Pandemic Watch News Brief: The News You Need To Know ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

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[link removed] August 31, 2023
AVAC's weekly Pandemic Watch is a curated news digest on the latest pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (PPPR) news and resources.


Efforts to address vaccine hesitancy in Africa require collaboration between governments, health organizations, community leaders, and public health advocates. Public health campaigns, community engagement, and transparent communication about vaccine safety and efficacy are essential strategies to combat vaccine hesitancy.” - Sethi Ncube in All Africa ([link removed])
Table of Contents
• If You Are in a Hurry (#If You Are in a Hurry)
• Rethinking R&D for Pandemic Preparedness (#Rethinking R&D for Pandemic Preparedness)
• Cholera Crisis in Kenya’s Refugee Camps (#Cholera Crisis in Kenya’s Refugee Camps)
• Misinformation Continues to Impact American’s Health (#Misinformation Continues to Impact American’s Health)
• A Call to Empower the Public to Understand Science (#A Call to Empower the Public to Understand Science)
• Pandemic Accord Talks Lagging (#Pandemic Accord Talks Lagging)
• No Seasonal Pattern for COVID-19 (#No Seasonal Pattern for COVID-19)
• There’s a New COVID-19 Variant. Should We Worry? (#There’s a New COVID-19 Variant. Should We Worry?)
• A Call to Win the Fight Against Tuberculosis, Malaria and Polio (#A Call to Win the Fight Against Tuberculosis, Malaria and Polio)
• Long COVID Updates (#Long COVID Updates)
• Non-Pharmaceutical COVID-19 Interventions Saved Lives in the UK (#Non-Pharmaceutical COVID-19 Interventions Saved Lives in the UK)
• COVID-19 Antibodies May Partially Protect Against Other Coronaviruses (#COVID-19 Antibodies May Partially Protect Against Other Coronaviruses)
• China Reaches New Milestone in Re-Opening (#China Reaches New Milestone in Re-Opening)

An increase in distrust of vaccines may well be one of the most enduring – and damaging – side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journalist Sethi Ncube writes for All Africa ([link removed]) (South Africa) that the reasons for vaccine hesitancy in Africa are many and varied. “The combination of reduced vaccine coverage, overstretched healthcare systems, and the return to pre-pandemic levels of social contact have created a perfect storm for infectious disease rates to rise. Growing vaccine hesitancy is only likely to make this issue worse. Inequitable access to vaccines can also contribute to hesitancy. If communities feel neglected or excluded from vaccine distribution efforts, they may become hesitant to trust the vaccines when they eventually become available.” Ncube argues, “Efforts to address vaccine hesitancy in Africa require collaboration between governments, health organizations, community leaders, and public health advocates. Public health
campaigns, community engagement, and transparent communication about vaccine safety and efficacy are essential strategies to combat vaccine hesitancy.”

If You Are in a Hurry

* Read a commentary from a group of global public health experts in The Lancet ([link removed](23)00328-5/fulltext#%20) on rethinking R&D for pandemic preparedness.
* Read STAT ([link removed]) on why experts think SARS-CoV-2 hasn’t yet settled into a seasonal pattern.
* Read The Guardian ([link removed]) on a new report that found non-pharmaceutical interventions saved lives in the UK during COVID-19.
* Read Medscape ([link removed]) on why long COVID numbers may be underestimated and Time ([link removed]) on why so seem to recover completely.
* Read The Atlantic ([link removed]) (US) for what we know – and don’t know – about the highly mutated COVID-19 variant BA.2.86.

Rethinking R&D for Pandemic Preparedness

A group of global public health experts writing in The Lancet ([link removed](23)00328-5/fulltext#%20) (UK) argue for moving away from relying on “market dynamics” to guide pandemic responses and instead “propose a new value proposition that instead prioritises equity from the research and development (R&D) stage and that strengthens capacity to control outbreaks when and where they occur.” They argue, “A new approach to R&D—with a focus on public health need rather than commercial incentives, equitable access to both the means for innovation (technologies, capital, and know-how) and the products it generates, and collective commitment to shared ownership and access—will increase equity and impact at each phase of outbreak control…. Although it is true that none of us are safe until we are all safe, it is also true that danger from epidemics is often differentially distributed, and that it is in the global interest to support local research
capacity, clinical trial design, and technology sharing to stop outbreaks where they occur and before they grow.”

