It will likely be decades – if ever – before we fully understand all the ways the COVID-19 pandemic changed our lives, but three years in, we are seeing more clearly some of the collateral damage from the pandemic and the responses to it. We’ve known almost since the beginning of the pandemic that lockdowns and other pandemic emergency measures prevented or slowed many children from receiving critical childhood vaccinations. We’ve seen growing mis-and disinformation about vaccines and growing vaccine hesitancy resulting in part from the politicization of COVID-19 vaccines.
 
Now Nature (UK) reports, “The drop in [childhood] vaccination rates is partly a direct consequence of the pandemic itself, which caused severe interruptions in public-health services and diverted resources. But it isn’t simply a crisis of access to vaccines. The failures and inequities in the global public-health response, coupled with politicization of the pandemic, have also undermined confidence in the institutions and people that coordinate and conduct immunization efforts. As a result, global vaccination rates have hit their lowest point since 2008 — and getting back on track could be difficult. ‘We’re talking about tens of millions of lives that are at stake,’ says Kate O’Brien, who heads the immunization programme at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. Rebuilding the trust lost during the pandemic will be a crucial step in pushing back against the global spread of otherwise preventable diseases.”
 

If You Are in a Hurry 

• Read Bloomberg on a new initiative delivering COVID-19 treatment to some African countries.
• Read a call to conference organizers to better assess COVID-19 risk in Nature.
• Read Reuters on how rising COVID-19 rates in China may prolong the global public health emergency.
• Read American Public Health Association’s Georges Benjamin’s assessment of Fauci’s legacy for public health in MedPage Today.
• Read a Lancet Infectious Disease editorial on the twin threats of climate change and zoonosis.
• Read NBC News on the consequences of vaccine misinformation.

 

Infections and Deaths Rise in China

 
The pandemic focus has shifted to China as winding down the zero COVID policy and lifting restrictions seems to be leading to a huge rise in cases. Nature (UK) reports, “Up to one million people in China could die from COVID-19 over the next few months, according to some of the first projections since the government lifted many of its strict ‘zero-COVID-19’ measures.” NPR’s Goats and Soda Blog (US) reports, “China is now facing what is likely the world's largest COVID-19 surge of the pandemic. China's public health officials say that possibly 800 million people could be infected with the coronavirus over the next few months. And several models predict that a half million people could die, possibly more.”
 
Radio Free Asia (US) reports, “Beijing is currently facing an extraordinary wave of deaths as COVID-19 rips through the population, amid a widespread lack of data as mass, compulsory testing is abruptly halted across the country, residents and officials told Radio Free Asia.”
 
Reuters (UK) reports, “It may be too early to declare the global end of the COVID-19 pandemic emergency because of a potentially devastating wave to come in China, according to several leading scientists and advisers to the World Health Organization…. Alongside the risks for China, some global health figures have warned that allowing the virus to spread domestically could also give it the chance to mutate, potentially creating a dangerous new variant….”
 
In an editorial the Washington Post (US) argues, “A new crisis could shake the whole world. As the Wuhan outbreak demonstrated three years ago, what begins in China does not necessarily stay there…. One danger is that China’s outbreak will generate new variants that threaten the rest of the world. It is impossible to predict, but previous variants with a transmission edge have spread rather quickly. Millions of infections in China increase the chances of a new variant rising.”
 

COVID-19 Drugs to African Countries

 
Bloomberg (US) reports on an initiative to deliver Pfizer’s COVID-19 drug Paxlovid to some African countries, with the first 1,000 doses delivered to Zambia. “The consortium, launched in September and backed by the Clinton Health Access Initiative and institutions including Duke University, aims to distribute 100 000 courses of the drug donated by Pfizer to poor nations, which have yet to receive therapeutic medicines to tackle the coronavirus. Other countries due to receive Paxlovid shipments include Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as Laos, the consortium said in a statement. Rwanda is currently the only African country where the treatment is available.”
 

COVID-19 Vaccines and Politics

 
Politics continues to play a role in COVID-19 vaccinations in many countries and communities. The governor of the US state of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is also widely believed to a contender for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024 is ramping up his ant-vax rhetoric. The Washington Post (US) reports, “this past week, DeSantis threw himself into misleadingly disparaging the vaccines, convening skeptics to buck guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seeking to investigate vaccine makers for fraud….”
 

India Concerned about New Variants

 
Reuters (UK) reports, “India's government has asked the country's states to keep a sharp lookout for any new variants of the coronavirus and urged people to wear masks in crowded areas, citing an increase in COVID-19 cases in China and other parts of the globe. Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya met senior government officials on Wednesday to discuss the matter, with all those present wearing masks - a practice that has not been mandatory in most parts of the country for several months.” The Hindu (India) reports, “The BF.7 variant of COVID-19, believed to be driving the recent surge of cases in China, was first identified in India as far back as July. Four instances of the Omicron subvariant had been genome-sequenced in people in Gujarat and Odisha in subsequent months, but it was not linked to increased severity or infectiousness in the two States…. ‘Whether BF.7 behaves differently in a population that has been minimally exposed to the coronavirus as opposed to Indians who have hybrid immunity (multiple doses of the vaccine along with exposure to several variants of the virus) is being investigated by the Indian Council of Medical Research,’ one of the officials told The Hindu.”
 

