The first step in combating any infectious disease outbreak is detection. Without widespread testing, health officials have little sense of who is infected, when to treat patients and how to monitor their close contacts.
In that sense, the bird flu outbreak plaguing the nation’s dairy farms is spreading virtually unobserved.
As of Monday, the virus had infected 157 herds in 13 states. But while officials have tested thousands of cows and are monitoring hundreds of farmworkers, only about 60 people have been tested for bird flu.
The report examined the status of obligations and expenditures related to COVID-19 and how FEMA estimated spending from January 2020 to March 2024. For fiscal years 2020 through 2024, Congress passed both annual and supplemental appropriations for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) totaling $97 billion, the GAO said.
