Feds warn of health risks during government shutdown

Federal health experts are warning of dire consequences in a prolonged government shutdown, saying they might not be able to “find and stop things that could kill people.” State health officials are not sure it’s as grave as all that.

At the Centers for Disease Control [CDC], Dr. Tom Frieden is concerned because two-thirds of his employees have been furloughed at the start of the flu season.

“What we won’t know is what’s happening with flu, where is it spreading, what types of flu are spreading, should we be using one medication or another, is it in nursing homes or elsewhere? This really interferes with our ability to protect people.”

The director of the CDC is wary of other outbreaks of illness or infectious disease, too.

“An outbreak of something like legionella pneumonia, we may not detect it, we may not find it, we may not stop it. If there’s an outbreak of foodborne illness that affects people in multiple states, we may not identify it promptly,” said Dr. Frieden.

At the state Department of Health, in Olympia, spokesman Donn Moyer appreciates the concerns at the federal level. But he points out that the state does a lot of its own testing and monitoring.

“If there were something really large and complex, then we would typically rely on CDC to come in and give us some extra help, but in the course of the stuff that we see on a daily basis and the foodborne illnesses and TB testing and that sort of thing, we’re doing that in our own labs every day.”

As for the flu season, Moyer said people will know what’s going on.

“We’ll still do our regular weekly updates on flu activity and monitor lab-confirmed flu deaths and that sort of thing, that work will continue in the state of Washington.”

Last year was the worst in recent memory for pertussis, or whooping cough, in Washington.

“We actually had some CDC investigators who came to help but what they did was they worked on analyzing data to see what they could find out about where things were spreading faster than others, the effectiveness of vaccine and that sort of thing,” said Moyer. “It was more about analysis than it was about disease response.”

The CDC warns that lab response will be slow during the shutdown. Moyer is confident that Washington, its border state neighbors and British Columbia are prepared, in the short term, to handle even large disease outbreaks.