The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its will on the federal workforce through mass firings, funding freezes and communication blackouts is hampering the ability of public health professionals to respond to the growing threat of avian flu.
As egg prices continue to rise and more cases are detected, state and local health officials say there is no clear plan of action from the administration. Dozens of people in the U.S. have also contracted the disease, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting the first human death from H5N1 last month.
When President Trump took office, his administration instituted an external communications blackout across health agencies. State and local health departments are only just beginning to hear from officials at the CDC, nearly a month after the inauguration.
Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said officials heard a “short update” from CDC on the avian flu virus last week.
“It’s absolutely critical that local health departments and the federal government are in communication, because both sides have something to add to the conversation to make sure we have the best evidence to move forward,” Casalotti said.
Public health experts were critical of the Biden administration for not being proactive enough in its virus response and failing to take action to stop the spread of the virus among dairy cattle after it was first detected last year.
But Casalotti said local officials under former President Biden at least knew where the federal government was targeting its efforts and what its priorities were. If they had a specific question or specific issue that was going on in their area, they knew who to call. Until very recently with Trump, nobody answered the phone.
A person familiar with the situation said the administration is still slow-walking critical updates, and any communication that does occur isn’t happening in a timely enough fashion.
“Everything is much more formal, much more scripted, much less real-time,” which is impacting situational awareness, the person said. Viruses don’t care about borders, “so I think that is really where the danger lies.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that it accidentally fired “several” agency employees over the weekend who are involved in the federal avian flu response, and the agency said it was now trying to quickly reverse the firings.
Local public health departments are continuing their work to identify instances of viral spread, but it’s made more difficult without timely updates from CDC about the national picture.
For instance, Wyoming this week confirmed its first case of the H5N1 avian flu virus in a human, but other jurisdictions learned about it through a Wyoming health department press release instead of being informed by CDC, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The responsibility for the protection of public health begins and ends with state and local health departments, but they are absolutely dependent on CDC and [the Health and Human Services Department] and other agencies to kind of aggregate information about what’s happening, not only in the United States, but what’s happening in other parts of the world,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
Yet the Trump administration has also stopped reporting flu data to the World Health Organization.
“These are creating blind spots for us, and the more blind spots we create, the harder it is to see the path forward,” Nuzzo said. “When you reduce the frequency or obstruct the delivery of certain data, it just makes it harder to know what’s going on and to know what to do about it, until it becomes blindingly obvious that we have a problem.”
Meanwhile, a federal funding freeze has left virus researchers in a state of confusion, wondering whether their work will continue.
Infectious disease experts are also concerned that public health labs, which rely on federal funding, won’t be able handle any increase in testing capacity if the widespread freeze continues. They have called for greatly expanded testing to better understand the virus.
“All those pieces kind of add to the general feeling of uncertainty,” Casalotti said. “There are many things in public health that are uncertain, and so when you when you add additional layers to that, it becomes really hard for a health department to plan, to be really efficient in their work.”
The confusion comes as more cases continue to be detected in cattle, birds and even humans.
The human case in Wyoming was linked to a backyard flock, with the woman hospitalized in another state. At the same time, a person in Ohio who was confirmed to have a bird flu infection was also hospitalized.
The CDC doesn’t have a confirmed director yet, though the secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture, who are central to a pandemic response, were confirmed last week.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters last week her very first briefing was on avian flu.
“We are looking at every possible scenario to ensure that we are doing everything we can in a safe, secure manner, but also to ensure that Americans have the food that they need. And as a mom of four teenagers, actually, I fully understand and feel the pain of the cost of these eggs,” Rollins said.
The average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in U.S. cities hit $4.95 in January, up from about $2 in August 2023. The Agriculture Department predicts prices will soar another 20 percent this year.
Trump blamed the inflation of egg prices on Biden in remarks to reporters this week.
“Well, there’s a flu,” he said. “Remember I’ve been here for three weeks. And when you saw the inflation numbers, I’ve been here for three weeks, I have had nothing to do with inflation. This was caused by Biden.”
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, previewed a new plan to fight bird flu during an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
He said the strategy will focus on vaccinations and tighter biosecurity instead of culling millions of chickens when the disease infects a flock. But it’s unlikely that shift would have an immediate impact on the spread of the disease, or its impact on egg prices.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said his top focus will be on chronic diseases, not infectious diseases. When asked specifically about avian flu during his confirmation hearing, Kennedy spoke broadly, saying he “intends to devote the appropriate resources to preventing pandemics.”