Cholera Crisis in Kenya’s Refugee Camps

Angela Oketch reports in The Nation ([link removed]) (Kenya) on an outbreak of cholera in Kenya’s refugee camps. “Cholera was first recorded in October of last year. In Hagadera Camp alone.… 3,000 people tested positive for cholera.… This waterborne illness is often linked to unhygienic conditions, a significant worry for those already struggling with displacement. Hygiene is lacking at the camp, and many here share inadequate toilets. ‘Cholera is treatable, and more importantly, preventable, however, on several occasions, Kenya's health system has not been well-prepared to respond to outbreaks. This has included failure to identify and trace people who have the disease, as well as reporting and management of suspected cases,’ said Ms Wainana [of African Population Health Research Centre], adding that epidemics can escalate quickly in countries where health systems are weak.”

Misinformation Continues to Impact American’s Health

The Hill ([link removed]) (US) reports on a recent KFF poll ([link removed]) on misinformation which found, “a third of [US] adults believed the COVID-19 vaccines ‘caused thousands of sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people,’ with 10 percent believing that claim to be ‘definitely true’ and 23 percent saying it was ‘probably true.’ Another 34 percent said it was ‘probably false,’ and 31 percent said that claim was ‘definitely false.’”

Reporting on the poll, Poynter ([link removed]) (US) notes, “The confusion about what’s true — and who’s telling the truth — is of critical importance to public health, experts in political science said. ‘Misinformation leads to lives being lost and health problems not being resolved,’ Bob Blendon, a professor emeritus of public health at Harvard University, said in an interview. Blendon was not associated with the survey.” One of the poll’s authors, Lunna Lopes said, “the results show wide exposure, but limited uptake, of false claims. ‘A lot of people have heard about these health misinformation claims. Just because they’re exposed to it doesn’t mean they’re buying into it,’ she said. Still, the din of misinformation might leave the populace unsure what to believe. ‘You might be less trusting, and less likely to outright reject false information.’”

In a related story, USA Today ([link removed]) (US) fact checks a claim posted on the online platform Substack. “’VAERS data is crystal clear: The COVID-19 vaccines are killing an estimated 1 person per 1,000 doses (676,000 dead Americans),’ reads the headline on a post by Steve Kirsch, a prominent skeptic of COVID-19 vaccine safety. The post was shared more than 1,000 times in two weeks on Facebook according to CrowdTangle, a social media analytics tool…. The post uses anecdotal data to draw baseless, sweeping conclusions about the causes of unverified deaths. The post also contains assumptions about underreporting and causes of death that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says are incorrect. Through May 2023, just nine deaths had been linked to COVID-19 vaccines, all from rare blood clots associated with a vaccine that hasn't been available in the US since
that same month.”

A Call to Empower the Public to Understand Science

A MedPage Today ([link removed]) (US) opinion piece calls for supporting studies of “where and why communication breaks down between doctors and the public, and how we can make it better?” The author, emergency medicine resident Kristen Panthagani, asks, “What if we invest in training scientists and doctors to be better communicators? The goal of health communications research should be to empower the public to make informed health decisions for themselves, to teach them to be critical consumers of health information, and to train doctors and scientists how to help them on this journey. It is much better to teach people to tell fact from fiction than to try to chase down all the fiction on the internet.”

Pandemic Accord Talks Lagging

Health Policy Watch ([link removed]) (Switzerland) reports that a third draft of the WHO pandemic accord has been given to member states, but WHO’s Tedros, “expressed concern this week about the slow pace of negotiations on the pandemic accord, warning that it may not be completed by the May 2024 deadline. ‘I’m concerned that negotiations are moving slowly and that the accord may not be agreed in time for next year’s World Health Assembly (WHA). I urge all member states to work with a sense of urgency with a particular focus on resolving the most difficult and contentious issues,’ Tedros told WHO Africa’s regional meeting at its opening on Monday.

