(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed the first case of severe bird flu in the United States.
The federal health agency said Wednesday that the patient has been hospitalized in Louisiana. No identifying details about the patient were made available.
Genomic data showed the Louisiana patient was infected with a version of the virus recently found to be spreading in wild birds and poultry in the U.S., as well as found in some human cases in Canada and Washington state, according to the CDC.
This is different than the version of the virus found to be spreading in dairy cows and some poultry populations in the U.S.
The Louisiana patient was exposed to sick and dead birds in backyard flocks, although an investigation into the source of the illness is ongoing, the CDC said. This is the first case of human bird flu in the U.S. linked to exposure to backyard flock.
Almost all confirmed cases have had direct contact with infected cattle or infected livestock. Prior to the case confirmed in the Louisiana patient, cases had been mild and patients had all recovered after receiving antiviral medication, according to the CDC and state health officials. One previous case in Missouri was hospitalized, but health officials pointed to other health conditions aside from bird flu infection involved in the patient’s admission to the hospital.
Signs and symptoms of infection in humans often include sore throat, cough, fever, runny or stuffy nose, headache, muscle or body aches, fatigue and shortness of breath, the CDC says. Less common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and seizures.
Infections can range from no symptoms or mild illness, such as flu-like symptoms, to more severe illness, such as pneumonia that could require hospitalizations, the CDC says.
“The best way to prevent bird flu is to avoid exposure whenever possible. Infected birds shed avian influenza A viruses in their saliva, mucous and feces,” the CDC wrote Wednesday in a press release. “Other infected animals may shed avian influenza A viruses in respiratory secretions and other bodily fluids (e.g., in unpasteurized cow milk or ‘raw milk’).”
The CDC said no person-to-person transmission has been detected and the risk to the general public is low. However, those who work with birds, poultry or cows — or have recreational exposure to them — are at higher risk and should take precautions recommended by the health agency.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a new federal order last week that raw milk samples nationwide will be collected and shared with the department in order to test for bird flu.
The decision came after the bird flu virus was found in samples of raw milk from a California farm, which issued a recall of all of its raw milk products earlier this week. The farm was also placed under quarantine by state health officials.
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud contributed to this report.
In this undated stock photo, signage for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is shown. (STOCK PHOTO/Adobe Stock)
(WASHINGTON) — Medical groups are expressing deep concern about the sudden removal or alteration of government data sets and webpages from agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at the behest of President Donald Trump’s administration.
The American Cancer Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating the disease, called on the administration to “restore access to comprehensive data, refrain from changes that would lead to incomplete future data collection and commit to ensure evidence-based science can proceed without additional bureaucracy or red tape” in a statement published on its website on Thursday.
“Any restriction to gather and release these data could thwart our ability to address and reduce the cancer burden across all communities,” interim CEO Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick said in the statement.
The organization highlighted the removal of the Social Vulnerability Index, which uses U.S. census data to identify county-level risk and vulnerability factors facing communities, taking into account poverty, race, disability, housing and more, according to the CDC.
“Data from public sources like the Social Vulnerability Index are key to deploying the right resources to those who could benefit the most,” the group said. “Therefore, any barriers to accessing these data can also have repercussions on planning and deployment of support services for cancer patients and survivors.”
The Trump administration transition team didn’t immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Across the federal government, webpages and datasets were removed or altered following Trump’s executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and transgender identities called for an “end” to any related policies within the federal government.
Webpages about HIV, LGBTQ+ people and multiple other public health topics were taken down. 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.
Several data tools were also removed or modified, according to Frederick.
Frederick said data collected by a plethora of federal and state agencies play a key role in many of the organization’s reports and publications, including the agency’s “Cancer Statistics, 2025” report and its companion, the “Cancer Facts and Figures” report.
The organization’s reports provide up-to-date trends on cancer occurrence, survival, symptoms, prevention, early detection and treatment, Frederick said.
“ACS develops guidelines for cancer screening and prevention, informed by the latest available data and evidence, to meet the needs of clinicians, the general public, and policy,” he said. “We are very concerned that the changes in data collection and dissemination have the potential to impact these efforts in the future.”
The organization is concerned about how the scope and impact of data removal and potential long-term changes to data collection will impact its research capabilities.
The ACS warning came just days after the medical nonprofit group Doctors For America filed a lawsuit against several Trump administration agencies over its sudden removal of health information from multiple government websites.
The suit targets the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Health and Human Services (which controls the CDC and FDA), asking a federal court in Washington, D.C. to order the government to restore the webpages and datasets.
