Reimagining the Future of Talent: A multi-generational dialogue at Spelman College
ATLANTA, Sept. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- In partnership with Spelman College, Tapestry Networks brought together corporate leaders, faculty, and students for a knowledge exchange on Reimagining the Future of Talent. Held on Spelman's Atlanta campus during National HBCU Week, the dialogue focused on how companies are adapting their talent strategies to shifts in workforce demographics, changing expectations from younger workers, and seismic developments in technology. Corporate executives and board members joined from over 40 organizations, including Accenture, AIG, Boston Scientific, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cigna, The Coca-Cola Company, Google, Novartis, Salesforce, Warner Brothers, Kohl's, Honeywell, Celsius, LHH, Arthur M Blank Family Foundation, and Assemble.fyi. Leading academic administrators, faculty, and students engaged in the conversation, coming from Spelman College, Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgetown University, and Brown University.
Seth Berkley, M.D., Arup Chakraborty, Ph.D., and Ashish Jha, M.D., MPH, join the Board
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Sept. 24, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Apriori Bio, a biotechnology company aimed at providing humanity with variant-resilient protection against rapidly-evolving viruses, announced today the addition of three esteemed leaders to its Board of Directors. The new directors include Seth Berkley, M.D., former CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, Arup Chakraborty, Ph.D., Scientific Advisor and Academic Partner at Flagship Pioneering, and Ashish Jha, M.D., MPH, former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator. They join Board Chair Lovisa Afzelius, Ph.D., General Partner at Flagship Pioneering and Co-Founder and CEO of Apriori, and Travis Wilson, Growth Partner at Flagship Pioneering.
The Board will support Apriori's leadership team and the company as they advance Octavia™, Apriori's biology-informed artificial intelligence platform, for the development of vaccines to protect against current and potential viral threats.
"I am pleased to welcome Seth, Arup and Ashish to Apriori's Board of Directors," said Board Chair Lovisa Afzelius, Ph.D., General Partner at Flagship Pioneering and Co-Founder and CEO of Apriori. "When we launched Apriori, we set out to create a future where we can get ahead of viruses, instead of chasing them as they evolve. The unparalleled wisdom and experience of Seth, Arup and Ashish will be instrumental as we pioneer transformative solutions to better protect the global community against viral threats."
Apriori, a 2023 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, recently received a grant from CEPI to further advance Octavia to focus on viruses beyond coronaviruses. The research Apriori conducts on this front will feed into and be supported by CEPI's newly established Biosecurity function.
Seth Berkley, M.D.
Seth, a medical doctor and infectious disease epidemiologist, is an advisor to the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health and several biotech, vaccine and technology companies. Previously, Seth was the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Under his leadership, Gavi accelerated global immunization access in its mission to save lives, reduce poverty and protect the world against the threat of epidemics and pandemics. He also co-founded and led COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), which provided more than two billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to 146 countries, and founded the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Seth has worked with the Special Pathogens Branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Ministry of Health of Uganda and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2022, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and has been recognized by several publications for his contributions to global health, including Newsweek, TIME and WIRED.
Arup Chakraborty, Ph.D.
Arup is a scientific advisor and academic partner at Flagship Pioneering. He is one of a maximum of 12 Institute Professors at MIT, the highest rank awarded to a MIT faculty member. He is also a professor of chemical engineering, physics and chemistry. Arup was the founding director of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and is a founding member of the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH and Harvard. For over two decades, Arup's work has largely focused on bringing together approaches from immunology, physics and engineering. Arup is one of less than 30 individuals who are members of all three branches of the US National Academies – National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine and National Academy of Engineering.
Ashish Jha, M.D., MPH
Ashish is the former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, appointed by President Joe Biden. While serving in this role, he led the work that increased the development of and access to treatments and newly formulated vaccines, dramatically improved testing and surveillance, facilitated major investments in indoor air quality measures and put in place an infrastructure to respond to current and future disease outbreaks more effectively. Before his appointment to the White House, Ashish served as the Dean of the Brown School of Public Health and a Professor of Health, Policy, and Practice. Prior to joining Brown University, Ashish was the Faculty Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute from 2014 until 2020 and served as the Dean for Global Strategy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health from 2018 to 2020. He is also a practicing physician with deep expertise in infectious diseases.
