Dr. Leana Wen says for bird flu, "we should have learned our lesson from COVID" in testing [View all]
Source: CBS News
Updated on: December 29, 2024 / 11:11 PM EST
Dr. Leana Wen said Sunday that the lack of testing for bird flu doesn't mean that the virus isn't alive in humans, and that she feels the federal government "should have learned our lesson from COVID" and should be proactive in making tests available for Americans — and not wait for labs to characterize the cases and their severity.
"I feel like we should have learned our lesson from COVID, that just because we aren't testing doesn't mean the virus isn't there," said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner, on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "We should be having rapid tests, home tests, available to all farm workers, to their families, for the clinicians taking care of them, so that we aren't waiting for public labs and CDC labs to tell us what's bird flu or not," she added.
The recent outbreak of bird flu stems from a mutation of the H5N1 virus that affects humans more easily, compared to past mutations of the virus that targeted birds and not mammals.
On Thursday, the CDC reported its first severe case of bird flu in the U.S. found in a patient in Louisiana who was infected from a backyard poultry flock. The Louisiana case was first confirmed by health officials Friday, adding to the total of 61 reported human cases of H5 bird flu reported in the United States. Another severe case of H5N1 has been reported in a teen in British Columbia.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/leana-wen-bird-flu-testing-h5n1-virus-face-the-nation/
From the OP excerpts -
She wasn't paying attention when the "lesson" was this -
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