Mpox outbreaks in Europe and the US in 2022 sparked global concern and led WHO to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, which was ended in May of this year. Cases have declined in Europe and the US, but as The Economist (UK) reports, “This year cases have fallen rapidly in much of the world, thanks to vaccines and health education. But not in China. In July and August the country said it had found nearly 1,000 new cases, more than half of the new infections reported worldwide in those months. This marked a sharp rise from zero infections early in the year…. Some 80% of cases lack a clear chain of infection, health officials say, implying that many others are not being recorded.” The Economist reports, anti-LGBTQIA sentiments and policies as well as the lack of an approved vaccine are behind the continued rise in cases in China. “China’s response to mpox recalls its initial handling of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In the late 1980s Chinese officials dismissed HIV as a foreign problem caused by decadent Western lifestyles…. Only after the scandal broke did a nationwide campaign against HIV gain traction and successfully reduce infections.”
Despite the relatively low rates of mpox in the US, the US National Institutes of Health announced a new trial – the STOMP trial – “to determine whether the antiviral drug tecovirimat can safely and effectively treat mpox…. Completing the STOMP trial is essential, not only to evaluate a therapeutic option for the current mpox outbreak, but also to guide preparation for future outbreaks and provide evidence that could inform medical practice in historically endemic countries.”
If You Are in A Hurry
- Read an interview with researcher Peter Hotez in CIDRAP about fighting back against the anti-science movement.
- Read a special report for the Council on Foreign Relations on what is needed for pandemic preparedness and global health security.
- Read AP on two new avaian flu deaths in Cambodia.
- Then read STAT on new research to try to develop flu-resistant chickens.
- Read Politico on an alarming rise in TB cases in New York City.
- Check out TAG’s (Treatment Action Group) 2023 TB Vaccine Pipeline Report and then read ProPublica on how GSK slow-walked development of a TB vaccine.
Fighting Back Against the Anti-Science Movement
In an interview with CIDRAP (US) researcher Peter Hotez talks about increasing attacks on science and scientists. He warns, “We need to find a way to decouple it from anti-vaccine aggression, because it’s accelerating. It’s not only COVID-19 vaccines; you’re starting to see this spill over into all childhood immunizations. It’s globalizing, and now it’s targeting not only science but scientists. These groups blame the vaccines themselves or say scientists created the COVID-19 virus. I can’t think of a time when we’ve seen that before in US history…. We need to create a new enterprise like the Southern Poverty Law Center for protecting science and scientists, because when you’re under attack—especially from Congress—it’s a very lonely place, and the backing of academic health centers varies. In my case, I’m lucky. What kind of assistance can we give scientists under attack?”
US Spending on Science Will Likely Fall
Nature (UK) reports, “Last year, lawmakers in the United States passed bipartisan legislation intended to maintain US competitiveness with countries such as China by boosting funding for science and innovation. But concerns are mounting that the US Congress will fail to deliver on its promises…. One reason that advocates for science worry about declines in public funding is the fact that such cuts tend to have a disproportionately strong effect on basic research. The private sector typically neglects this area because the pay-off — although potentially larger than that derived from applied sciences — is harder to predict.”
True Pandemic Preparedness Looks Like…
Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, writes in the Bangkok Post (Thailand): Any rational approach must start with the acknowledgment that controlling pandemics is in everyone's interest. Given rich, powerful countries' apparent inability to keep their commitments during a crisis, the reasonable solution is to ensure capacity to produce pandemic products everywhere, and to eliminate foreseeable impediments to countries doing so. That means agreeing to a strong IP waiver, and establishing stiff penalties for any drug company that wrongly interferes in another company's use of the specified IP, including in cases where production is being exported to third countries in the developing world.
In a special report for the Council on Foreign Relations, Yanzhong Huang and Rebecca Katz write, “’In the face of unprecedented global challenges, three crucial tasks emerge as paramount: promoting public health capabilities, bridging the gaps in global health governance, and effectively mitigating the harmful effects of geopolitical tensions’ While the authors acknowledge well-known global health threats, there are also other contributing factors. They note that climate change increases ‘the likelihood of contact between disease-carrying animals and humans’ and underscore that vulnerabilities in the global supply chain threaten ‘the production, distribution, and delivery of the medical supplies and commodities essential to global health security.’”
Cholera Deaths Rise in Zimbabwe
AP (US) reports, “Zimbabwe has recorded 100 suspected deaths from cholera and more than 5,000 possible cases since late last month, prompting the government to impose restrictions to stop the spread of the disease, including limiting numbers at funerals and stopping some social gatherings in affected areas.”
Avian Flu Deaths in Cambodia
AP (US) reports, “A 2-year-old girl is the second person in Cambodia to die of bird flu this week, and the third this year, the country’s Health Ministry has announced…. According to a global tally by the UN’s World Health Organization, from January 2003 to July 2023, there have 878 cases of human infection with H5N1 avian influenza reported from 23 countries, 458 of them fatal. Cambodia had recorded 58 cases since 2003 of humans infected with bird flu.”
