Dr. Gupta: We Don’t Know the Full Extent of How Much Bird Flu Is Actually Spread Amongst Humans

EXCERPT:

GUPTA: "Well, you know, Willie, about a year ago, the CDC recommended that anybody that came in to a hospital and had confirmed flu should then go for additional testing to say, is this actually bird flu? That was a recommendation. It wasn’t broadly followed because there’s — it requires resources and things that are, frankly, hard to do sometimes. And so I — to answer your question directly, we don’t know the full extent of how much bird flu is actually spread amongst humans and to what degree has it been asymptomatic spread or, say, mild spread so that people don’t even seek care, much less get tested, including those that end up in the hospital? So I think we’re underestimating spread to outside of, say, California that has a state of emergency when it comes to, you know, everything that Chris is saying, to testing dairy farms, to making sure that we have rigorous protocols in place to minimize human spread amongst animals, California is the leader there. Outside of that, we have 50 other — 49 other approaches here, which don’t approach with California is doing. And as a result, this is running amok in animal populations. You know, I’ll say here in Washington State, 20 big cats died. So when we think about cows first getting impacted by this, now we're seeing big cats getting impacted and dying. I mean, it's pretty cataclysmic, what's happening with other mammalian species."