It’s not over. Two and a half years after WHO declared COVID a pandemic, this week the body said it remains a serious global health emergency. SABC (South Africa) reports, “The Emergency Committee, made up of independent experts, said in a statement that rising cases, ongoing viral evolution and pressure on health services in a number of countries meant that the situation was still an emergency…. ‘COVID-19 is nowhere near over,’ WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual press conference from Geneva after the announcement. ‘As the virus pushes at us, we must push back.’”
 
Sky News (UK) reports, “Dr Ghebreyesus outlined several ‘interlinked challenges’ now facing the global response to coronavirus, including the Omicron sub-variants and reduced testing and sequencing. He added: ‘There is a major disconnect in COVID-19 risk perception between scientific communities, political leaders and the general public. This is a dual challenge of communicating risk and building community trust in health tools and public health social measures like masking, distancing and ventilation.’"
 
Writing in Forbes (US) Madhukar Pai says, “Millions of people worldwide are getting infected or re-infected with highly transmissible Omicron subvariants. Subvariant BA.5, in particular, causing surges in many parts of the world. BA.2.75 is another worrisome, new threat…. A staggering 2.6 billion people, a third of humankind, mostly in LMICs, are yet to receive even 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccination. Although 12 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered globally, only 19.1 percent of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose, 18 months after vaccinations began. He quotes “Fatima Hassan, a human rights lawyer and social justice activist and the founder of the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa, has been consistently calling out the racism behind the vaccine apartheid. ‘Given the new subvariants, the issue of vaccine equity is even more pressing,’ she said. ‘It’s not the 2021 or 2022 vaccines, but it is the next generation vaccines that we all need to have access to,’ she said.”
 

If You Are in a Hurry

• Read The Conversation Africa on evidence that supports COVID vaccination for pregnant women. Then read about advice to pregnant women and policy makers on vaccination in New Vision.
• Read the World Bank’s Pandem-ic blog on the “poor data and narrow thinking” that skew the perception that the pandemic is a rich country problem.
• Read Myron Cohen in Science Speaks on the promise and challenge of monoclonal antibodies as COVID treatment and prevention.
• Check out a new resource from Internews that explains the speed of COVID vaccine development.
• Read a Bloomberg via The Washington Post's monkeypox explainer.
• The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 outlines progress and barriers to reaching the SDGs. Read highlights of the impact of COVID in a press release.

 

COVID and Pregnant Women

 
The Conversation Africa (South Africa) spoke with Marta C. Nunes, author of a review of safety of COVID vaccines in pregnancy. Nunes says based on the review of data from “more than 30 studies from a number of different countries that had data on pregnant women and COVID vaccines” the authors recommend pregnant women take COVID vaccines. “This is because multiple studies, including a study by our research unit in South Africa which hasn’t been published yet, show that women who are pregnant and get infected with COVID have a higher risk of preterm births. Some studies have also shown that women who get COVID during pregnancy have a higher risk of stillbirths. So it’s really important to protect pregnant women against COVID-19.”
 
Science Africa (Kenya) reports, “Though pregnancy doubles the risk of death, pregnant women with COVID-19 have five times likelihood of dying from the disease in Africa. This is according to the findings of a one-year study conducted across 22 sites in six African countries, namely Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana. It is against this background, that Prof. Jean B. Nachega, Associate Professor of Epidemiology Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University of Pittsburg urged African countries to prioritize pregnant women for COVID-19 vaccination alongside other priority groups.” Prof. Nachega was speaking during a media science café supported by AVAC.
 
New Vision (Uganda) reports from the same media science café: “Prof. Jean Nachega urged pregnant mothers to ignore the information on social media that alleges that the vaccines compromise their immunity and the one of their babies. 'Mothers feared because of baseless information on social media that the vaccines would make the mothers infertile or lead to premature births. Pregnant women should ignore such rumours and get vaccinated,' Prof. Nachega said.” Advocate Sylvia Nakasi is quoted: “In Uganda, there is a lot of misinformation in the community on whether the vaccine is safe for pregnant mothers. Previously, we did not have enough literature to promote vaccination. Now we want policymakers to get this information so that they take the right action."
 

