Climate change is increasingly impacting where and when some infectious disease outbreaks are occurring. This trajectory is expected to increase in the coming years. Japan Today (Japan) reports, “The World Health Organization has warned that dengue and other diseases caused by mosquito-borne arboviruses were spreading far faster and further amid climate change, warning global outbreaks could be looming. Experts with the United Nations health agency sounded the alarm over swelling numbers of cases of dengue and chikungunya, and warned new epidemics of zika could also be expected. All three are caused by arboviruses carried by Aedes aegypti mosquitos, which have been spreading into new territory as the planet warms.”
 
South America is seeing the effects of climate change on disease outbreaks and researchers are looking for new ways to combat mosquito-borne diseases. There is some promising news. The Telegraph (UK) reports, “Dengue cases fell to the lowest level in 20 years after mosquitoes infected with a virus-blocking bacteria were released across Colombia’s Aburrá Valley. According to analysis by the World Mosquito Programme (WMP), dengue incidence fell by at least 94 per cent across Medellín, Bello and Itagüí – three interconnected cities home to more than three million people – after the infected mosquitoes were released. The findings confirm that the bacteria-based intervention is feasible and effective at a large scale. This is critical at a time when dengue – also known as ‘breakbone fever’ because of the severe muscle and joint pain it can trigger – is causing larger and more frequent outbreaks than ever before.” Nature (UK) reports the non-profit World Mosquito Program plans to release modified mosquitoes [which carry a Wolbachia bacterium that stops the insect from transmitting viruses] in many of Brazil’s urban areas over the next 10 years, “with the aim of protecting up to 70 million people from diseases such as dengue…. A mosquito factory will be built in a location yet to be determined in Brazil to supply the WMP’s ambitious initiative….”
 

If You Are in a Hurry

 

• Read NPR on a new study that shows boys born to women who had COVID-19 during their pregnancy are at higher risk for delays in brain development.
• COVID-19 is still a leading cause of death. Read more in The Washington Post.
• Read about the impacts of COVID-19 on the population beyond deaths in The Conversation.
• Read The Telegraph on concerns that mpox could make a comeback in Europe and the UK as Summer approaches.
• Read Quartz on approvals for a new malaria vaccine for children in Ghana and Nigeria as late-stage trials of the vaccine continue.
• Does having COVID-19 increase risk for developing diabetes? Read more in The New York Times.

 

COVID-19 Pandemic Still Volatile

 
While more countries end COVID-related emergencies and people attempt to move on from the pandemic, there’s evidence the virus is not ready to move on from us.
 
China News Asia (Singapore) reports WHO “warned the COVID-19 pandemic was still volatile, saying there could be further trouble before the virus settles into a predictable pattern. In the last 28 days, more than 23,000 deaths and three million new cases have been reported to the WHO, in the context of much-reduced testing.” WHO’s Michael Ryan is quoted: “He said respiratory viruses do not pass from a pandemic to an endemic phase, but instead move to low levels of activity with potentially seasonal epidemic peaks. ‘We don't turn off a pandemic switch,’ said Ryan. ‘It's much more likely that we're going to see ... a bumpy road to a more predictable pattern.’”
 
Bloomberg (US) reports, “A number of Asian nations are reporting an uptick in COVID-19 infections as the region treats the virus as endemic, with the fresh wave exerting limited pressure on health-care systems. Singapore’s infections almost doubled in the final week of March to the highest this year, data from the Ministry of Health showed. India reported its biggest single-day tally since late-August, while Indonesia’s daily caseload is near a four-month high and Vietnam is ramping up virus prevention measures…. Most of the region’s population have been vaccinated or had prior infections and governments have counseled that new coronavirus waves are to be expected from time to time after the pivot to living with COVID-19 and dismantling many curbs.”
 
In some places the uptick in cases is caused by the XBB. 1.16 omicron subvariant known as Arcturus which is thought to be more infectious, but does not appear to lead to more severe disease than previous strains. The Independent (UK) quotes WHO’s Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove: “We haven’t seen a change in severity in individuals or in populations, but that’s why we have these systems in place. It has one additional mutation in the spike protein, which, in lab studies, shows increased infectivity as well as potential increased pathogenicity.” Virologist Professor Lawrence Young is also quoted: “These kinds of things highlight the importance of genomic surveillance but a lot of countries including our own have let our guards down a bit and we can’t be sure what variants are around and what level of infection they’re causing until we see a significant outbreak.”
 

Death is Only One Metric

 
A group of University of Oxford Health Economics researchers write in The Conversation (Australia) about a new study in which they “attempted to quantify how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected global health using an international survey of the general public.” The surveyed adults in in 13 countries spanning 6 continents in late 2020 about their health before and after the start of the pandemic. They found “the pandemic was associated with significantly worse health-related quality of life for more than one-third of respondents. Anxiety and depression was the aspect of health that worsened the most, especially for younger people (aged under 35) and women.” The authors argue “only focusing on COVID-19 cases and deaths overlooks the burden of the pandemic and the impacts of policies that are designed to control it.” Read the study in PLOS.
 
Mathematics professor Joseph Stover writes in The Conversation (Australia): “During the pandemic, I watched health statistics become a national conversation. The public was inundated with ever-changing data as research unfolded in real time, calling attention to specific risk factors such as preexisting conditions or age. However, using these statistics to accurately determine your own personal risk is nearly impossible since it varies so much from person to person and depends on intricate physical and biological processes.”
 

