Bird Flu Spread Data Removed from CDC’s Weekly Report
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) posted its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) despite the temporary freeze on public communications as ordered by the Trump administration. However, Apoorva Mandavilli and Emily Anthes reported for The New York Times (NYT)on February 6 that data on the spreading of bird flu appeared briefly on the CDC’s website on Wednesday and was shortly after removed.
Data on the bird flu, H5N1, spread from cats to humans was part of the MMWR with details on Emergency Department (ED) use during the Los Angeles fires. The data on H5N1 has since been removed.
“The data appear to have been mistakenly posted,” Mandavilli and Anthes wrote, “but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.” According to a copy of the data table obtained by NYT, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent. “The table was not present in an embargoed copy of the paper shared with news media on Tuesday and is not included in the versions currently available online.”
“If there is new evidence about H5N1 that is been held up for political purposes, that is just completely at odds with what government’s responsibility is, which is to protect the American people,” shared Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, with the NYT’s reporters.
“Although I’m encouraged that the MMWR is being published again, I’m surprised and concerned that it doesn’t contain any reports on bird flu spreading in animals and people, the new strain of mpox spreading or other emerging health threats,” said Tom Frieden, a CDC director for the Obama administration, in a statement obtained by The Washington Post.
