KFF Health News
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Sonia Stokes, an emergency room doctor in the San Francisco Bay area, is preparing for herself for a daily flood of patients with coughing, pain, fever, vomiting, and other flu -like symptoms.
It is desperate to obtain information, but the centers of control and prevention of diseases, and they are a decisive source of urgent analyzes of influenza and other general health threats, calm in the weeks that have passed on President Donald Trump.
“Without more information, we are blind,” she said.
The influenza was brutal this season. The Disease Control Center estimates at least 24 million patients, 310,000 hospitals and 13,000 deaths of influenza since the beginning of October. At the same time, the outbreak of bird influenza continues to injure livestock and farm workers. However, the analyzes of the Center for Disease Control, which would teach people about these situations, are delayed, and the Center for Disease Control has cut communication with doctors, researchers and the World Health Organization, as doctors and public health experts say.
“The Center for Disease Control is now not reported by influenza data through the World Health Organization platforms, Flonet [and] A questioner, they were providing information [on] “For many years.”
“We are communicating with them, but we haven’t heard anything,” she added.
On his first day in his post, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the World Health Organization.
A cash analysis of the seasonal influenza chosen for distribution through the health alert network at the Disease Control Center, according to people close to the Center for Disease Control. They asked not to be identified due to fears of revenge. The network, which was shortened by HAN, is the main way to the Center for Disease Control to share urgent public health information with health and doctors, and sometimes the public.
A scheme of this analysis, which was reviewed by the KFF Health News, indicates that the influenza may be at a standard level. About 7.7 % of patients who visited clinics and hospitals without accepting them suffering from influenza -like symptoms in early February, a higher percentage of four other seasons for the music fluono shown in the graph. This includes 2003-2004, when a non-stereotype of influenza feeds a specially left season, killing at least 153 children.
However, without a complete analysis, it is not clear whether this tide and disease wave predicts a rise in hospitals and deaths that hospitals, pharmacies and schools must prepare for. Specifically, other data can deport the number of influenza-like diseases caused by influenza-or influenza strain that affects people. The deepest report may also reveal whether the influenza is more severe or contagious than usual.
“I need to know if we are dealing with a more fierce or nerve strain with another virus that makes my patients more ill, and what to search for it until I know if my patients are in danger,” said Stox. “Data delay creates dangerous positions on the confrontation line.”
Although the influenza control plate, the Disease Control Center shows an increase in influenza, it does not include all the data needed to explain the situation. It also does not provide the designed advice in HAN Alerts that tell health care workers how to protect patients and the public. In 2023, for example, the report urged clinics to test patients with respiratory symptoms instead of assuming that cases are influenza, because other viruses were causing similar problems that year.
“This is very annoying,” said Rachel Hardan, a member of the Consultative Committee of the Director of the Disease Control Center. On February 10, Hardman and other members of the Committee wrote to CDC director, Susan Monareraz, asking the agency to explain the lost data, delayed studies, and severe employees discounts. “The Center for Disease Control is vital to our nation’s security,” said the message.
Several studies have also been delayed or remained missing from the prominent scientific publication at the Center for Disease Control, which is a weekly report of the disease and deaths. “The suppression of information may be confusing, and perhaps dangerous, and it can bring counter -results.”
CDC spokeswoman Melissa Dibel refused to comment on late or missing analyzes. She said: “It is not expected that we will see the influenza activity high and more at this time of the year.”
An unpublished one -study draft described by the KFF Health News, which was blocked from MMWR for three weeks how milk and dairy worker in Michigan may spread bird flu on pets. Interior cats have become very sick and died. Although the workers were not tested, the study says that one of them has angered her eyes before the cat suffers – one of the symptoms of common bird flu. This person told the researchers that the pets “will” roll into their work clothes.
After one of the cat was ill, the investigations submitted that the teenager in the family developed a cough. But the report says that this young person tested negatively for the influenza, and positively for the cold virus.
CDC documents that summarize the CAT study and another analysis of the unpublished bird flu magazine, said it was scheduled to be published on January 23. It was reviewed by KFF Health News. CATS briefing advises dairy farmers “removing clothes and shoes, rinsing any dual -animal structures before entering the family to protect others in the family, including possible cats only.”
The second summary indicates the “most comprehensive” analysis of the bird influenza virus discovered in wastewater in the United States.
Jennifer Nuzu, director of the Palpity Center at the University of Brown, said that the delay of bird flu reports is annoying because it is necessary to inform the public about an increasing position with many unknown elements. Quoting “insufficient data” and “high uncertainty”, the UK raised its evaluation of the risks posed by dairy outbreaks in the United States.
“The missing and delay data causes uncertainty,” Nuzu said. “It is also possible to make us interact in ways that lead to reverse results.”
Another study of the birds stipulated in January in MMWR on February 13, three weeks after expected. He revealed that three veterinarians in livestock suffered an infection without the knowledge of last year, based on the discovery of antibodies against the bird flu virus in its blood. One of the veterinarians worked in Georgia and South Carolina, and he has not reported the outbreak of dairy farms.
The study provides additional evidence that the United States does not discover cases sufficiently in cows and people. Nuzzo said it also highlights how data can provide reassuring news. Only three of 150 veterinarians in livestock had signs of previous infections, indicating that the virus does not spread easily from animals to people. More than 40 dairy dairy workers were wounded, but they generally had more sustainable contact with sick cattle and their virus milk more than veterinarians.
Instead, recent reports on forest fires in California and Hawaii were.
“Interesting but not sooner,” Nuzo said, given that acute emergency situations have ended. She said that the outbreak of bird flu is “an urgent health threat that we need updated information to know how to protect people.”
“The American public is in a greater danger when we do not have time information,” Shuchhat said.
This week, a federal judge ordered the Center for Disease Control and Other Health Agencies to “restore” data groups and web sites that the organization’s doctors have set in a lawsuit that it has been changed. Moreover, the judge ordered the agencies to “define any other resources that DFA members rely on to provide medical care” and restore them by February 14.
In their letter, members of the Consultative Committee asked their country to control diseases to investigate the lost data and delayed reports. Hardman, an expert in health policy expert at Minnesota, said the group did not know why data and scientific results were blocked. However, she added, “I am the responsibility of the director of the Disease Control Center, the President of HHS and the White House.”
Hardman said that the Trump administration has the authority to dissolve the advisory committee. She said that the group expects this to happen, but she followed its demands regardless.
She said: “We want to protect the accuracy of work in the Center for Disease Control because we are very concerned with public health.” “We are not here to be silent.”