President Donald Trump and his new administration inherited a plethora of problems from the prior Biden-Harris administration, one of which is the scattered outbreaks of avian influenza, more commonly known as bird flu, across the country.

That problem recently hit close to home for residents of a beachside community on New York's Long Island, as their shores and backyards have been inundated with dozens of dead birds that are suspected of dying from the communicable disease, NBC News reported.

State officials have not yet confirmed a current outbreak of bird flu, but residents are steering clear of the carcasses regardless, and though the Trump administration hasn't yet addressed this particular situation, broader actions have been taken to deal with the virus and the damage it has caused.

Possible bird flu outbreak on NY's Long Island

NBC News noted that Tim Jones, the vice president of a community association for Patchogue Shores in East Patchogue, shared how he and his family discovered numerous dead birds of a variety of species during a recent walk along the community's private beach.

"I saw three seagulls, a cormorant, and I got a count of 11 ducks," Jones told a reporter who joined him for another beachside walk and confirmed the presence of dead gulls, geese, and other smaller birds.

New York's Department of Environmental Conservation was contacted about the situation, and that agency confirmed that cases of bird flu have occurred in the past in that area and neighboring counties. Indeed, just last month, a farmer in a nearby community was forced to kill nearly 100,000 ducks after an outbreak was identified.

Though the DEC has yet to test any of the dead bird specimens to confirm if they were killed by the virus, they strongly suspect that to be the case, and even while it is rare for humans to become infected by sick birds, it was still recommended that the beach be closed and residents keep their distance from any avian carcasses.

"It’s upsetting because people enjoy this," Jones told the reporter. "This is the one place where everybody who lives here enjoys, it’s something to have special, private, and it’s sad."

The USDA has unveiled a plan to address bird flu and egg prices

It was earlier this week that, in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, recently confirmed Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins outlined a five-step plan the USDA had devised to help address both the bird flu epidemic and the soaring cost of eggs that is directly related to the virus by way of the culling of poultry flocks.

The first of those steps is providing up to $500 million to help poultry producers implement better biosecurity measures to help protect their flocks from catching the virus in the first place, followed by the provision of up to $400 million in financial assistance for producers whose flocks have already been decimated by the disease.

The third step in Rollins' plan involves making $100 million available to researchers studying the potential efficacy of various therapeutics and vaccines that poultry producers could use to hopefully avoid having to cull the entirety of their flocks.

The two remaining steps were focused less on the bird flu and more on efforts to reduce the price of eggs and included eliminating some of the burdensome regulations that constrain production as well as possibly importing eggs from foreign suppliers if they meet certain safety standards.

Contract for study of possible bird flu vaccine now being reevaluated

There may be a problem with the third step of Sec. Rollins' plan, the possible development of a vaccine against bird flu, as Bloomberg News reported that Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered a pause and reevaluation of a program working on exactly that issue.

Though not yet canceled, HHS is now reviewing a $590 million contract for Moderna to create an mRNA-based bird flu vaccine that was granted by the prior Biden-Harris administration, and the project, which already completed a preliminary study last year and was set to begin a final trial later this year, is now up in the air.