(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A former health czar is controversially calling on President Joe Biden to expedite the approval of a bird flu vaccine before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.
In a Sunday interview with CBS News’s Face the Nation, Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore Health Commissioner and Planned Parenthood president claimed, without evidence, that expedited approval is necessary in case Trump sides with experts who oppose vaccine mandates.
“They could get this authorized now and also get the vaccine out to farmworkers and vulnerable people. I think that’s the right approach because we don’t know what the Trump administration is going to do around bird flu,” Wen said.
She added, “If they have people coming in with anti-vaccine stances, could they hold up vaccine authorization? If they don’t want to know how much bird flu is out there, could they withhold testing?”
Wen’s claims come amid an outbreak of bird flu in poultry and U.S. dairy cows, with some human cases reported among poultry and dairy workers. There has been no person-to-person transmission, though 66 confirmed cases of human infections have been reported in 2024.
The CDC affirmed that the public health risk remains “low.”
Meanwhile, the FDA announced in October a process to manufacture an updated version of bird flu vaccines in the event of a pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There are at least five vaccines against bird flu that were approved in 2007, 2013 and 2020.
“I think we are all … doing everything we can do to be as prepared as possible to shorten the time needed to get a vaccine to market,” said Jerry P. Weir, the director of the FDA’s Division of Viral Products.
Wen, however, wants the vaccines distributed immediately, even though they have not yet been fully approved.
“This is not like the beginning of COVID, where we were dealing with a new virus and didn’t have a vaccine,” Wen remarked. “There actually is a vaccine developed already against H5N1. The Biden Administration has contracted with manufacturers to make almost 5 million doses of the vaccine. However, they have not asked the FDA to authorize the vaccine.”
She added, “There’s research done on it. They could get this authorized now and also get the vaccine out to farmworkers and vulnerable people.”