ABC News has reached out to the agencies for comment.
In a statement to ABC News, the CDC confirmed that changes “to the HHS website and HHS division websites are in accordance with President Trump’s January 20 Executive Orders, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government and Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.”
The Office of Personnel Management provided guidance on both executive orders, prompting HHS and divisions to respond accordingly, the spokesperson stated.
In a separate emailed statement to ABC News, the CDC’s SVI coordinator also attributed the online restrictions to the HHS “pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health.”
It said the pause will be brief, “to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization.”
In the lawsuit, Doctors for America expressed concerns that the lack of data “creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.”
Asked last Friday afternoon if government websites would be shut down to be scrubbed, the president said it wouldn’t be a “bad idea.”
“DEI … would have ruined our country, and now it’s dead. I think DEI is dead,” Trump said. “So, if they want to scrub the website, that’s OK with me. But I can’t tell you.”
ABC News’ Youri Benadjaoud and Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Meta — the company that operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp –announced on Tuesday it was ending third-party fact-checking.
Some social media policy experts and public health experts are worried that the end of fact-checking could lead to the spread of medical and science misinformation and disinformation. This is especially worrisome as the U.S. is in the throes of respiratory virus season and is fighting the spread of bird flu.
“There’s going to be a rise in all kinds of disinformation, misinformation, from health to hate speech and everything in between,” Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics and open-source intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News. “[Health] is supposed to be a nonpartisan issue, and … we do see people trying to leverage health [misinformation], in particular, toward a political end, and that’s a real shame.”
“I’m hopeful, but I’m also concerned that this new structure that all the Meta properties are embarking on, it’s just not going to end well,” she added.
The social network giant said it was following the footsteps of X, replacing the program with user-added community notes.
In a press release of the announcement, Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer for Meta, said that the choices about what was being fact-checked showed “biases and perspectives.”
How fact-checking, community notes work
Meta started fact-checking in December 2016. Meta’s fact-checking works by Meta staff identifying hoaxes or by using technology that detects posts likely to contain misinformation. The fact-checkers then conduct their own reporting to review and rate the accuracy of posts.
If a piece of content is identified as false, it receives a warning label and the content’s distribution is reduced so fewer people see it.
Fact-checkers put in place following Donald Trump’s 2016 election win were found to be “too politically biased” and have destroyed “more trust than they’ve created,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a video posted by the company.
By comparison, community notes work by a user adding context to a post that may be misleading. It is then upvoted or downvoted by other users.
Zeve Sanderson, executive director of NYU Center for Social Media Politics, said after the 2016 election, there was immense pressure for social medial platforms, including Meta, to commit resources to combatting misinformation.
Following the election, most posts being fact-checked were to combat political misinformation, according to Sanderson. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this was expanded to combat medical misinformation, he said.
Sanderson said there were a lot of claims going unchecked online because Meta has not had enough fact-checkers to check every post. Additionally, he said some people didn’t trust fact-checkers.
“There were groups of people online who didn’t trust fact checkers, who saw them as biased, often in a liberal direction,” he told ABC News. “This crowd-sourced content moderation program … it’s going to do different things well and different things poorly. We just don’t know how this is actually going to work in practice.”
Meta referred ABC News back to its Tuesday announcement in response to a request for comment on plans for its community notes or potential spread of misinformation.
Spread of misinformation during COVID-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic, millions were exposed to a deluge of information including news, research, public health guidance and fact sheets, which the World Health Organization referred to as an “infodemic.”
People were also exposed to misinformation and disinformation about what treatments work against COVID-19, how much of a risk the virus poses to children and whether COVID-19 vaccines are effective.
A 2023 KFF survey found that most Americans were not sure if health information they had encountered was true or false.
A report from the U.S. Surgeon General in 2021 found that misinformation led to people rejecting masking and social distancing, using unproven treatment and rejecting COVID-19 vaccines.
Experts told ABC News that members of the general public often do not have enough health literacy to determine if they should trust or not trust information they encounter online or on social media.
Squire said sometimes government agencies do not put out information in an “interesting” format, which may lead people to click on “entertaining” content from misinformation and disinformation peddlers.
“Some of these YouTube videos about health misinformation are a lot more entertaining. Their message just travels faster,” she said. “When you’re presenting scientific information — I know this firsthand as a former college professor — that’s a struggle. You have to be pretty talented at it and, a lot of times, where the expertise lies is not necessarily where the most expedient, fun videos are and stuff.”
