If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that it’s never a good thing when a new disease takes the world by surprise. The initial response to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 was a scattershot affair, with some countries having the resources to develop tests and vaccines, others lacking them, and the best defense the world could come up with turning out to be little more than shutting itself down—with borders slamming closed and people remaining inside their homes.
What was needed was a more coordinated global effort not just to battle the virus, but also to look for emerging variants. As my colleague Alice Park reports, in 2021, Abbott, the global health care company, developed just that, establishing the Abbott Pandemic Defense Coalition (APDC), a collection of scientists based in 12 countries that would search not just for SARS-CoV-2 variants, but other emerging outbreaks of diseases like monkeypox, hepatitis, Zika, dengue, meningitis, and yellow fever.
But it is against the COVID-19 pandemic that the APDC has had its greatest successes. In the early summer of 2020, researchers at the Center for Epidemic and Response Innovation (CERI) in South Africa—who were already collaborating with Abbott—found and reported mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that would soon become known as the Beta variant. The early discovery allowed Abbott to determine that its existing PCR and at-home rapid tests could detect the new strain. Several months later, researchers in Brazil sounded a similar alarm when they spotted and reported a variant emerging in the Amazon basin that would soon become known as Gamma.
“What would have happened if Gamma would not have been discovered until it reached a big city such as Sao Paulo, of 20 million people?” Esper Kallas, professor of infectious and parasitic diseases at the University of Sao Paulo, a coalition partner, asked Alice.
Then in the fall of 2021, the most alarming variant yet emerged, when a lab technician in South Africa noticed a variant of SARS-CoV-2 that was missing three hallmark proteins. The technician quickly alerted CERI, which conducted further studies of the new strain, and notified South African officials and the World Health Organization. That was when the world first learned of Omicron.
Coalitions like the APDC are not entirely new. The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, which recently partnered with the Pasteur Institute, is a philanthropic organization that does similar virus-sleuthing work. But more are needed.
In his 2022 book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Bill Gates proposed the establishment of a worldwide disease-monitoring system dubbed GERM—for Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization—which would scan the world’s databases, looking for new and unexplained infections. According to Gates’s estimates, it would cost $1 billion to maintain a team of 3,000 full-time virus hunters—or less than one-thousandth what the world’s nations currently spend on defense.
APDC could serve as a model for establishing just this kind of global coalition. “Viruses move very fast," says Gavin Cloherty, who heads APDC. "We also need to be moving very fast with our partners.”
More than 577.3 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 9 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 6.4 million people have died. On July 31, there were 538,942 new cases and 814 new deaths confirmed globally.
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending, in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 10 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 91.3 million coronavirus cases as of 9 a.m. E.T. today. More than 1.02 million people have died. On July 31, 7,489 new cases were reported and 1 new death was confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending in terms of cases:
And in terms of deaths:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Aug. 1. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
Have suggestions for our COVID-19 newsletter? We'd love to hear from you. Fill out our survey here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
President Biden continues to test positive for COVID-19, according to a letter released yesterday by Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the physician to the president. He had previously tested negative on July 26, and every day the rest of the week, but tested positive again on July 30 in an apparent case of Paxlovid rebound. O’Connor added that Biden “continues to feel well” and “will continue to conduct the business of the American people from the Executive Residence." CNN reports that the president had six close contacts prior to the positive test on Saturday that required him to return to isolation. None of those six people has tested positive.
Pfizer-BioNTech plans to begin clinical trials of a bivalent vaccine to target both the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and the BA.4 and BA.5 strains “in the near future,” company officials told the Wall Street Journal. The plan is in keeping with a June recommendation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that future shots use a bivalent formulation. Moderna is also planning to test a similar bivalent, though was less specific about when the trial will begin, telling the Journal only that the company “is discussing the trial details with the FDA.”
For the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020, New Zealand has fully opened its borders, reports the BBC. Visitors still need to be vaccinated to enter the country, but they are not required to undergo any quarantine period after their arrival. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hailed the move as an “enormous moment.” That is especially true for the country’s tourism industry, which shed 72,000 jobs during the lockdown and saw its contribution to the country’s GDP slashed nearly in half.
The Washington, D.C. school system is imposing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for children 12 and older in the coming academic year, reports the Washington Post. But the mandate carries a racial disparity risk. Overall, 85% of children 12 to 15 have been vaccinated in the District, but the rate is only 60% among Black children. If the city does not close that vaccination gap before fall, a disproportionate number of Black students could be required to remain home in the fall. Health officials are planning a vaccine drive in order to raise overall vaccination rates—especially those among Black children.
Activity in factories in China shrank in July, as surges of COVID-19 around the country shuttered portions of the industrial sector, reports the Guardian. The decrease was a small one—less than 2%—but that was sufficient to drop manufacturing below the level that separates expansion from contraction. The sharpest fall-off came in energy-intensive plants such as oil refineries and companies that manufacture ferrous metals. Partly as a result of the decline, Beijing announced that it would miss its official growth target of 5.5% this year.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
If you were forwarded this and want to sign up to receive it twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, click here.
Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Angela Haupt.
沒有留言:
張貼留言