Avian Flu Update: U.S. Announces More Than $175 Million to Track, Contain H5N1

The Biden administration is making more than $175 million in funds available on a variety of fronts to try to halt the spread of avian influenza into cows and humans, administration officials said Friday.

“The risk to the public from this outbreak remains low,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said during an online briefing for reporters. “All of the data we’ve been able to collect to date supports the continued safety of the milk supply.”

“Our primary responsibility at HHS is to protect public health and to protect the safety of the food supply,” continued Becerra, who spoke from a car while traveling to a speaking event in Pennsylvania. “CDC’s monitoring team is looking at emergency department data and flu testing data for any unusual flu trends or conjunctivitis. Thus far there have been no unusual patterns that we’ve detected. CDC is continuously monitoring the virus to detect any changes that may increase the risk to the people.”

Tom Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) told reporters that his agency’s top priority “is to contain this as an animal health event … We want to make sure to continue at USDA to focus on what can be done to prevent the spread, with a [particular] focus on biosecurity.” He added that “thus far we have found no changes in the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans.”

On April 1, administration officials announced that a farmworker in Texas had been diagnosed with bird flu, an infection tied to the recent discovery of the virus in dairy cows. The patient was treated with an antiviral drug and their only reported symptom was eye redness, Texas health officials said at the time. Health officials say the person had been in contact with cows presumed to be infected.

The FDA — which said last week that a preliminary study of 297 retail dairy samples found all were negative for the virus — announced Friday that “all final egg inoculation tests associated with this retail sampling study have been completed and were also found to be negative for viable [highly pathogenic avian influenza] H5N1 virus.” In addition, “the agency is also announcing an additional $8 million is being made available to support its ongoing response activities to ensure the safety of the commercial milk supply.”

To date, 42 herds of dairy cattle in nine states have been infected with the virus, known as H5N1, Vilsack said at the briefing. “The key now is to make sure that we’re restricting as much as we possibly can the movement of these lactating cows, so that we ultimately allow the virus to peter out, eventually have that herd become virus-free, and eventually have the industry become virus-free.”

The funding the administration announced Friday includes the following from HHS, according to a fact sheet:

• $34 million to develop assays for sequencing viruses, assess circulating H5N1 viruses for any concerning viral changes — including increased transmissibility or severity in humans — and support the ability of public health laboratories to surge their testing abilities
• $29 million to scale up existing efforts to monitor people who are exposed to infected birds and poultry, scale up contact tracing efforts and data reporting, support the collection and characterization of additional clinical specimens, and expand respiratory virus surveillance to capture more samples from patients with acute respiratory illness in different care settings
• $14 million for genomic sequencing at CDC that supports enhanced monitoring, and expand sequencing capacity for highly pathogenic avian influenza
• $8 million to analyze circulating H5N1 viruses to determine whether current vaccine candidates would be effective, and develop new ones if necessary

The USDA also announced $98 million of its own funding — with more available if needed — including money to:

• Provide financial support of up to $2,000 per affected premises per month for producers who supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to employees and/or provide outerwear uniform laundering for producers of affected herds who get their workers to participate in a USDA/CDC workplace and farmworker study. Workers who participate in the study are also eligible for financial incentives to compensate them for their time.
• Provide support (up to $1,500 per affected premises) to develop biosecurity plans based on existing secure milk supply plans. This includes recommended enhanced biosecurity for individuals that frequently move between dairy farms – including milk haulers, veterinarians, feed trucks, and avian influenza technicians.
• Reimburse producers for veterinarian costs associated with confirmed positive H5N1 premises, including costs incurred for treating cattle infected with H5N1, as well as fees for veterinarians to collect samples for testing. Veterinary costs are eligible to be covered from the initial date of positive confirmation at that farm, up to $10,000 per affected premises.
• Work with states to limit movement of lactating cattle between states. Additionally, USDA “will work with and support the actions of states with affected herds as they consider movement restrictions within their borders to further limit the spread of H5N1 between herds to reduce further spread of this virus,” the fact sheet noted.

HHS also has been reaching out to clinicians to make them aware of the situation, Nirav Shah, MD, JD, principal deputy director of the CDC, told MedPage Today at the briefing. In addition to putting a clinician guide on the CDC website, “on April 5, after we first started seeing the situation in cattle, we issued a nationwide health alert to clinicians, not just to let them know what’s happening, but specifically what symptoms to be on the lookout for — i.e., conjunctivitis in addition to the traditional respiratory symptoms, and then how to manage those symptoms,” he said. “If they have such a patient, [we explained] what sort of medical history to obtain and what sort of testing to conduct, particularly in the eyes.”