About Apriori Bio
Apriori is working to create a world that is protected against viral threats. Our pioneering approach centers on a unique technology platform, Octavia™, which allows us to survey the entire landscape of existing and potential variants to design new vaccines against the most threatening viruses. Octavia can also inform public health policy in real time by predicting the impact of emerging variants. Apriori was founded in 2020 in Flagship Labs, a unit of Flagship Pioneering. For more information visit www.aprioribio.com or follow us on LinkedIn and X at @AprioriBio.
American democracy and public health effectiveness are inextricable. American health security depends on maximizing the ability to live in a free, pluralistic society able to coherently manage a public health emergency. In turn, the health of US democracy depends on citizens’ faith and trust in institutions—especially government—to protect them in a crisis such as a pandemic.
The ongoing mpox outbreak in Africa is a stark reminder of the persistent threat of infectious diseases. It also highlights a game-changing opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health applications in response to not just mpox, but any future infectious disease outbreaks.
AI’s transformative potential, when integrated into digital health tools, can empower individuals and healthcare providers, enabling a more rapid, effective and equitable response to emerging health threats.
The rapid advances in AI over the past few years, particularly since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, offer a glimpse into a future where data-driven insights and intelligent tools can empower us to act swiftly and decisively against emerging health threats. AI-powered digital health apps can serve as critical tools in this endeavour.
Imagine two innovative applications: one designed for people to safely self-navigate infectious disease outbreaks and another tailored for community health workers to efficiently provide vaccinations and medical care. Both can revolutionise public health responses and enhance our ability to manage outbreaks proactively.
During an infectious disease outbreak, timely and accurate information is crucial for the public to make informed decisions. An AI-powered app that helps individuals and families self-navigate outbreaks by providing real-time, personalised guidance based on the latest information can radically improve infectious disease response and containment.
The consumer app would deliver easy-to-understand and concise summaries of the pathogen, the most vulnerable cohorts, local exposure risk factors, a person’s risk of death if infected, and the availability of vaccinations and infection treatment.
Such an app offers a single source of truth for informed infectious disease management tailored to each family’s circumstances. The actionable insights are a lens into prevention measures, symptom monitoring and when to seek medical care.
Someone who lived with a Missouri resident infected with bird flu also became ill on the same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Friday.
The disclosure raises the possibility that the virus, H5N1, spread from one person to another, experts said, in what would be the first known instance in the United States.
On Friday night, C.D.C. officials said that there was “no epidemiological evidence at this time to support person-to-person transmission of H5N1,” but that additional research was needed.
The coincidental timing of the illnesses, especially outside flu season, concerned independent experts. H5N1 has been known to spread between close contacts, including those living in the same household.
With the approach of fall and cooler weather across the United States, officials say the risk posed by the H5N1 bird flu virus could rise — and they’re taking steps to prevent the creation of a hybrid flu virus that could more easily infect humans.
Fall and winter months present more opportunities for H5N1 to spread and change since both cows and other flu viruses will be on the move. While most human infections in the current outbreak have been mild and self-limiting, each new host gives the virus a chance to get better at infecting people.
“To be clear, we have no evidence so far that this virus can easily infect human beings or that it can spread between human beings easily in a sustained fashion,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “If it did have those abilities, we would be in a pandemic.
“The second we know that someone gave it to someone else relatively easily, that’s a new pandemic, and it will be around the globe, probably in a matter of weeks,” Nuzzo said at a seminar hosted by the Health Coverage Fellowship.
The concern comes as scientists are urgently trying to solve the mystery of how a person in Missouri who had no contact with animals became infected by a type of bird flu.