Preventing More Pandemics

 
A Lancet Infectious Disease (UK) editorial calls for coordinated efforts to fight the twin threats of climate change and zoonosis. “The world is at a tipping point at which putting the health of our planet at the centre of its efforts will ensure life on Earth is preserved. We must stop the underlying climate change and, in the meantime, take other actions to mitigate zoonotic risk…. Scientists have a huge part to play as their research efforts can guide policy makers to assist LMICs, not just in building capacity to lower risk and promoting health care, but by replenishing and innovating the available drugs, vaccines, and technologies. Policy makers and individuals have to act now to help prevent the threat of another pandemic.”
 

The Consequences of Vaccine Misinformation

 
NBC News (US) reports on a small but growing outbreak of measles among children in the US state of Ohio. “The outbreak, the largest in the US since 2019, is happening as resistance to school vaccination requirements is spreading across the country. On Friday, the Kaiser Family Foundation released data showing that 28 percent of adults surveyed this summer were against vaccination requirements for kids entering kindergarten, up from 16 percent in 2019.” US CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walenskyis quoted: "’As I think about the challenges that we have to public health, vaccine misinformation is among the biggest threats. Walensky said that once a parent becomes frightened by false or inaccurate claims about vaccine risks, it is difficult to ease that fear, even with facts.’…. One of the biggest hurdles is getting through to parents who, based on rumor or false information, truly believe vaccines cause harm.” Read the Kaiser Family Foundation report.
 
ABC News (Australia) Fact Check team reports, “In the third year of the pandemic, much of the misinformation coming across our desk involved the safety of COVID-19 vaccines…. The swirl of misinformation ultimately coalesced in the film "Died Suddenly", which CheckMate picked apart to discover a dizzying array of misappropriated case studies involving people — and, bizarrely, in one case a gaming platform — who had supposedly died suddenly after being vaccinated.”
 

Fauci’s Legacy

 
As Tony Fauci nears the end of the government part of his career, there are many interviews with him, reflection on his career and impact in the media this week. In one, the American Public Health Association’s Georges Benjamin argues in MedPage Today, “his most enduring accomplishment is his assiduous capacity to explain complicated science to both policymakers and the general public. Fauci has a way of taking complex scientific material and making it understandable, becoming the go-to guy whenever complicated public science communication was required. This will be his true legacy.”
 

WHO Estimates of Excess Deaths from COVID-19

 
A WHO study in Nature (UK) reports, “We estimate 14.83 million excess deaths globally, 2.74 times more deaths than the 5.42 million reported as due to COVID-19 for the period. There are wide variations in the excess death estimates across the six World Health Organization regions…. In the two years within which the COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted humanity, important lessons remain to be fully documented and harnessed as part of the global public health surveillance capacity. First, the urgent need to improve data and health information systems and the way data are collected, analysed, shared and reported. Second, the required alignments of communicable disease surveillance with the continuous strengthening of health information systems and their integration with other existing routine surveillance systems, and with demographic and geographic monitoring systems to facilitate timely and targeted interventions. COVID-19 surveillance must also be combined with Universal Health Coverage and the International Health Regulations monitoring and related indicators for health-system preparedness, including vaccine coverage and water, sanitation and hygiene services.”
 

COVID-19 Leading Cause of Death in Spain

 
Reuters (UK) reports, “The number of deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic fell by almost a third in Spain in the first half of this year from a year ago, but the illness provoked by the virus remained the leading cause of fatalities…”
 

Museveni Declares Uganda Ebola Free

 
The Daily Monitor (Uganda) reports Ugandan President Museveni has declared Uganda Ebola free, quoting the President in a national address: “We have defeated Ebola. We have now overcome Ebola. Why? Because people have listened. Simple. I want to thank the medical staff. When we are giving medals, we shall have to give medical staff…because in this war of Corona [virus] and Ebola, they are always on the frontline.”  The story also notes, “According to WHO guidelines, 42 days have to elapse without any person contracting Ebola in an area for it to be declared free of the disease.”
 

Omicron Infections Not Always Mild

 
CIDRAP (US) reports on a new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases that challenges the perception that Omicron infections were largely milder than those from Delta and other previous strains. The study authors wrote: “The finding that unvaccinated individuals hospitalized with Omicron infections have similar risk of severe disease compared to cases prior to emergence of variants of concern undercuts public perception that Omicron is a mild disease. Comparison of disease severity between Omicron and Delta alone overlooks the increased severity of Delta variant compared to prior lineages which were responsible for millions of deaths."
 

Conferences and COVID-19 Risk

 
A scientific conference attendee argues in a Nature (UK) article, “Organizers should evaluate the risks of COVID-19 infections at conferences and communicate those to attendees,” sharing his own experience of testing positive for COVID-19 after attending a conference. “The organizers could have made changes to better protect attendees, if they had known they had a problem in the first place. And they could have been aware of this issue simply by surveying recent attendees, as I did. It’s hard to understand why the organizers didn’t, and why other conference hosts don’t. Anonymous surveys are not rocket science, and many conference organizers already conduct post-meeting customer satisfaction surveys. So why don’t they make the effort to find out how many people are getting sick following such conferences? Perhaps it is because conference revenues sustain the finances of many scientific societies. Having said that, conference organizers shouldn’t be singled out: the risk of infection at many other types of events should also be better assessed.”
 

COVID-19 Could Spread from Corpses

 
New York Times (US) reports, “Like a zombie in a horror film, the coronavirus can persist in the bodies of infected patients well after death, even spreading to others, according to two startling studies. The risk of contagion is mainly to those who handle cadavers, like pathologists, medical examiners and health care workers, and in settings like hospitals and nursing homes, where many deaths may occur…. The research has not yet been vetted for publication in a scientific journal, but outside experts said that the studies were well-done and the results compelling.”