But the study, whose publication was delayed by a pause in public communications by the agency, leaves key questions unanswered.

Two dairy workers in Michigan may have transmitted bird flu to their pet cats last May, suggests a new study published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In one household, infected cats may also have passed the virus to other people in the home, but limited evidence makes it difficult to ascertain the possibility.

The results are from a study that was scheduled to be published in January but was delayed by the Trump administration’s pause on communications from the C.D.C.

A single data table from the new report briefly appeared online two weeks ago in a paper on the wildfires in California, then quickly disappeared. That odd incident prompted calls from public health experts for the study’s release.

The new paper still leaves major questions unanswered, including how the cats first became infected and whether farmworkers spread the virus to the cats and to other people in the household, experts said.

“I don’t think we can say for sure if this is human-to-cat or cat-to-human or cat-from-something-else,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.

Officials in Michigan began investigating two households last May when exclusively indoor cats showed respiratory and neurological symptoms and, after death, tested positive for the virus, called H5N1. The officials interviewed the cats’ owners and household members and offered to test them for the virus.

The owners of both cats were dairy workers. The first farmworker did not work with cows directly, and the farm was not known to have infected herds. But the worker reported that many of the barn cats on the farm’s premises recently died. The worker also reported having experienced vomiting and diarrhea before the first household cat became ill.

The second farmworker reported being splashed in the face and eyes with milk and experiencing eye irritation. Both workers declined to be tested.

“This study provides yet more concerning evidence that farmworkers with high-risk exposures may refuse testing,” Dr. Nuzzo said.

“In order to protect people and stay ahead of this virus, we need to remove disincentives for patients to get tested,” she added. “People should not fear that testing positive will cause financial distress or other personal harms.”

In the household of the first farmworker, the first cat to become ill showed decreased appetite, lack of grooming, abnormal gait and lethargy, and quickly deteriorated. She was euthanized on the fourth day of illness.

A second cat in the household developed watery eye discharge, rapid breathing and decreased appetite four days after the first cat became ill. This cat recovered and was not tested for the virus. A third cat had no symptoms and tested negative for the virus 11 days after the first cat became ill.

Neither the cats nor the humans in the household drank unpasteurized milk. How the cats might have become infected is unclear, but experts said that the farmworkers were likely to have become infected with H5N1 at their workplace and to have brought the virus home to their cats.

“If you love your cat, you probably give it head kisses if it lets you,” said Kristen K. Coleman, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Maryland.

Three people in the household — an adult and two adolescents — tested negative for H5N1. Six days after the first cat became sick, one of the adolescents became ill with a cough, sore throat and body aches, and the other reported a cough that was attributed to allergies.

But because the adolescents were tested late — 11 days after the first cat became sick — it was not impossible that they became infected with H5N1 that they picked up from the cats, Dr. Coleman said.

Later in May, a pet cat in the second household developed severe neurological symptoms, including anorexia and minimal movement, and died within a day; the cat tested positive for bird flu after its death.

The cat’s owner transported unpasteurized milk, including from farms with known bird flu outbreaks. According to the study, the owner “did not wear personal protective equipment (PPE) while handling raw milk; reported frequent milk splash exposures to the face, eyes and clothing; and did not remove work clothing before entering the home when returning from work.”

The cat that became ill was known to “roll in the owner’s work clothes,” the study noted.

Virus in raw milk splattered on those clothes may be the source of infection in the cat, said Dr. Keith Poulsen, the director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

“At this point, I think the higher risk is their exposure from raw dairy products,” he said. “There’s so much virus in the milk.”

Of 24 veterinary staff members who were potentially exposed to the infected cats, seven reported symptoms such as nasal congestion and headache. Only five agreed to testing; all were negative.

Dr. Coleman recommended that veterinarians remain alert to the possibility of bird flu infections when they see sick cats. “Pet owners should not have to rely on postmortem sampling to get a diagnosis,” she said.

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The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its will on the federal workforce through mass firings, funding freezes and communication blackouts is hampering the ability of public health professionals to respond to the growing threat of avian flu.

As egg prices continue to rise and more cases are detected, state and local health officials say there is no clear plan of action from the administration. Dozens of people in the U.S. have also contracted the disease, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting the first human death from H5N1 last month.

When President Trump took office, his administration instituted an external communications blackout across health agencies. State and local health departments are only just beginning to hear from officials at the CDC, nearly a month after the inauguration.

Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said officials heard a “short update” from CDC on the avian flu virus last week.

“It’s absolutely critical that local health departments and the federal government are in communication, because both sides have something to add to the conversation to make sure we have the best evidence to move forward,” Casalotti said.

Public health experts were critical of the Biden administration for not being proactive enough in its virus response and failing to take action to stop the spread of the virus among dairy cattle after it was first detected last year.

But Casalotti said local officials under former President Biden at least knew where the federal government was targeting its efforts and what its priorities were. If they had a specific question or specific issue that was going on in their area, they knew who to call. Until very recently with Trump, nobody answered the phone.

A person familiar with the situation said the administration is still slow-walking critical updates, and any communication that does occur isn’t happening in a timely enough fashion.

