The Trump administration’s new approach to communicating health and medical data has left a hazy picture of the country’s fight against bird flu and has complicated the relationship between the federal health bureaucracy and state agencies.
While some state health officials told NOTUS they’ve continued to get what they need from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, other officials and outside experts say they’re worried about what they’re not being told and how that could be hampering the urgent push against H5N1.
But at least some of the dysfunction of the federal health agencies has trickled down to the states that have had human infections, say some pandemic experts and health officials — making responding to the ongoing H5N1 outbreak that much harder.