Deborah Birx, a physician who served as former President Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, warned that the United States is making the “same mistakes” with bird flu as it did with COVID-19.
“That’s why I’m really concerned, because we’re making the same mistakes today that we made with COVID. And what do I mean by that? We’re not testing to actually see how many people have been exposed and have been infected asymptomatically,” Birx told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Tuesday.
Birx served as coronavirus response coordinator in the Trump administration and has since sounded alarm bells about how the United States is not doing enough to prevent another pandemic.
A third human case of bird flu was identified in Michigan last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Like previous cases identified since March, the case involved a dairy farm worker who was exposed to infected cows.
The CDC has maintained that the current risk to public health from bird flu is low, but that it will continue to monitor the situation.
Birx said every cow should be tested weekly for bird flu, adding that there are likely some undetected cases in humans.
“We have the technology. The great thing about the United States is that we are incredibly innovative and we have the ability to make these advances,” he said.
“We could do group testing of all dairy workers. I think there are undetected cases in humans, because again we are just tracking people with symptoms. When we did that with COVID, the virus spread throughout the Northeast undetected, because it took so long to reach vulnerable people,” he added.
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