“Everything is much more formal, much more scripted, much less real-time,” which is impacting situational awareness, the person said. Viruses don’t care about borders, “so I think that is really where the danger lies.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that it accidentally fired “several” agency employees over the weekend who are involved in the federal avian flu response, and the agency said it was now trying to quickly reverse the firings.

Local public health departments are continuing their work to identify instances of viral spread, but it’s made more difficult without timely updates from CDC about the national picture.

For instance, Wyoming this week confirmed its first case of the H5N1 avian flu virus in a human, but other jurisdictions learned about it through a Wyoming health department press release instead of being informed by CDC, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“The responsibility for the protection of public health begins and ends with state and local health departments, but they are absolutely dependent on CDC and [the Health and Human Services Department] and other agencies to kind of aggregate information about what’s happening, not only in the United States, but what’s happening in other parts of the world,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health.

Yet the Trump administration has also stopped reporting flu data to the World Health Organization.

“These are creating blind spots for us, and the more blind spots we create, the harder it is to see the path forward,” Nuzzo said. “When you reduce the frequency or obstruct the delivery of certain data, it just makes it harder to know what’s going on and to know what to do about it, until it becomes blindingly obvious that we have a problem.”

Meanwhile, a federal funding freeze has left virus researchers in a state of confusion, wondering whether their work will continue.

Infectious disease experts are also concerned that public health labs, which rely on federal funding, won’t be able handle any increase in testing capacity if the widespread freeze continues. They have called for greatly expanded testing to better understand the virus.

“All those pieces kind of add to the general feeling of uncertainty,” Casalotti said. “There are many things in public health that are uncertain, and so when you when you add additional layers to that, it becomes really hard for a health department to plan, to be really efficient in their work.”

The confusion comes as more cases continue to be detected in cattle, birds and even humans.

The human case in Wyoming was linked to a backyard flock, with the woman hospitalized in another state. At the same time, a person in Ohio who was confirmed to have a bird flu infection was also hospitalized.

The CDC doesn’t have a confirmed director yet, though the secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture, who are central to a pandemic response, were confirmed last week.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters last week her very first briefing was on avian flu.

“We are looking at every possible scenario to ensure that we are doing everything we can in a safe, secure manner, but also to ensure that Americans have the food that they need. And as a mom of four teenagers, actually, I fully understand and feel the pain of the cost of these eggs,” Rollins said.

The average price of a dozen Grade A eggs in U.S. cities hit $4.95 in January, up from about $2 in August 2023. The Agriculture Department predicts prices will soar another 20 percent this year.

Trump blamed the inflation of egg prices on Biden in remarks to reporters this week.

“Well, there’s a flu,” he said. “Remember I’ve been here for three weeks. And when you saw the inflation numbers, I’ve been here for three weeks, I have had nothing to do with inflation. This was caused by Biden.”

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture fired several personnel responsible for working to stop the spread of the H5N1 avian flu over the weekend. The agency is now trying to find and rehire those workers. The bird flu has affected more than 160 million birds nationally since 2022, contributing to rocketing egg prices and the endangerment of farm workers.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working to rehire employees it fired over the weekend, many of whom were part of the federal government’s efforts to stop the spread of the virulent H5N1 avian flu that has killed millions of livestock and contributed to sky-high egg prices.

“Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters,” a USDA spokesperson told Fortune in a statement. “USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission.”

The spokesperson said job categories within the USDA, such as veterinarians and emergency response personnel, were exempted from the sackings.

The H5N1 avian flu has wrought havoc on U.S. agriculture. More than 162 million birds and nearly 1,000 dairy cow herds in the U.S. have been affected by the avian flu since 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USDA, which has contributed to about 20 million deaths of egg-laying hens in the last quarter of 2024 alone.

About 70 people in the U.S. have contracted the disease since the 2022 outbreak; the CDC reported the first human death from H5N1 last month.

The elimination of key USDA positions is part of an effort by President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency to cull thousands of government positions in an effort to overhaul bureaucracy and curb federal spending. Some USDA employees, including those from the National Animal Health Laboratory Network program office overseeing the response to animal-borne disease outbreaks, were notified Friday their jobs would be eliminated, Politico reported.

“They’re the front line of surveillance for the entire outbreak,” Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told Politico. “They’re already underwater and they are constantly short-staffed, so if you take all the probationary staff out, you’ll take out the capacity to do the work.”

Consequences of federal workplace uncertainty
The USDA is the country’s first line of defense in understanding and combating the avian flu because of its access to the farms battling the brunt of the virus’s consequences, according to Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health. The agency’s surveillance efforts of farms, such as bulk testing raw milk for disease, is the primary means of gathering information about the virus and its spread.

Beyond staff shortages siphoning resources from that work, the anxiety around sweeping personnel changes alone may prevent USDA employees from focusing on constraining the virus.

“With this changing policy environment and the uncertainty about all of the personnel, government worker personnel issues, agencies are spending a lot of their time just trying to navigate that highly chaotic and uncertain situation,” Nuzzo told Fortune, “which I believe is interfering with their abilities to fulfill their statutory missions.”

Besides firing thousands of public health workers, the Trump administration has also hampered response to the bird flu outbreak, with the CDC and USDA unable to hold congressional briefings, meet with state officials, or receive internal reports, according to multiple reports.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

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