No Seasonal Pattern for COVID-19

STAT ([link removed]) (US) reports, SARS-CoV-2.… Has not fallen into a predictable seasonal pattern of the type most respiratory pathogens follow…. It’s been widely expected that SARS-2 will ease into [the same] type of a transmission pattern [as many respiratory viruses], once human immune systems and the virus reach a sort of detente. But most experts STAT spoke to about this question said that, so far, the virus has not obliged. Their views differ on the margins. Some expect seasonality to set in soon while others don’t venture to guess when the virus will settle into a seasonal pattern.”

There’s a New COVID-19 Variant. Should We Worry?

The Atlantic ([link removed]) (US) looks at what we know – and don’t know – about the COVID-19 variant BA.2.86, which has a significant number of mutations in its spike protein. “This new variant, dubbed BA.2.86, has now been detected in at least 15 cases across six countries, including Israel, Denmark, South Africa, and the United States. This is a trickle of new cases, not a flood, which is somewhat reassuring. But with COVID-19 surveillance no longer a priority, the world’s labs are also sequencing about 1 percent of what they were two years ago, says Thomas Peacock, a virologist at the Pirbright Institute. The less surveillance scientists are doing, the more places a variant could spread out of sight, and the longer it will take to understand BA.2.86’s potential.”

A Call to Win the Fight Against Tuberculosis, Malaria and Polio

Richard Conniff writes in an guest essay in The New York Times ([link removed]) (US), “There was a time not so long ago when preventing epidemic disease was a cause ordinary people embraced and celebrated…. [But] instead of presenting a unified front against COVID-19, we fought bitterly, and three years on, our shared response seems to be a shellshocked unwillingness to even think about epidemic diseases.” He argues, “I believe that the way to ease us as a nation back into the essential business of preventing infectious diseases is by focusing on pathogens we already know perfectly well, and for which we have new tools to reduce or eliminate sickness worldwide. I’m thinking in particular of the very winnable fights against three diseases with a long history of maiming, crippling and killing humans: tuberculosis, malaria and polio.”

Long COVID Updates

Medscape ([link removed]) (US) reports, “It's been estimated that up to one third of people who survive acute SARS-CoV-2 infection will suffer a post-viral syndrome with lingering neurologic and other symptoms — now known as long COVID or neurological postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (Neuro-PASC). However, new research suggests that may be an underestimate and that far more people may be suffering from long COVID without ever having tested positive for the virus. Researchers found a significant proportion of patients in their small study who had never tested positive for COVID-19 but who were having symptoms of long COVID nevertheless showed evidence of immune responses consistent with previous exposure.”

Time ([link removed]) (US) reports, “More than 200 symptoms are associated with Long COVID, commonly including fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, intolerance to exercise, chronic pain, and more. Millions of people around the world have developed Long COVID, and an uncertain number have completely recovered. ‘It’s really hard to tell’ exactly how many people get over their symptoms entirely, says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis who researches Long COVID. ‘But anecdotally, from clinical experience, the majority unfortunately don’t.’”

Non-Pharmaceutical COVID-19 Interventions Saved Lives in the UK

The Guardian ([link removed]) (UK) reports, “Measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic [in the UK] such as social distancing and wearing face masks ‘unequivocally’ reduced the spread of infections, a report has found. Experts looked at the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) – not drugs or vaccines – when applied in packages that combine a number of measures that complement one another…. The review found social distancing and lockdowns were the most effective category of NPIs. Stay-at-home orders, physical distancing and restrictions on gathering size were repeatedly found to be associated with significant reduction in Sars-CoV-2 transmission. The more stringent the measures were the greater the effect they had, the experts found.” Read the report
([link removed]) .

COVID-19 Antibodies May Partially Protect Against Other Coronaviruses

New Scientist ([link removed]) (UK) reports on a new study which found, “As a result of the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, and related vaccination campaigns, many people may have some immunity to other coronaviruses, including two that could cause dangerous outbreaks in the future. This includes the virus behind SARS, which started spreading in China in 2002 and killed around 1 in 10 of those infected before it was stopped by infection control measures, as well as the deadlier virus behind MERS, which kills 1 in 3 infected people. Small outbreaks of MERS still occur when the virus crosses to people from camels.”

China Reaches New Milestone in Re-Opening

AP ([link removed]) (US) reports, “China will no longer require a negative COVID-19 test result for incoming travelers starting Wednesday, a milestone in its reopening to the rest of the world after a three-year isolation that began with the country’s borders closing in March 2020.”
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