CDC and California offer $25 gift cards to encourage bird flu testing

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now working with California to offer gift cards to encourage people to get tested or vaccinated near farms with bird flu, the state says.

Dubbed the Avian Flu Influenza Area Surveillance Testing or AFAST project, some clinics in the state are giving $25 in gift cards to people in the community to get swabbed for a potential bird flu infection or to get a shot of the regular seasonal influenza vaccine.

The effort runs contrary to rumors on social media that states have stopped testing symptomatic farmworkers for bird flu, at the behest of the CDC under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.