A bird flu outbreak has spread for two months at a Utah mink farm about an hour from Salt Lake City, while the state veterinarian struggled to get federal help, ProPublica reported last week.
The farm raises thousands of mink for their fur. Utah state veterinarian Amanda Price handled the response. When she asked the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for help, federal officials told her they did not regulate mink and had no vaccine approved for the animal, according to messages ProPublica obtained through Utah's public records law.
The case has raised concerns among infectious disease experts about the Trump administration's ability to manage such viruses, The Guardian reported on Sunday. Those concerns sharpen as human flu season begins.
Is bird flu in humans a risk for the general public?
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiology professor and director of the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health, told The Guardian that the sick mink were unlikely to set off a wave of human infections.
In a phone interview on Saturday, Nuzzo said the risk is greatest among people who are exposed to sick animals. People without that exposure could take the outbreak off their list of worries, she said. She added that this does not relieve the government of its responsibility to try to prevent a pandemic.
Nuzzo said she did not see any signals that the virus is spreading. Her main concern, she said, is that workers exposed to the animals will get sick and some might die. She said that outcome could potentially be prevented by protecting farm workers with a vaccine, as other countries are doing.
The longer-term danger, Nuzzo said, is that the virus could infect humans and become a pandemic if it combined with an influenza virus. That worry grows each human flu season, when more influenza viruses are circulating. She told The Guardian she could not say how likely that is and that the probability could be zero.
USDA says it does not regulate mink, and the CDC never spoke to the vet
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spoke with staff at Utah's health department but did not communicate with Price, ProPublica reported.
The USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, The Guardian reported. Price and the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food also did not immediately respond.
In other countries where bird flu has struck mink farms, governments have ordered farms to kill their animals. Veterinarians told ProPublica that the Utah farm owners should already have done so.
A fur trade representative told Price that culling the mink at C&T Fenn Farms would kill the business and the industry, according to ProPublica.
Tom Peacock, an avian influenza researcher at the Pirbright Institute, told ProPublica that depopulation usually happens quickly in such situations. He described the failure to do so in Utah as very concerning.
Farm workers were reportedly not monitored for symptoms
Officials also reportedly did not monitor workers at the farm for symptoms, despite CDC guidance to do so, according to ProPublica.
The outlet found two people who had worked at the farm. One had a red eye, a symptom for which the CDC urges testing.
Farm owner Chad Fenn told ProPublica that the worker had dust in his eye and that the state health department did not recommend testing. The Guardian said it could not immediately reach Fenn.
Why mink farms worry scientists
Mink are highly susceptible to infection with several viruses that also infect humans, according to a report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, The Guardian noted.
Utah's fur farms have faced outbreaks before. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 10,000 mink in Utah died from the coronavirus, and quarantines were imposed at nine farms. A report in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases concluded that infected workers probably transmitted the virus to the animals.
Nuzzo told The Guardian that during Donald Trump's second term, the federal government appears to be monitoring farms for such viruses less closely than previous administrations did.
Shortly after Trump took office, his administration fired federal employees who were responding to a bird flu outbreak among dairy cows, The Guardian reported.
Federal and state officials have not publicly said whether the Utah mink will be culled or whether the farm's workers will be tested.