A newly confirmed human bird flu infection in Missouri is being seen as a sign that the virus could pose a growing threat to humans.
The new case, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state officials disclosed late last week, is the first bird flu case in the U.S. this year not tied to a known exposure to animals.
The ongoing bird flu outbreak has sickened dairy cattle in herds across 14 states and is known to have sickened 13 workers at U.S. dairy and poultry farms.
The CDC has said for months that the risk from the virus to the general public is low, but that farm workers should take precautions. The apparent emergence of a patient with no known ties to animals is a significant development.
Brown University epidemiology professor Jennifer Nuzzo says she has been concerned about the threat to farm workers, and the new case may expand the threat.
“If it gained the ability to more easily infect humans and spread between humans, we would be in another pandemic,” Nuzzo says.
Many questions about the Missouri case remain unanswered.
Last Friday, the Missouri health department announced a recent human case of bird flu. What’s unsettling about the case is that the patient — hospitalized on August 22 and later released — is the first among 15 people infected in the US who didn’t report having contact with animals. That raises the possibility that the illness has already begun spreading among humans.
It’s not yet clear whether the virus involved is the H5N1 influenza subtype that has infected wild birds, poultry, and dairy cows worldwide since it was first identified in 2020 and raised flags among experts about another potential pandemic. If it is, though, there’s concern about what the Missouri case could represent. “There’s a few steps before this potentially becomes a pandemic threat,” says Nahid Bhadelia, who directs the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. “But I’m a lot more worried about it than I was.”
Bird flu’s threat to most people remains pretty low. Still, here’s what makes this case concerning to experts, and what you can do to keep yourself safe.
What experts are worrying about
The Missouri patient was sick enough to be hospitalized
Since the virus first spread to American dairy cows in January of this year, all 13 of the bird flu cases identified in humans before last Friday caused pretty mild disease — eye redness, otherwise known as conjunctivitis, and in one person, a cough without a fever.
That’s where the latest case is different: The patient was hospitalized, suggesting severe disease. The Missouri health department noted the adult patient “has underlying medical conditions,” but we don’t know their age or other risk factors.
For a flu virus to cause a human pandemic, says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist and flu expert at Emory University, it needs to overcome three hurdles: It must access and replicate efficiently within the respiratory tract to cause disease; it must spread easily from person to person; and it must be novel to our immune systems. If the virus infecting the latest case turns out to be H5N1, the fact the patient was hospitalized suggests this germ is evolving to replicate more efficiently in our airways (and coming closer to overcoming the first hurdle).
Infectious disease experts say many people are not taking the latest Covid-19 wave in the US seriously enough and are not getting vaccinated or using antiviral drugs when sick, despite a summer wave that was larger and came earlier than anticipated.
Epidemiologists are saying that while symptoms of this wave are more mild than earlier strains, the virus remains a threat – particularly for older adults and people with underlying health conditions.
In response, public health officials are urging people to get a booster now – unless they recently had Covid, in which case they should wait three to four months – and to take a rapid test when sick. And if they have Covid, they should ask their doctors about antiviral treatments.
A nurse prepares a booster dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, Spikevax – a closeup of hands wearing surgical gloves drawing the vaccine from a small bottle into a syringe
Communicate risks of not getting Covid vaccine to boost uptake, study suggests
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“There is a ton of Covid out there,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “If you’re experiencing any kind of symptoms, test yourself because you might benefit from getting medicine. At the very least, you can learn that you’re infected and stay home so you don’t give it to other people.”
Notably, the Covid viral activity in wastewater in August in the United States was almost twice as high as the same time last year and about the same as the peak of summer 2023, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Still, hospitalizations and deaths are a fraction of what they were in 2022.
Updated COVID-19 vaccines are now available: They’re meant to give you the best protection against the strain of the virus that is making people severely sick now and even causing deaths.
Many people were infected during the persistent summer wave, which may leave you wondering when you should get the updated vaccine. The short answer is that it depends on when you last got infected or vaccinated and on your particular level of risk.
