Medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen is calling on the Biden administration to authorize existing bird flu vaccines and begin administering them to the vulnerable in the remaining days before President-elect Donald Trump assumes office.
Appearing on CBS News’ Face the Nation, the Chinese-born physician and former president of Planned Parenthood expressed concerns about potential delays in responding to a possible outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza. “I feel like we should’ve learned our lesson from COVID,” Wen stated. “Just because we aren’t testing doesn’t mean the virus isn’t there.”
Dr. Wen said the United States is not starting from scratch, as it did at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. “There actually is a vaccine already developed against H5N1,” she said. “The Biden administration has contracted with manufacturers to produce nearly five million doses of the vaccine. However, they have not yet asked the FDA to authorize it.”
She suggested that the right approach should include getting the vaccine authorized and distributed to high-risk groups, such as farm workers and others who may be more exposed to the virus.
Dr. Wen also voiced her concerns about potential policy shifts under the incoming Trump administration. “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? That’s a possibility,” she said.
During Covid, Dr. Wen urged the Biden administration to take “bolder” action to ensure more people are vaccinated by making it clear that the vaccine is the “ticket” to pre-pandemic life. “If everything is reopened then what is the carrot going to be?” she said during an April 2021 interview on CNN. “How are we going to incentivise people to actually get the vaccine?”
