Trump names COVID lockdown critic Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as pick for NIH director

(WASHINGTON) — The number of confirmed bird flu cases has risen in the U.S. to 31, federal health officials said on Thursday.

Washington health officials reported four presumptive positive bird flu cases over the weekend. Since then, two of the four cases have been confirmed, according to Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The confirmed and presumptive cases all worked with infected poultry at a commercial egg farm. All had mild symptoms and were given antiviral medication.

“These numbers of confirmed and presumptive cases will certainly shift as more cases are potentially identified in Washington state and then confirmed at the CDC,” Shah said during a press conference on Thursday.

Additionally, the number of cases in California rose to 15, which is the highest number in a single state so far.

The CDC also said there is no evidence that human-to-human transmission is occurring, sharing the results of an investigation that occurred after a Missouri case of bird flu was confirmed through routine influenza surveillance. Investigators found a household contact who had similar symptoms.

They also investigated the hospital where the bird flu patient was hospitalized, and they found that 112 health care workers had interacted with this patient, six of whom reported experiencing respiratory symptoms. Serologic testing, which looks at antibodies in the blood, confirmed the workers were not positive for bird flu.

Health officials’ investigation suggest the Missouri index patient and the household contact were both exposed to the same source, but further testing revealed the household contact did not meet criteria for a confirmed case.

The CDC said the risk to the general public is still low, and there is no evidence that the virus has mutated to better infect individuals.

Additionally, the CDC confirmed that laboratory company Quest Diagnostics will have a bird flu test soon available with a prescription from a provider for clinical purposes. Being prescribed the test would require being at risk for bird flu and experiencing symptoms of the virus.

Timeline of the bird flu outbreak

The outbreak began in early March when the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a bird flu strain that had sickened millions of birds across the U.S was identified in several mammals this year. Later, health officials said they were investigating the illness among dairy cows, but assured there was no risk to the commercial milk supply.

The following month, the CDC said a human case of bird flu was identified in Texas and linked to cattle.

Since then, cases have been confirmed in California, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Washington. All the cases were among people who came into contact with sick dairy cows or infected poultry and all patients recovered with antivirals.

In late April, reports emerged that bird flu fragments had been found in samples of pasteurized milk. However, the fragments are inactive remnants of the virus and cannot cause infection.

Federal agencies maintain the U.S. commercial milk supply remains safe because milk is pasteurized and dairy farmers are required to dispose of any milk from sick cows, so it does not enter the supply.

In May, the CDC said in a summary that it is preparing for the “possibility of increased risk to human health” from bird flu as part of the federal government’s preparedness efforts, including filling doses of bird flu vaccine into vials to shore up the national stockpile.

Earlier this month, federal health officials announced they are providing $72 million to vaccine manufacturers to help ensure currently available bird flu vaccines are ready-to-use, if needed.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — With the recent pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the environmental attorney’s views on vaccines have been thrust back into the spotlight.

Kennedy has been a prominent vaccine skeptic, arguing that more research of vaccines is needed, although he has claimed in interviews that he has “never been anti-vaccine.”

Vaccine researchers tell ABC News that his recent comments don’t align with his past campaigns and that, if confirmed, he could convince vaccine-hesitant parents to not vaccinate their children.

“He’s really not a vaccine skeptic; I’m a vaccine skeptic,” Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center, an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, told ABC News.

“Everybody who sits around the table at the FDA vaccine advisory committee is a vaccine skeptic, right? Show us the data, prove that this vaccine is safe, prove that it’s effective, because then and only then will we authorize it, or recommend authorization or licensure,” he said.

Offit argued that Kennedy is a “vaccine cynic,” adding, “He thinks that we’re not getting the right information, that there’s an unholy alliance between the pharmaceutical industry and the FDA with the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] to hide the real data, and he’s going to find the real data, which is utter nonsense.”

Claims that vaccines cause autism

Kennedy has previously claimed that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine — a myth that was born out of a now-debunked paper from the U.K. in 1998.

The fraudulent paper has since been discredited by health experts, retracted from the journal in which it was published, and its primary author, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license. More than a dozen high-quality studies have since found no evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism.

Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, said he’s worried that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has spilled over into hesitancy towards childhood vaccines.

There have been more measles outbreaks this year than last year and a five-fold increase in whooping cough cases this year from the year before, according to CDC data, which Hotez says is a sign that more parents may be increasingly vaccine-hesitant.