COVID and Global Health

 
Philip Schellekens asks in the World Bank’s Pandem-ic blog, “Has COVID-19 subverted global health?” He writes that arguments that the death rate from COVID has been much lower in low- and middle-income countries despite lower vaccination rates, “are based on poor data and narrow thinking. Poor data because data quality concerns have been pervasive during the pandemic. Such concerns have been not just the preserve of the developing world – many of the richest high-income countries have faced difficulties in correctly measuring and attributing COVID-19 as a cause of death. At the same time, we need to recognize that pre-existing inadequacies in CRVS (civil registration and vital statistics) systems before the pandemic will have amplified the challenge of capturing pandemic-related mortality correctly. Narrow thinking because the mortality toll of the pandemic goes well beyond direct COVID-19 mortality and includes the fatalities that are indirectly related as well as the fatalities that may have been avoided. Examples of additional fatalities include deaths due to unmanaged or undermanaged diseases as resources got redirected to COVID and existing patients became more hesitant to visit hospitals.”
 

COVID and Antimicrobial Resistance

 
MedPage Today (US) reports, “A new CDC report warned that progress against deadly antimicrobial-resistant infections reversed course during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.” According to the report, “over 29,400 people in the US died in 2020 from antimicrobial-resistant infections commonly linked to healthcare, with nearly 40 percent acquired during hospital stays. But the true toll may be far higher, with the report citing data gaps caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—data were either unavailable or delayed for half of the 18 pathogens listed in CDC's 2019 Antibiotic Resistance Threats report. Read the report.
 

Antibodies to Treat COVID and Other Diseases

 
Myron Cohen writes in a Science Speaks (US) blog about the promise and challenge of monoclonal antibodies (mABs) to treat and prevent COVID and other diseases: “Although the rise and fall of the first generation of mAbs directed against SARS CoV-2 has been challenging, the work has served as a critical proof of concept and catalyst. mAbs are tools that can play an important and unfilled role in infectious disease prevention and treatment. For SARS-CoV-2, targets will be identified that are unlikely to escape combinations of antibodies, regardless of mutations that occur. In the future, we can expect the COVID-19 experience to galvanize development of mAbs for many other infectious diseases for which we have no vaccine, prophylaxis or treatment. We are limited only by our creativity.”
 

COVID and HIV

 
The Body Pro (US) reports, “A large analysis published in The Lancet HIV adds to a growing body of research concluding that HIV is independently associated with increased odds of being hospitalized with severe COVID, as well as dying from COVID in the hospital—and suggests a higher risk for mortality for people living with HIV (PLWH) independent of antiretroviral therapy (ART) and viral suppression status. However, the study is limited by lack of data on vaccination status and CD4 counts.  Study author Silvia Bertagnolio says, “In addition to recommending that PLWH be prioritized for vaccination…, PLWH also need to be prioritized for therapy such as monoclonal antibodies if they have COVID. She emphasizes that physicians should more carefully monitor PLWH who have COVID, especially those with comorbidities.” Read the study in The Lancet.
 

Vaccine Hesitancy in Guatemala

 
Nature (UK) reports, “Researchers have been studying vaccine hesitancy in Guatemala, interviewing people to understand their resistance to COVID-19 vaccines and to find solutions. Although the phenomenon is not unique to Guatemala — many people worldwide have rejected COVID-19 vaccines despite data showing they are safe and effective — researchers hope the country’s failures could offer lessons beyond its borders, in preparation for future public-health emergencies. Guatemala has one of the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Latin America: only about 35 percent of people have been fully vaccinated…. A spokesperson for the Guatemalan health ministry says that many ‘cultural and religious factors’ have contributed to vaccine hesitancy among Guatemala’s people, and points out that ‘wrong or malicious information’ was distributed by groups including community leaders, making residents reluctant to get jabs.” But one expert notes, “Failing to educate Guatemalans about the side effects that are a normal reaction to the COVID-19 jabs increased scepticism. Guatemala’s message was too simple: ‘The vaccine is good, go get it.’”
 

