex.
The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a national survey system that collects various habits on teenagers as well as their gender identity, is also down.
The CDC’s “HIV Risk Reduction Tool,” an interactive tool that allowed users to gauge the risk of certain sexual behaviors, has also been erased.
For now, the agency appears to have consolidated all of its information about the virus that causes AIDS into a single, simplified page titled, “About HIV.”
Another website, reproductiverights.gov, which provided resources on reproductive care and abortion access, was also removed. The Food and Drug Administration’s webpage titled “Minority Health and Health Equity” was also down.
Asked Friday afternoon in the Oval Office if government websites would be shut down to be scrubbed, the president said it wouldn’t be a “bad idea.”
“I don’t know — it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me,” Trump said.
“DEI … would have ruined our country, and now it’s dead. I think DEI is dead. So, if they want to scrub the website, that’s OK with me. But I can’t tell you,” Trump continued. Trump’s executive order on DEI called for an “end” to any related policies within the federal government.
The other executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” directed the federal government to recognize only two sexes: male and female.
A memo sent to HHS officials on Wednesday directed subagencies such as the CDC to remove “all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology” by 5 p.m. on Friday.
Canned cherries made with red dye #3/Photo credit: Linnea Bullion For The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is moving to ban the use of Red No. 3 dye in food products.
The agency said Wednesday it is amending its color additive regulations to no longer allow the use of Red No. 3 in food, beverages and ingested drugs, in response to a 2022 petition from health groups and activists.
FD&C Red No. 3, also known as Red 3, is a synthetic food dye that gives foods and drinks a bright, cherry-red color. It is primarily used in foods such as candy, cakes and cupcakes, cookies, frozen desserts, frosting and icings, and some ingested drugs.
At least two studies have shown that high levels of the food dye were linked to cancer in rats. However, the link between the dye and cancer does not occur in humans, the FDA says.
While studies in other animals and humans did not show this link of cancer, an FDA regulation prohibits the agency to authorize color additive found to induce cancer in humans or animals, pushing the agency to revoke the food dye’s authorization.
Food manufacturers will have until 2027 to reformulate their products while drugmakers will have until 2028.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf was asked at a Senate hearing in December why the dye had not been banned. He said the FDA hasn’t been given the resources to do the kind of post-market monitoring of substances done in Europe, where it has been largely banned since 1994. The FDA also banned the use of Red 3 in cosmetics in 1990.
“We have repeatedly asked for better funding for chemical safety … Please look at our request for funding for the people who do this work, remember that when we do ban something, it will go to court, and if we don’t have the scientific evidence … we will lose in court,” Califf said at the hearing.
Red 40, another synthetic food dye used to achieve a bright crimson color in condiments and candy, will remain available for use. Some studies have also shown Red 40 is a carcinogen in animals.
Red No. 3 was first approved by the FDA in 1969 and had been reviewed “multiple times” since then, according to the agency.
ABC News’ Kelly McCarthy contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Friday marks five years since the COVID-19 virus was declared a public health emergency by the United States. But five years later, the virus is still killing thousands, according to experts.
“One of the things we have learned is that COVID came to us new, and now is integrated into our way of life,” said Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “COVID is not going away, and it still causes a substantial amount of illness each year.”
While the world might not be in a global pandemic anymore, Sean Clarke, a professor of nursing leadership at New York University, said COVID is still a constant presence.
“The virus is still persistent and still moving. It’s still not a trivial thing,” Clarke told ABC News. “It hasn’t vanished, it’s just at a different point.”
Since 2020, over 7 million lives have been lost to the virus, according to the World Health Organization. Social distancing, wearing masks and introducing COVID-19 vaccines led the WHO to declare on May 5, 2023, that the virus was no longer a global health emergency. However, that didn’t mean COVID-19 could be immediately disregarded, said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“It is with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency,” Ghebreyesus said in 2023. “However, that does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat.”
There have been 2,861 reported COVID-19 deaths in the world in the last 28 days, according to the WHO, with the U.S. making up 2,100 of those deaths. Hospitalizations and emergency department visits are also on the rise, and death rates for COVID-19 are at 1.8%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Despite five years of research developments, treatments and diagnostic tests, Schaffner told ABC News that COVID-19 will always be around, with two peaks each year — one in the summer and one in winter.
“We are going to have to keep living with this virus as we live with others,” Schaffner said.
The thousands of deaths and rise in hospitalizations will not decrease until more people take advantage of getting vaccinated, Schaffner told ABC News.
While COVID-19 vaccines are available for adults and children, vaccination rates are low. As of Jan. 4, less than 25% of adults were vaccinated with the updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.
“There are still people who are being admitted who’ve never been vaccinated at all and others who are not up to date in their vaccinations,” Schaffner said. “That’s unfortunate because the data continues to show that vaccination is the single most important preventive measure.”
Since COVID-19’s introduction, many patients have reported experiencing long COVID-19, where symptoms continue for years after the initial infection. According to the Mayo Clinic, some researchers have estimated that 10% to 35% of people who have had COVID-19 went on to have long COVID.
Schaffner said the way to diminish cases of long COVID is to keep up with vaccinations, which will reduce the chance of acquiring the virus and eliminate the possibility of developing long COVID.
“Anything we can do to reduce the occurrence and the severity of that acute infection will result in a reduction in the risk of long COVID,” Schaffner said. “Vaccination helps prevent and reduce the severity of the initial infection, it also reduces the risk of you getting long COVID.”
Looking at the next five years, Schaffner said the virus will continue to evolve or mutate, which will lead to updated vaccines on an annual basis. But, COVID-19 might also become even more intense, Schaffner said.