According to the CDC, there have been a total of 277 measles cases reported in 30 states in 2024 — more than four times the amount last year — with 16 outbreaks this year compared to four outbreaks in 2023. An estimated 96% of measles cases this year were not fully vaccinated. Additionally, whooping cough cases are at the highest levels this year since 2014, according to CDC data.

This comes as vaccinations among kindergarteners dipped in the 2023-2024 school year for the fourth year in a row – failing to meet the 95% threshold goal aimed to prevent a single infection from sparking an outbreak. The last time that threshold was met was pre-pandemic, during the 2019-2020 school year.

“Now you put someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s most prominent, well-known anti-vaccine activist at the top of the food chain, at the top of Health and Human Services,” Hotez said. “I don’t see how these things improve any. If anything, they could start to decline even further. …So, I worry about further erosion in the number of kids getting vaccinated in the U.S.”

Claims about the COVID-19 vaccine

Kennedy also spread vaccine misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic including claims that Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were trying to profit off a COVID-19 vaccine.

During a December 2021 Louisiana House of Representatives meeting discussing a proposal to require schoolchildren to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Kennedy falsely called the vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Health officials say COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective following clinical trials that involved tens of thousands of people, and have since helped save millions of lives.

Offit says he is worried that, as the head of the HHS, Kennedy would help select directors of the CDC, FDA and the National Institutes of Health who are not qualified, and could similarly espouse vaccine-skeptic views.

“My worry is that he is not going to pick technically competent people,” he said. “My worry is he’s going to have a role in selecting ideologues who are not well-educated about infectious diseases or vaccines, and maybe who lack government experience as well.”

Both Offit and Hotez said it will be important over the next four years for doctors to have conversations with vaccine-hesitant parents to educate them on the importance of vaccinating their children in case they are swayed by vaccine-skeptic rhetoric from Kennedy.

Offit said he is already getting emails from pediatricians about parents who are hesitant to vaccinate their children because of Kennedy’s past comments.

“Over the last few days, I’ve gotten emails from pediatricians, one particularly in Connecticut that comes to mind, where they’re saying, ‘Parents are coming in, and they’re saying they don’t want to get vaccines, in part because of what [Kennedy] said. What should we do?'” Offit said. “So, I think that’s where the rubber meets the road. It’s certainly a lot more work for clinicians than it used to be.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(FRESNO, CA) — After bird flu was detected in a retail sample of raw milk produced and packaged by Raw Farm, LLC, the California Department of Public Health warned consumers on Sunday to avoid consuming any from the same lot.

At the state’s request, the Fresno County-based company also issued a voluntary recall of the affected product: cream top, whole raw milk from lot No. 20241109 with a “best by” date of Nov. 27.

Anyone in possession of the product will be able to pursue a refund from the location where the item was originally purchased.

Retailers have also been notified to take affected products off of their shelves.

The CDPH has also emphasized that pasteurized milk remains safe to drink.

Most cases of bird flu discovered in humans in the current outbreak are with people that worked directly with birds or cows. There are not any cases known to be associated with raw milk consumption, but the risks associated with raw milks have been long established.

The Food and Drug Administration has previously warned of the possible dangers of drinking raw milk.

In a statement from May 2024, it warned, “Raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and others that cause foodborne illness, often called ‘food poisoning.'”

Raw milk products do not undergo pasteurization, which is a heating process that kills bacteria and viruses.

Pasteurized milk and dairy products, however, are safe to consume because the heating process kills pathogens that can cause illness — including bird flu.

However, raw milk does have its proponents, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Last month, in a post on X, called the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of it part of the agency’s “war on health.”

In November, President-elect Donald Trump selected RFK Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The appointment requires Senate confirmation.

As of Sunday evening, no illnesses had been reported in association with the finding of bird flu in the single lot of raw milk.

The contaminated sample was discovered as part of routine testing performed by the County of Santa Clara Public Health Laboratory, which tests raw milk products from retail stores as a second line of consumer protection. The finding was then verified by the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System.

In response to the positive test, the California Department of Food and Agriculture provided onsite testing at the Raw Farms facilities, which were negative for bird flu. CFDA will continue testing raw milk banks twice per week.

ABC News’ Claire E. Strindberg contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.