CRISPR Chickens
STAT (US) reports, “While farmers trying to protect poultry have turned to isolating farmed birds from wild birds — no more ranging free for those chickens — and, increasingly, to vaccination, scientists in the UK on Tuesday offered up the idea of stitching immunity to influenza into chickens’ DNA. In a way, the research is an extension of humanity’s long history of enhancing certain traits in crops and farm animals, though with a decidedly 21st-century twist. In the paper, published in Nature Communications, the researchers described using the genome-editor CRISPR to alter a protein in chicken cells that flu hijacks to make copies of itself. If the virus can’t take over that protein, the idea goes, it can’t establish an infection.” Much more research is needed before this strategy could be used.
Malaria Comes to a 4th US State
CIDRAP (US) reports, “The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) yesterday reported a locally acquired malaria infection, the fourth state this year to report a local malaria case. In a press release, the ADH said the patient lives in Saline County, which is located in the central part of the state. The individual had not traveled outside of the country. The state has reported five travel-related malaria cases this year.
Rapid COVID-19 Tests Can Show More than Positive or Negative
MedPage Today (US) reports, “Experts agree that rapid antigen test kits can show degrees of infectiousness…. Researchers have shown that variations in COVID-19 test results can reveal different aspects about an individual's infection and, critically, how contagious they are at a given moment…. ‘These tests are really good indicators of how infectious you are,’ Mina said. ‘There's so much anxiety around having this virus that I think it helps people to know what's happening inside their body. There is some real public health utility to it.’"
New York City TB Cases Rising Sharply
Politico (US) reports New York City “has confirmed about 500 cases of active tuberculosis so far this year, an increase of roughly 20 percent from the same time last year, according to internal preliminary data reviewed by POLITICO. That rate would make it the worst year in a decade…. Tuberculosis has been relatively scarce in the US since cases peaked decades ago during the AIDS epidemic, but the situation in the nation’s largest city foreshadows a possible resurgence of the disease — still a leading killer globally.”
Update on TB Vaccine Research from TAG
Treatment Action Group has posted its 2023 TB Vaccine Pipeline Report, noting in the introduction: “TB vaccine development may be slow – especially compared to COVID-19 – but it is an active field of discovery and getting busier across the board, from preclinical development to clinical trials to policymaking. Anticipation for new TB vaccines has even sparked a new set of activities called ‘vaccine preparedness’ meant to smooth the transition from clinical development to implementation. Collective anticipation is a productive space: it generates agitation, which if channeled in the right ways pays off.”
GSK Stalled TB Vaccine Development
ProPublica (US) reports, “A vaccine against tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest infectious disease, has never been closer to reality, with the potential to save millions of lives. But its development slowed after its corporate owner focused on more profitable vaccines…. Pharmaceutical giant GSK pulled back on its global public health work and leaned into serving the world’s most-profitable market, the United States… As TB continued to rage around the globe, it took nearly two years for GSK to finalize an agreement with the nonprofit Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, or Gates MRI, to continue to develop the vaccine. While the Gates organization agreed to pay to keep up the research, GSK reserved the right to sell the shot in wealthy countries.”
Gates Foundation Funds Efforts to Develop New mRNA Vaccines for Africa
Reuters (UK) reports, “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will give $40 million, including to a Belgian biotech company and two leading African vaccine manufacturers, in a bid to boost access to mRNA vaccines for protection against various diseases in Africa. Nivelles-based Quantoom Biosciences will get $20 million to advance work on its mRNA manufacturing platform, while the Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal and Biovac in South Africa will get $5 million each to buy the technology. A further $10 million is available for other vaccine manufacturers who want to use the platform.”
Feeling Bad After a COVID-19 Vaccine May Be Good
New York Times (US) reports, “People who had those side effects after the second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine had more antibodies against the coronavirus at one month and six months after the shot, compared with those who did not have symptoms, according to the new study. Increases in skin temperature and heart rate also signaled higher antibody levels…. The relative increase in antibody levels among those who experienced side effects was small and doesn’t mean that people without symptoms don’t muster a strong immune response, experts said. Read the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed.
Study of How Severe COVID-19 Develops May Lead to New Treatments
Japan Times (Japan) reports, “A Japanese-led research team has said it has identified how infections with the coronavirus can cause inflammation in blood vessels and blood clots, resulting in severe COVID-19 cases…. The research results, published Friday in the US journal Cell Stem Cell, are expected to facilitate the development of drugs to prevent serious COVID-19 complications.”
Long COVID Rare in Children
Washington Post (US) reports, “Although COVID-19 symptoms can linger for weeks, months or years, 1 percent of children in the United States had the condition known as long COVID through 2022, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By the end of last year, about 92 percent of those 17 and younger had antibodies indicating a previous COVID-19 infection, but among youths, long COVID ‘remains rare, especially in children younger than 12,” the report’s authors wrote.’”
Older Americans Most Affected by COVID-19
CNN (US) reports, “Older adults have accounted for nearly two-thirds of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States this year, posing “a continued public health threat,” says a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From January through August, adults 65 and older accounted for about 63% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations, 61% of intensive care unit admissions and 88% of in-hospital deaths associated with COVID-19, according to the report published Friday by the CDC. Most of those hospitalized older adults had underlying health conditions, such as diabetes or kidney disorders, and less than one-quarter – only 23.5% – had received the bivalent vaccine that was recommended at the time.”
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