Informing Action. Training Leaders. Increasing Resilience.
We are in an age of pandemic threats.
COVID-19, the most consequential pandemic in a century, is not our last. The Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health works to reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience to pandemics, other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, peace, security, and prosperity. The Pandemic Center is an independent and credible voice for positive disruption.
This Pandemic Center is uniquely positioned to work across disciplines and sectors to generate and analyze evidence, educate a new generation of leaders, and ensure this work is translated to effective policy and practice around the globe.
The Pandemic Center Tracking Report
Each week, we review published data concerning domestic and international infectious disease outbreaks. Our goal is to interpret, contextualize, and summarize this data to keep readers informed about health threats.
Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center and Professor of Epidemiology at Brown University, reviews depictions of epidemics in Twilight (2008), The Last of Us (2023), Outbreak (1995), and Contagion (2011), and discusses how they relate to real public health systems today.
This video was created by BPR Producer Clara Baisinger-Rosen. The BPRM Video Team is led by Ayana Ahuja, and the BPR Multimedia Board is led by Solomon Goluboff-Schragger. Special Thanks to Jennifer Nuzzo, Amina Fayaz, Elliot Smith, Jordan Lac, and Grace Leclerc.
The Covid-19 virus in the U.S. has largely faded from view. But it hasn't faded away.
National wastewater data shows low Covid-19 activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The weekly reported Covid-19 deaths in April were slightly down compared with the same time a year earlier, federal data shows. Still, more than 300 Covid-19-related deaths were reported weekly as recently as mid-April.
Some infectious-disease specialists said they expect more cases this summer, as there have been somewhat regular summertime increases in the past. Others cautioned that Covid-19 can still surprise us, more than five years after it spurred a global pandemic that killed more than 1.2 million Americans.
"It is at our lowest levels it has been since the beginning of the pandemic," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "Our challenge is we don't know what that means for tomorrow."
The Trump administration on Tuesday released a more stringent set of guidelines for approving Covid-19 vaccines , requiring randomized controlled trials for new Covid-19 vaccines for many children and adults. The Food and Drug Administration expects it will be able to approve shots for adults older than 64 and other high-risk groups based on antibody testing.
The original Covid-19 shots were tested in large, randomized trials with placebos. The vaccines updated to match newer versions of the virus have been tested with antibody testing to ensure that they triggered an immune response.
As of May 10, the CDC projected that 70% of cases were caused by a version of the virus called LP.8.1. It is an offshoot of the Omicron variant, which first appeared in late 2021, and is related to the JN.1 variant, which was the target of last season's booster shots. The LP.8.1 version has picked up new mutations but hasn't yet led to an increase in cases or hospitalizations.
"Because there are so many people who have been vaccinated and infected, there is a high amount of immunity in the population," said Andrew Pekosz, director of the Center for Emerging Viruses and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University. "I think we're also seeing that as a way to dampen the spread of the virus."
Surveillance and monitoring for changes in the virus are continuing, Pekosz said, but at much lower levels than before, so there is more reliance on modeling to suss out variant spread. Hospitalization and death data remains the most reliable, though that data is now slower to arrive, some researchers said. All hospitals were no longer required to report data as of the close of April 2024, one of several data changes made at the end of the public health emergency.
Deaths from the virus are heavily concentrated among adults ages 65 and above, with more than 81% of Covid-related deaths occurring in that group, according to the CDC. But people of all ages can get seriously ill from a Covid-19 infection, the agency said, especially those with underlying medical conditions.
Covid-related hospitalizations in the U.S. are currently on the decline. There were some 1.3 hospitalizations per 100,000 people during the week ended April 26, down from a winter peak of 4.2 per 100,000 people for the week ended Jan. 4, CDC data shows. That rate is down from the winter of 2023-24, when hospitalization rates peaked at 7.8 per 100,000 people. The data is from a surveillance network of acute-care hospitals across 13 states.
Most years, the U.S. has experienced additional Covid-19 waves in late spring or summer, in addition to wintertime surges. Last year, a summertime wave peaked at around the week of Aug. 31, with more than 1,300 deaths reported, CDC data shows. Still, the virus has yet to fall into a fully predictable seasonal pattern, infectious-disease experts said.
"While we're in a better place this year than we were in previous years, I cannot tell you we will always continue to be in a better place," said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the pandemic center at Brown University. "There's still a lot of questions we don't have answers to."
Write to Brianna Abbott at brianna.abbott@wsj.com
By Brianna Abbott
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The termination letter arrived in Sabra Klein’s email inbox on March 25, telling her to immediately stop all work on a $10.9 million, five-year grant to research variations in people’s immune responses to COVID-19.
The grant funded the Serological Science Center of Excellence, which Klein, PhD ’98, MS, MA, a professor in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology (MMI), had to shut down that day, along with her fellow investigators across the National Cancer Institute’s Serological Sciences Network (SeroNet), which encompassed 25 research institutions. Klein and her co-principal investigator, Infectious Disease Professor Andrea L. Cox, MD, PhD, supported 40 workers across the schools of Public Health and Medicine. Klein had no choice but to immediately let go of four people from her team.
We are responding to the need to generate, synthesize and translate evidence to better define the most effective policies, practices, and resources to prepare for future infectious disease emergencies and confront the current crisis.
The Center is dedicated to cross-training a new generation of diverse pandemic leaders and equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need to make change in the world.
Engaging with governments, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations and media across the globe, the Pandemic Center works to advance evidence-based policies and practices to save lives, improve quality of life and equity and avert existential biological risks.
Explore the American Democracy and Health Security Initiative: Lamplighters and New Recommendations
The Initiative's website collects hundreds of Pandemic Lamplighter stories and lessons learned from their innovation and ingenuity in the face of pandemic darkness.
