The Biden administration has been pumping money out the door to fund bird flu preparedness programs before the Trump team takes over, leaving public health officials grateful even as they insist the incoming president will need to do more once he’s in office.
“This is a good down payment on funding for what is currently a limited number of human cases acquired directly from infected animals. It is not adequate funding for preparing for a potential pandemic,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced in early January it would be awarding over $300 million in funding for bird flu response efforts, including $186 million through the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response for preparedness efforts like training for hospital staff, special units for infectious diseases and personal protective equipment stockpiles.
David Boucher, ASPR’s director of infectious disease preparedness and response, told NOTUS that the incoming Trump administration’s potential views on H5N1 were not considered when deciding which programs to allocate funds to and when. But he said that almost all of the recently announced funding has already been obligated to specific contracts and grants.
“Where we are focusing on the transition is to make sure that it’s smooth, so that our response to H5N1 carries through and we don’t have any disruptions,” he said. “We want a seamless transition to make sure that we’re giving the best response possible to the American public.”
The current H5N1 outbreak began in early 2024. Cases have been detected in wild birds, poultry and cattle — along with over 60 confirmed human cases, mostly in agricultural workers. One person with severe H5N1 died in early January.
A health care lobbyist, who asked to remain anonymous in order to remain on good terms with the incoming Trump administration, said public health advocacy groups involved in the bird flu response are waiting to see how HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may influence public health policy. Kennedy has repeatedly implied that bird flu was created in a lab, potentially with the knowledge of the government, a theory that is not supported by evidence.
Kennedy and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.
“I think there’s a lot of question marks about the stance that the administration is going to take. [Trump’s first administration] obviously presided over a wildly successful program in Operation Warp Speed, but that has caused some friction within the Republican caucus and the Republican Party,” the lobbyist said. “It’s hard to know who will be calling the shots on the response and what they will want to do. So I think there’s definitely concern, but certainly hope that they will continue preparing in the same way that the Biden administration has.”
But New York State Health Commissioner James McDonald told NOTUS that the every-other-week phone calls he’s had with HHS throughout the current bird flu outbreaks aren’t currently scheduled to continue past Jan. 20.
“They’re waiting for the new administration to see what they want to do,” McDonald said.
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a former member of HHS’ COVID-19 advisory committee, said that while the Biden funding was “a start,” it wasn’t enough. What the U.S. really needs to be prepared for a future pandemic, Osterholm said, is sustained investment in vaccine development and manufacturing — because once a serious outbreak actually starts, it’s already too late.
“When you have a pandemic begin, it’ll happen real fast, and it’s like falling off a cliff,” Osterholm said. “Imagine you’ve just walked miles and miles on a perfectly flat piece of ground, and then you take one more step and you’re 24 inches off the edge of the cliff, and it’s five miles straight down. That’s where we’re at. We don’t know how close we are to the edge of that cliff.”
But the U.S.’s vaccine manufacturing capacity is far below what would be needed to adequately protect the population should H5N1 become a widespread pandemic, Osterholm said — and the 60 million doses of antiviral drug Tamiflu the U.S. has stockpiled won’t be enough if H5N1 becomes widely transmitted between humans.
“That won’t stop transmission. At best, it will reduce serious illness and deaths, but it won’t stop the pandemic, and of course, it won’t even begin to address what’s happening globally,” Osterholm said.
The chances of the incoming administration making a large investment in vaccines may be slim. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has said he would give infectious disease research a “break.” And Trump has said he would support efforts by Kennedy to investigate if vaccines cause autism, a claim that has been debunked.
“I worry about the fact that a lot of people who will be in health decision making positions will be new to the job,” Nuzzo said. “We lost a lot of experienced people due to political attacks and general attrition during COVID-19.”
But regardless of staffing challenges, Nuzzo said she believes the incoming administration will be forced to act on H5N1 — if not because of the public health risk, then because of the threat it poses to the economy. Nuzzo pointed to egg shortages and the loss of income to dairy farmers as examples of H5N1’s economic impacts.
“For an administration that was elected in part because of the cost of grocery bills, I don’t see a scenario in which they can ignore H5N1 and still answer the political mill that is hoping for a safe, healthy and inexpensive food supply,” Nuzzo said.
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Margaret Manto is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.