How to combat health misinformation
Meta’s change comes as the U.S. faces an increase in bird flu cases and continues treating patients falling ill with respiratory illnesses.
As of Jan. 8, there have been 66 human cases of bird flu reported in the U.S., according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s also flu season. As of the week ending Dec. 28, 2024, there have been at least 5.3 million illnesses, 63,000 hospitalizations and 2,700 deaths from flu so far this season, according to CDC estimates.
Meanwhile, health care professionals have been encouraging Americans to get their flu shot and other vaccines — including COVID and RSV — to protect themselves against serious disease.
Experts are worried that with the change from fact-checking to community notes that misinformation could spread about the effectiveness of vaccines or how serious an illness is.
“I am concerned about the sheer amount of inaccurate information that’s out there,” Dr. Brian Southwell, a distinguished Fellow at nonprofit research institute RTI International and an adjunct faculty member at Duke University, told ABC News. “That’s something that you know ought to bother all of us as we’re trying to make good decisions. But there’s a lot that could be done, even beyond, you know, the realm of social media to try to improve the information environments that are available for people.”
Southwell said one thing that public health experts and federal health agencies can do is to get an idea of the questions that users are going to have about medical topics — such as bird flu and seasonal flu — and be ready with information to answer those questions online.
To combat being exposed to information, the experts recommended paying attention to where the information is coming from, whether it’s a respected source or someone you are unfamiliar with.
“There are various skills that are important, things like lateral reading, where rather than just evaluating the claim, you do research about the source of that claim and what you can find out about them to understand what some of their incentives or track record might be,” Sanderson said.
“This is obviously something that, sadly, social media platforms are not designed in order to incentivize this sort of behavior, so the responsibility is thrust on users to sort of look out for themselves,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — Measles cases are rising in the U.S. with infections confirmed in at least five states so far this year.
Cases have been reported in Alaska, Georgia, New York City, Rhode Island and Texas, mostly among individuals not vaccinated for measles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In western Texas, an outbreak has grown to at least 24 cases according to an update published Tuesday from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS).
All of the cases are in unvaccinated people who live in Gaines County, which borders New Mexico, and at least nine of the patients have been hospitalized. Two cases are in adults aged 18 and older, while the remaining cases are among children and adolescents.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in Gaines County and the surrounding communities,” DSHS said on its website.
Vaccine exemptions among children in Gaines County — the epicenter of the outbreak — have grown dramatically in the past few years. Roughly 7.5% of kindergarteners had parents or guardians who filed for an exemption for at least one vaccine in 2013. Ten years later, that number rose to more than 17.5% — one of the highest in all of Texas, according to state health data.
Individual schools saw similar jumps. At Loop ISD, located in the county, 13.08% of students between kindergarten and 12th grade received a conscientious exemption from at least one vaccine during the 2018-19 school year, During the 2023-24 school year, that figure rose to more than 47.95%, according to DSHS data.
Meanwhile, the Georgia Department of Public Health recently confirmed two additional cases of measles in metro Atlanta among unvaccinated family members of a case confirmed earlier this year in January.
Heath officials have been urging parents to vaccinate children who have not received the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) shot yet. The CDC recommends that children get two doses with the first dose at 12 to 15 months old and the second dose between ages 4 and 6. One dose is 93% effective and two doses are 97% effective.
Zach Holbrooks, executive director of the South Plains Public Health District, told ABC News on Tuesday that the district’s clinic in Seminole will be offering MMR vaccines through Thursday.
The cases mirror those seen across the country. The CDC says 14 cases have been confirmed nationwide so far, which does not include the updated cases in Texas or Georgia. Every single case is among someone who is unvaccinated or whose status is unknown.
Vaccination rates have been lagging in the U.S. About 93% of kindergarteners received select routine childhood vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, for the 2022-23 school year, according to a November 2023 CDC report.
This is about the same as the previous school year, but lower than the 94% seen in the 2020-21 school year and the 95% seen in the 2019-20, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter percentage had been the standard for about 10 years.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to humans. Just one infected patient can spread measles up to nine out of 10 susceptible close contacts, especially if they are not wearing a mask or not vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Complications from measles are variable, ranging from fairly benign, such as rashes, or they can be more severe, including viral sepsis, pneumonia or brain swelling, or encephalitis.
The rise in cases come as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems poised to become the next head of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. Kennedy has previously falsely stated that the MMR vaccine causes autism, despite many high-quality studies showing no such link.
During his confirmation hearings in late January, Kennedy said he is not “anti-vaccine” but “pro safety,” yet he refused to say that vaccines don’t cause autism.