COVID and the SDGs

 
The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 outlines progress and barriers to reaching the SDGs. “According to the Report, cascading and interlinked crises are putting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in grave danger, along with humanity’s very own survival. The Report highlights the severity and magnitude of the challenges before us. The confluence of crises, dominated by COVID-19, climate change, and conflicts, are creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, and affecting all the Sustainable Development Goals….” A press release notes, “the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the Goals and its effects are still far from over. Global “excess deaths” directly and indirectly attributable to COVID-19 reached 15 million by the end of 2021. More than four years of progress in alleviating poverty have been wiped out, pushing 93 million more people worldwide into extreme poverty in 2020. An estimated 147 million children also missed more than half of their in-person instruction over the past two years. The pandemic also severely disrupted essential health services…”
 

Africa CDC and Access to Paxlovid

 
Reuters (UK) reports the Africa CDC and Pfizer “signed a memorandum of understanding…for countries on the continent to receive supplies of the Paxlovid pill to treat COVID-19…. The MOU would allow African countries to access Paxlovid at cost.”
 

Physicians and Misinformation

 
A Perspective in NEJM (US) looks at whether or not what physicians say on social media can be regulated. “Growing allegiance to crowd-endorsed ‘facts’ poses a serious challenge for the institutions and structures that the medical enterprise has developed to protect the public and ensure that people can tell who can or cannot be trusted as medical professionals or relied on for scientific knowledge…. The issue of what physicians can and cannot say on social media has been hotly debated by legal scholars and in medical journals…. With nearly 1 million Americans dead from COVID, and deaths—some of them clearly preventable—continuing at a rate of more than 200,000 per year, it has become imperative for our profession to empower our institutions to signal clearly who is—and who is not—providing evidence-based information. We physicians need to use the institutions we’ve created for professional self-regulation to maintain public trust by establishing some recognizable boundaries. There aren’t always right answers, but some answers are clearly wrong.”
 

Bivalent Vaccines

 
Ars Technica (US) reports, “Vaccine-maker Moderna is working up two omicron-targeting boosters for different countries. If the company's plans pan out, it will mark the first time that COVID-19 vaccines would target different versions of the pandemic coronavirus in different places. Until now, all vaccines, including boosters, have targeted the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2, first identified in Wuhan, China. Both of Moderna's next-gen booster candidates are bivalent vaccines, which target both the ancestral virus and some version of omicron. One booster option targets BA.1…. That BA.1-based next-gen booster could be available in the EU, UK, Australia, and elsewhere later this month or early August. Moderna's other booster option targets BA.4/5 and is intended for use in the US. However, it likely won't be ready until early to mid-fall.”
 

Resource of the Week: The speed of COVID vaccine development

 
A new journalist resource from Internews is great for anyone who wants to understand or explain the speed of COVID vaccine development: The assumption that COVID-19 vaccines were developed “too fast” and are therefore unsafe and do not work is false and based on a misunderstanding of a number of issues. This false narrative has been hijacked and spread by anti-vaccination lobby groups to discredit COVID-19 vaccines and vaccines in general. The scientific facts are that the speeded-up process did not compromise safety or the scientific integrity of COVID-19 vaccines. In part, it reflected the extraordinary scientific advances in the types of vaccines which allowed scientist to do things in months, that took years before.”
 

Understanding Monkeypox

 
Bloomberg via The Washington Post (US) looks at the growing monkeypox outbreak and how it is spreading. “Monkeypox now represents a serious, evolving threat after sparking outbreaks in dozens of countries this year, mostly in Europe, demonstrating again how readily an infectious agent that emerges in one country can quickly become an international concern…. Preliminary research estimates that among cases who identify as men who have sex with men, the virus has a reproduction number greater than 1, which means more than one new infection is estimated to stem from a single case.”
 
NBC News (US) reports on first person accounts of monkeypox infection: “18 gay men who contracted monkeypox told NBC News how it can cause unsightly and, in some cases, debilitatingly painful skin lesions — and has left them stuck glumly inside…. Most of the men interviewed expressed a strong sense of duty to draw attention to this new pathogen spreading so concerningly within their community. They also hope to combat stigma against those who contract the virus by giving it a human face.”
 
CNBC (US) reports the WHO will reconvene the emergency committee for monkeypox next week. “The UN agency declined last month to declare a global emergency in response to monkeypox. But as infections have risen substantially over the last several weeks, the organization is expected to consider whether to issue its highest alert when the emergency committee reconvenes next week. ‘The emergency committee for monkeypox will reconvene next week and look at trends, how effective the countermeasures are, and make recommendations’ to countries and communities confronting the outbreak, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a virtual press conference.”