A former Baltimore health official has sparked backlash after she asked Joe Biden to authorize bird flu vaccines before leaving office.
Dr Leana Wen, the ex-Commissioner for Baltimore’s health department, said on Sunday’s Face The Nation that Biden should do as much as he can to battle the avian influenza outbreak during his last days as president.
‘There are two main things they should be doing in the days that they have left,’ said the public health professor at George Washington University. ‘The first is to get testing out there… we should have learned out lesson from Covid that just because we are not testing, it doesn’t mean the virus isn’t there.’
Wen added that the ‘second very important thing’ is that the Biden administration work to secure FDA authorization for the already-developed vaccine against the bird flu.
Wen said Biden should make the move ‘because we don’t know what the Trump administration will do about the bird flu‘.
She added Trump has ‘people coming in with anti-vaccine stances’ and thus it’s possible that his White House could ‘hold up’ the vaccine authorization or ‘withhold testing.’
The H5N1 vaccine is already developed and contracted with manufacturers to make almost 5million doses, but awaits FDA approval.
‘There’s research done on it. They could get this authorized now, and also get the vaccine out to farm workers and to vulnerable people,’ Wen added.
Former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen has urged the Biden administration to approve the bird flu vaccine, which is already developed
Wen’s comments struck a nerve with many X users who recalled her asking Biden to implement vaccine mandates in federal workplaces and public venues in their jurisdiction during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The health policy expert controversially stated the unvaccinated should not be allowed to go out in public.
One X user said: ‘Dr. Leana Wen pushed to take away fundamental human rights…why would anyone listen to her again? This should be entirely disqualifying.’
Another added: ‘Leana Wen is a politician, not a doctor. Her health advice should be completely ignored.’
However, many have also taken to social media to support Wen, with one user writing: ‘Disappointed to see Dr. Leana Wen being viciously attacked again for some reasonable comments about bird flu.’
Another X user said: ‘I am not an epidemiologist (but I have family and best friends who are) and they say it’s not if, but when. Since we now have RFK on the case you can find me gathering my quarantine supplies. Again.’
The bird flu virus has been causing sporadic, mostly mild illnesses in people in the US and nearly all of those infected worked on dairy or poultry farms.
A worker in a hazmat suit is pictured spraying a truck in a quarantine zone after an outbreak of bird flu (stock image)
The above map shows the number of people infected with bird flu by state in the US this year. California and Washington state have recorded the most cases. Louisiana was added today (not colored on the map), after recording its first case
A Louisiana resident was hospitalized with a severe case for the first time earlier this month. The H5N1 patient is in Louisiana, and investigators said they likely caught the disease after handling sick and dead birds in a backyard poultry flock.
In California, officials declared a state of emergency over the spread of bird flu, which is tearing through dairy cows in that state.
The virus, also known as Type A H5N1, was detected for the first time in US dairy cattle in March. Since then, bird flu has been confirmed in at least 866 herds in 16 states.
More than 60 people in eight states have been infected, with mostly mild illnesses, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
One person in Louisiana has been hospitalized with the nation’s first known severe illness caused by the virus, health officials said this week.
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stressed again this week that the virus poses low risk to the general public.
Importantly, there are no reports of person-to-person transmission and no signs that the virus has changed to spread more easily among humans.
