Over the weekend, the Trump administration fired several frontline responders to the ongoing H5N1 bird flu outbreak—then quickly backpedaled, rescinding those terminations and attempting to reinstate the critical staff.
The termination letters went out to employees at the US Department of Agriculture, one of the agencies leading the federal response to the outbreak that continues to plague US dairy farms and ravage poultry operations, affecting over 160 million birds and sending egg prices soaring. As the virus continues to spread, infectious disease experts fear it could evolve to spread among humans and cause more severe disease. So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented 68 cases
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