Category Archives: Epidemics

US to demand countries share data on ‘pathogens with epidemic potential’ in return for health aid

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Draft template seen by the Guardian has no reference to countries receiving benefits for sharing information, such as guaranteed access to medicines developed as a result

The US wants countries to agree to hand over information on bugs that could cause large-scale disease outbreaks in return for restoring aid to tackle health problems such as HIV and malaria, according to government documents.

The Trump administration is seeking new bilateral aid agreements with dozens of countries, after an abrupt withdrawal from existing arrangements at the start of this year. The agreements form part of a new America First Global Health Strategy announced in September.

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US anti-vax stance to blame for continent-wide surge in measles, say experts

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The disease was eliminated across the Americas in 2024, but urgent vaccination drives are now under way as cases rise from Mexico to Bolivia after outbreaks farther north

Governments across Latin America are stepping up efforts to vaccinate their populations against measles, as outbreaks in North America drive a 34-fold increase in the number of cases reported in the region this year.

Measles cases have surged worldwide to a 25-year high, due to low vaccine coverage and the spread of misinformation about vaccine safety. However, there is added concern in parts of Latin America over unequal access to healthcare and the worrying situation in the US, which is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades following a reversal of vaccine policy led by Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

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EU urged to build stockpiles to prepare for pandemic, natural disaster or invasion

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European Commission unveils strategy for storing food, medicine, generators and raw materials

The EU should develop stockpiles of food, medicine, generators and raw materials to be better prepared for a military invasion, pandemic or natural disaster, the European Commission has said.

Outlining its first-ever strategy on stockpiling, the EU executive said on Wednesday member states should also consider emergency supplies of water purification products, equipment to repair undersea cables, drones and mobile bridges for use in conflicts.

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Trump disrupting US bird flu response as outbreak worsens

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Experts’ concern grows as communication breaks down among federal agencies responsible for tackling epidemic

The Trump administration has disrupted the US response to bird flu as the outbreak worsens, leading to confusion and concern among federal staff, state officials, veterinarians and health experts, 11 sources told Reuters.

Since Donald Trump took office on 20 January, two federal agencies responsible for monitoring and responding to the epidemic have withheld bird flu reports and canceled congressional briefings and meetings with state health officials, the sources said.

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Race to combat mpox misinformation as vaccine rollout in DRC begins

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Poll suggests half of Congolese have not heard of deadly disease, as conspiracy theories and rumours spread

For doctors and nurses fighting mpox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the virus itself is not the only enemy. They are also facing swirling rumours and misinformation.

The first of millions of promised doses of mpox vaccine have finally started to arrive. Now the focus is on ensuring that people who need them will take them when the vaccination campaign begins next month, and teaching wider communities how to protect themselves.

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Africa to finally receive first batch of vaccines for deadly mpox virus

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The continent will belatedly get 10,000 shots amid criticism of delays to the process caused by WHO red tape

Africa’s first batch of mpox vaccines will this week finally reach the continent, weeks after they have been made available in other parts of the world.

The 10,000 shots, donated by the US, will be used to tackle a dangerous new variant of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, after a 2022 outbreak triggered global alarm.

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Five babies in England reported dead after developing whooping cough

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Fears of biggest UK outbreak in two decades as 2,793 cases confirmed in first quarter of 2024

The UK may be experiencing its biggest outbreak of whooping cough in two decades, with five deaths reported among infants who developed the disease in England between January and March.

According to the latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on Thursday, cases of whooping cough continue to increase, with 1,319 confirmed in March. This brings the total number of confirmed cases during the first quarter of 2024 to 2,793. The true number of cases is likely to be much higher though, because mild cases are easily confused with other respiratory illnesses in the early stages when the infection can be tested for.

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North Korea ‘in great turmoil’ over Covid death toll, says Kim Jong-un

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Regime reports another 21 deaths as fresh outbreaks of coronavirus in South Africa and US concern health officials

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has warned his country has been thrown into “great turmoil” after reporting another 21 deaths, days after the secretive state first admitted it was in the grip of a coronavirus outbreak.

The nation’s total death toll now stands at 27, with 524,440 illnesses attributed to a rapid spread of fever consistent with Covid since late April. The regime said 243,630 people had recovered and 280,810 remained in quarantine. However, it did not specify how many of the cases and deaths had been confirmed as Covid-19 infections.

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Pigs can pass deadly superbugs to people, study reveals

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Research into C difficile found antibiotic resistance is growing as a result of overuse on farm stock

Scientists have uncovered evidence that dangerous versions of superbugs can spread from pigs to humans. The discovery underlines fears that intensive use of antibiotics on farms is leading to the spread of microbes resistant to them.

The discovery of the link has been made by Semeh Bejaoui and Dorte Frees of Copenhagen University and Soren Persson at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institute and focuses on the superbug Clostridioides difficile, which is considered one of the world’s major antibiotic resistance threats.

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Britain got it wrong on Covid: long lockdown did more harm than good, says scientist

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A new book outlines the mistakes and missteps that made UK pandemic worse

There was a distinctive moment, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, that neatly encapsulated the mistakes and confusion of Britain’s early efforts to tackle the disease, says Mark Woolhouse. At a No 10 briefing in March 2020, cabinet minister Michael Gove warned the virus did not discriminate. “Everyone is at risk,” he announced.

And nothing could be further from the truth, argues Professor Woolhouse, an expert on infectious diseases at Edinburgh University. “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.”

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We can vaccinate 70% of the world against Covid by mid-2022. Here’s how

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The WHO’s vaccination goal is achievable – but it will take proper funding, better vaccine distribution and jabs with longer shelf lives

While western countries scramble with their booster rollout to deal with the Omicron wave, only 8.4% of people in low-income countries have had at least one Covid vaccination dose.