Return of Mpox?

 
While the number of mpox cases in the UK and Europe remain low, officials are warning of a possible resurgence as weather warms. The Telegraph (UK) reports, “Monkeypox could surge again in Britain and Europe this summer due to holiday travel and music festivals, public health officials have warned. Those eligible are being urged by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to get vaccinated ahead of the summer festivities. “Last week, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said ‘there is [a] risk of an increase in the coming spring and summer season due to festivities and increased holiday travel.’… Summer festivals and music raves were credited with accelerating last year’s sudden surge in mpox, which had rarely spread beyond Africa prior to 2022.”
 

Most US Mpox Deaths Among Black Gay Men Living with HIV

 
AJMC (US) reports, “Most mpox-associated deaths occurred among Black, cisgender men with advanced HIV or AIDS who reported recent sexual contact with another man, according to the CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report…. Among the 38 who died of mpox in the United States, 87 percent were Black—followed by White (8 percent) and Latino (5 percent)—compared with 33 percent of those who survived and recovered from mpox.” The authors of the report are quoted: “The gender and racial disparities in mpox-associated deaths align with previous reports, in which most patients hospitalized for severe manifestations of mpox were Black men with uncontrolled HIV and parallel racial and ethnic disparities in HIV infection and mortality. In 2020, 75 percent of all-cause deaths among adults with HIV occurred in males, 39 percent of whom were Black males. Disparities and barriers are apparent at all levels of HIV care including recognition of HIV risk, access to testing, and access to and receipt of preexposure prophylaxis and ART.”
 

Bird Flu Updates

 
New York Times (US) reports, “A sample of avian influenza isolated from a Chilean man who fell ill last month contains two genetic mutations that are signs of adaptation to mammals, [CDC officials said]…. In experimental animal studies, the mutations, both of which are in what is known as the PB2 gene, have previously been shown to help the virus replicate better in mammalian cells. The risk to the public remains low, health officials said, and no additional human cases have been linked to the Chilean man, who remains hospitalized.”
 
Reuters (UK) reports, “A Chinese woman has become the first person to die from a type of bird flu that is rare in humans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, but the strain does not appear to spread between people. The 56-year-old woman from the southern province of Guangdong was the third person known to have been infected with the H3N8 subtype of avian influenza, the WHO said in a statement.… Sporadic infections in people with bird flu are common in China where avian flu viruses constantly circulate in huge poultry and wild bird populations.”
 

Ghana and Nigeria Approve Malaria Vaccine

 
Quartz (US) reports, “Nigeria has provisionally approved the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine developed by scientists at the University of Oxford, less than a week after Ghana became the first country to approve the vaccine…. Despite the approval, Adeyeye explained that there is still need for more Phase 4 clinical trials of the vaccine in Nigeria. The vaccine has shown efficacy levels of 77 percent, exceeding the WHO’s threshold of 75 percent. Results from an ongoing phase 3 clinical trial of the vaccine involving 4,800 children in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania are yet to be published…. Africa’s most populous nation is also the world’s most affected by malaria, accounting for 32 percent of global deaths, according to the 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) report. The country records 95,000 malaria deaths in children aged under five every year, largely due to the high cost of treating the disease.”
 

COVID-19 and Pregnancy

 
NPR (US) reports, “Boys born to mothers who got COVID-19 while pregnant appear nearly twice as likely as other boys to be diagnosed with subtle delays in brain development. That's the conclusion of a study of more than 18,000 children born at eight hospitals in Eastern Massachusetts. Nearly 900 of the children were born to mothers who had COVID-19 during their pregnancy….. But the effect from COVID-19 appears to be modest, Perlis says. ‘Most children of moms who have COVID-19 during pregnancy won't have neurodevelopmental consequences even if there is some increase in risk.’"
 

COVID-19 Still a Leading Cause of Death in US

 
Dan Diamond writes in The Washington Post (US), “Federal health officials say that COVID-19 remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States, tied to about 250 deaths daily, on average, mostly among the old and immunocompromised. Few Americans are treating it as a leading killer, however — in part because they are not hearing about those numbers, don’t trust them or don’t see them as relevant to their own lives.” He quotes a report from the People’s CDC, a coalition of public health experts: “The decision to tolerate preventable deaths in disproportionately vulnerable groups, in exchange for the convenience of more able-bodied, younger, wealthy, and white individuals, is unethical and demonstrates a reckless disregard for the lives of communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.”
 

COVID-19 and Diabetes

 
The New York Times (US) reports, “People infected with the coronavirus were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes within a year of their infection, compared with those who had not been exposed to the virus, researchers in Canada reported on Tuesday…. The findings do not prove that the infection causes diabetes, however. Experts said it was possible, for instance, that patients recovering from COVID-19 were more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes simply because they were receiving more regular care.”
 

Marburg Outbreak Grows in Equatorial Guinea

 
The Telegraph (UK) reports, “Equatorial Guinea is struggling to track cases of the deadly Marburg virus and protect health workers from infection, as the nation’s outbreak continues to grow, the World Health Organisation has warned. The West African country has reported 11 confirmed Marburg deaths, but another 23 fatalities are thought to have been caused by the virus, making it one of the worst ever recorded outbreaks of the Ebola-like haemorrhagic fever…. The latest WHO update published on April 15 suggests the country is struggling to monitor and quarantine cases – and trace how the infection may be spreading.