“This virus could mutate again and become more severe,” Schaffner said. “We don’t know if that’s going to happen. But when it comes to viruses, it’s very hazardous to predict the future, because they’re so unpredictable.”
Three influenza A (H5N1/bird flu) virus particles (rod-shaped). Note: Layout incorporates two CDC transmission electron micrographs that have been inverted, repositioned, and colorized by NIAID. Scale has been modified. Image via CDC and NIAID.
(NEW YORK) — As seasonal influenza ramps up, and with bird flu continuing to circulate, some public health experts are worried there may be a strain on the public health system.
Since the bird flu outbreak began earlier this year connected to dairy cows and poultry, there have been 55 human cases reported in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This includes a child in California, who was confirmed on Friday by the agency to be the first pediatric case linked to the outbreak.
There is currently no evidence of person-to-person transmission of bird flu and the risk to the general public is low, federal health officials say. But with millions of seasonal flu infections around the corner, there is some concern about additional stress on how public health surveillance systems will track the virus.
“I think it does add a layer of stress, at least in the public health planning part of things, because we have to think about what resources would be necessary were we to have a significant outbreak of bird flu,” Dr. Tony Moody, a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases specialist at Duke University, told ABC News.
Bird flu and seasonal flu at the same time
Currently, respiratory virus activity is low in the U.S., but the country is on the brink of entering traditional flu season.
Dr. Otto Yang, a professor of medicine and microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the flu season earlier this year in the Southern Hemisphere looked typical so the same can be expected for the Northern Hemisphere.
Countries in the Southern Hemisphere experience their flu season before countries in the Northern Hemisphere. This often provides a glimpse as to what the upcoming flu season may potentially look like for the Northern Hemisphere, though it is not fully predictive of what may occur in each individual country.
“It looks like everything so far points to a fairly typical flu season in terms of the numbers, not [an] especially severe flu season, but not one especially mild either,” he told ABC News.
So far, all bird flu cases in humans in the U.S. have been mild and patients have all recovered after receiving antiviral medication. Almost all confirmed cases have had direct contact with infected livestock.
Yang said he doesn’t see bird flu putting a major strain on the health system right now, but there are unknown factors such as whether COVID-19 or RSV will lead to a higher number of cases than normal.
Moody added that health systems have conversations every year about respiratory virus season regarding whether there are enough beds, enough staff and enough equipment to treat sick patients, and that unknown factors always present a threat.
“That’s what we would be thinking about, is, what can we do to try to blunt that as much as possible, because it’s not so much that the public health system can’t absorb it,” he said. “They just can’t absorb everything all at once.”
Testing for bird flu
With flu season expected to start ramping up in the coming weeks, it may be increasingly difficult to differentiate bird flu from seasonal flu without more extensive testing, experts say.
“The reality is, we want to be ahead of a problem. There’s a surveillance challenge that was easier in the summer because we didn’t have seasonal flu cycling,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News medical contributor. “As we enter flu season, we’re going to have a respiratory mix that includes flu and may include cases of avian, and it’ll be an even greater needle in the haystack.”
Right now, a PCR test, which checks for genetic material, is needed to detect a novel flu virus in a patient. More than 60,000 tests have been completed by public health labs to detect any presence of bird flu since February of this year, according to the CDC.
Tests are sent to public health labs if there is suspicion of bird flu exposure from a clinician or a sample was submitted for surveillance purposes. Health care systems send in a quantity of flu samples to public health labs for additional testing to help detect any new bird flu cases, which is how a case in Missouri was initially identified.
“We’re doing some opportunistic sampling of cases that would get additional sequencing. [Our hospital] is sending five samples per week to state labs that would ultimately get deeper identification for bird flu,” Brownstein said.
The nation’s flu surveillance systems “are built to be able to detect novel flu infections even during peak flu season” the CDC told ABC News in a statement in part. “The level of testing performed is designed to scale with increases in seasonal flu activity so that we’re casting a wider net and maintaining the ability to detect rare infections with novel influenza viruses.”
Other surveillance methods like emergency department trends and wastewater data may become less reliable as seasonal flu ramps up, Brownstein said.
“Patients that have access to rapid tests at home also aren’t necessarily collected and connected to surveillance systems” he added.
Risk of recombination
Questions have swirled about whether or not bird flu and seasonal influenza could form a recombinant virus, meaning a combination of the two.
There is currently no evidence that this has happened and, although it is possible for either virus to mutate with each new case, experts believe this is unlikely considering bird flu is not yet showing evidence of person-to-person transmission.
“It certainly is possible, but generally you get recombination when you have hosts where both strains can get in easily, and at the moment the bird flu strain is not traveling human to human, and so very, very few humans are infected with it,” Yang said. “It’s been a handful of cases, so the risk is really tiny.”
Moody said so-called “recombination events” do happen, with people becoming infected with multiple viruses at the same time or multiple strains of a virus. However, most of the time, they are “failures,” he said.
“That’s an important thing to understand, these recombination events are happening all the time and, most of the time, it doesn’t go anywhere,” Moody said. “Very, very rarely it does, and then that becomes a possibility for transmission”
How to best protect yourself
Moody and Yang say they both recommend that people receive the flu shot. Flu vaccines are currently available for everyone six months and older, according to the CDC.
In the last flu season prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, flu vaccination prevented an estimated 7 million illnesses, 3 million medical visits, 100,000 hospitalizations, and 7,000 deaths in the U.S., the CDC said.
The seasonal flu vaccine does not protect against bird flu, but it can reduce the risk of human influenza viruses, and therefore lower the risk of co-infection.
“Is there the potential for some cross-benefit for the avian flu? There may be. It’s hard to say, because, of course, these viruses are distinct from one another,” Moody said.