The gap in the vaccination rates between high- and low-income countries is wider than ever. We cannot keep turning a blind eye to it.

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Omicron proves we’re not in control of Covid – only global action can stop this pandemic

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If we keep allowing this virus to spread through unvaccinated populations, the next variant could be even more deadly

It’s almost two years since we first heard of Covid-19, and a year since the first Covid vaccines were rolled out. Yet this staggering progress is being squandered. We have drifted for months now, with richer countries, taking a very blinkered domestic focus, lulled into thinking that the worst of the pandemic was behind us. This variant reminds us all that we remain closer to the start of the pandemic than the end.

There is a lot we need to learn about the Omicron variant. Whether or not this is a pandemic-changing variant – one that really evades our vaccines and treatments – remains to be seen. Research will tell us more in the coming days and weeks, and we must watch and follow the data closely while giving the brilliant scientific teams time to get the answers. Although I am very worried about countries with limited access to vaccines, I am cautiously hopeful that our current vaccines will continue to protect us against severe sickness and death, if we are fully vaccinated.

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Covid-19 variants may not evolve to be less dangerous, says Neil Ferguson

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Senior UK scientist says extent of threat posed by Omicron will not be clear until end of year

People should not assume that Covid will evolve to become a milder disease, a senior scientist has warned, adding that the threat posed by the Omicron coronavirus variant will not be clear until the end of December.

Prof Neil Ferguson, head of the disease outbreak analysis and modelling group at Imperial College London, told MPs on Wednesday that while evolution would drive Covid to spread more easily the virus might not become less dangerous.

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Scientists sharing Omicron data were heroic. Let’s ensure they don’t regret it | Jeffrey Barrett

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The teams in Africa who detected the new Covid genome moved quickly. Their actions should not result in economic loss
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One of the positive experiences during two years of pandemic gloom has been the speed of scientific progress in understanding and treating Covid. Many effective vaccines were launched in less than a year and rapid large-scale trials found a cheap and effective drug, dexamethasone, that saved thousands of lives.

The global scientific community has also carried out “genomic surveillance” – sequencing the genome of the virus to track how it evolves and spreads at an unprecedented level: the public genome database has more than 5.5m genomes. The great value of that genomic surveillance, underpinned by a commitment to rapid and open sharing of the data by all countries in near-real time, has been seen in the last few days as we’ve learned of the Covid variant called Omicron.

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People testing negative for Covid-19 despite exposure may have ‘immune memory’

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Study says some individuals clear virus rapidly due to a strong immune response from existing T-cells, meaning tests record negative result

We all know that person who, despite their entire household catching Covid-19, has never tested positive for the disease. Now scientists have found an explanation, showing that a proportion of people experience “abortive infection” in which the virus enters the body but is cleared by the immune system’s T-cells at the earliest stage meaning that PCR and antibody tests record a negative result.

About 15% of healthcare workers who were tracked during the first wave of the pandemic in London, England, appeared to fit this scenario.

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We can be confident there have been far more than 5 million global Covid deaths | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters

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Estimating ‘excess’ fatalities, a more robust analysis method, puts the pandemic’s grim toll between 10m and 19m people
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On 1 November, news organisations reported the global Covid-19 death toll had exceeded 5 million. But, as these articles highlight, this figure is likely to be a massive underestimate.

Johns Hopkins University collates official daily statistics on Covid deaths, but there is no unified global definition: Belgium’s high reported death rate partly reflects its including all probable Covid deaths in all settings, while Hungary only publishes hospital deaths with a positive test. Turkmenistan and North Korea have, apparently, not experienced a single Covid death.

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Call for action on TB as deaths rise for first time in decade

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Tuberculosis campaigners tell G20 leaders $1bn is needed annually for vaccine research to reverse decades of underfunding

A group of tuberculosis survivors are calling for more funding and action to find new vaccines, after the numbers dying of the infection rose for the first time in 10 years.

In 2020, 1.5 million were killed by TB and 10 million infected, according to the World Health Organization. Campaigners want world leaders to invest $1bn (£730m) every year into vaccine research, spurred on by the momentum from the Covid jab development.

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Coronavirus report warned of impact on UK four years before pandemic

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Exclusive: Report from planning exercise in 2016 alerted government of need to stockpile PPE and set up contact tracing system

Senior health officials who war-gamed the impact of a coronavirus hitting the UK, warned four years before the onset of Covid-19 of the need for stockpiles of PPE, a computerised contact tracing system and screening for foreign travellers, the Guardian can reveal.

The calls to step up preparations in areas already identified as shortcomings in the government’s response to Covid, emerged from a previously unpublished report of a health planning exercise in February 2016 that imagined a coronavirus outbreak.

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UK vaccine volunteers to help prepare for next virus at new Pandemic Institute

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The Liverpool site will work with other international centres to research the threat of emerging disruptive diseases

A new scientific institute which aims to prevent future pandemics may have been able to save thousands of lives by accelerating vaccine development had it existed before December 2019, its researchers believe.

Liverpool’s new Pandemic Institute will include a new human challenge facility, where volunteers will test new vaccines and treatments under controlled conditions.

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‘They thought Covid only kills white people’: myths and fear hinder jabs in DRC

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Mutant strain may emerge amid vaccine hesitancy, experts say, as even medics reject jabs in DR Congo

Dr Christian Mayala and Dr Rodin Nzembuni Nduku sit together on a bench outside the Covid ward at Kinshasa’s Mama Yemo hospital.

They are discussing the health of their father, Noel Kalouda, who contracted coronavirus weeks before, and is now lying in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask.

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