We heard from six experts—including medical doctors and epidemiologists—about when they recommend getting an updated vaccine. Read on to learn what they said. And to make it easy, check out the flowchart below.
It’s been about five months since the Texas Department of State Health Services announced that a worker on a dairy farm had tested positive for avian influenza A (H5N1) virus after being exposed to apparently infected cattle. Since then, the U.S. public health response has been slow and disjointed, bringing back memories of how the federal government responded during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite having a pandemic playbook in early 2020, the U.S. appeared flat-footed in its response to Covid-19, including inadequate testing and unavailable personal protective equipment. And throughout the pandemic, mixed messaging on masks and later vaccines set back public health efforts.
As H5N1 circulates, it seems that lessons from Covid-19 remain unlearned. It appears that missteps are being made regarding testing, surveillance, transparency, and failure of communication and coordination throughout the health care system, the same kinds of things that hurt the response to Covid-19.
“The World Health Organization,” according to NPR, “considers the virus a public health concern because of its potential to cause a pandemic.” What may be concerning is that the genetic sequence of the Spanish flu that killed between 50 and 100 million people from 1918 to 1919 was later found to be an H1N1 virus that originated in birds and then somehow adapted to humans. And based on confirmed cases, the case fatality rate could be as high as 50 percent, as over the past two decades roughly half of about 900 people around the globe known to have contracted bird flu died from it. (There are two caveats, however: Due to limited testing, there were likely more cases that were undetected which would lower the mortality rate. And in the last two years, the global case fatality rate seems to have decreased.)
As of Aug. 30, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 196 dairy cow herds in 14 U.S. states have confirmed cases of avian influenza.
COVID-19 hasn’t gone away, and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests it’s on the upswing around the country.
“We’ve seen these summer increases every summer that COVID-19 has been with us,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Johns Hopkins University infectious disease physician. “What’s different about these cases this summer vs. prior summers is that they don’t translate into hospitals in crisis.”
Adalja said factors in the seasonal increase could be increased travel, people staying indoors to avoid summer heat and the virus’ continued evolution – which could help it get around people’s immunity.
Testing for COVID-19 is sporadic and the true number of cases isn’t clear because many infections aren’t reported. But one way to spot trends is to see what percentage of lab tests come back positive. By that metric, COVID-19 is surging.
As of 28 July 2024, a total of 14,250 cases of mpox (2,745 confirmed; 11,505 suspected) and 456 deaths have been recorded in 10 African countries, including Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa.
The DRC outbreak, ongoing since 2022, accounts for more than 90% of the reported cases of severe mpox clade 1b. This year, the DRC identified 13,791 cases, with children under 15 accounting for 68% of cases and 85% of deaths.
Four countries – Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – previously unaffected by mpox, have reported cases since mid-July 2024 (at least 50 confirmed cases, with clade 1b now confirmed in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda).
There is a vaccine that is effective against both clades, but it is not widely available. The resources to contain and avoid this unfolding crisis exist but must be brought to bear to contain the outbreak with the greatest urgency possible.
This zoonotic virus, endemic to the forested regions of east, central and west Africa, has shown increased human-to-human transmission, including by way of sexual transmission, which deviates from the historically zoonotic (animal) nature of the disease.
Kenya’s Ministry of Health confirmed an outbreak of mpox clade 1b on 29 July 2024, originating from a traveller moving through Uganda and Rwanda. The development underscored the urgent need for enhanced public health measures across east Africa, as the high mobility of populations through key transport corridors poses a significant risk for regional transmission.
Four years after SARS-CoV2 sparked a devastating global pandemic, U.S. health officials now consider COVID-19 an endemic disease.
"At this point, COVID-19 can be described as endemic throughout the world," Aron Hall, the deputy director for science at the CDC's coronavirus and other respiratory viruses division, told NPR in an interview.
That means, essentially, that COVID is here to stay in predictable ways.
The classification doesn't change any official recommendations or guidelines for how people should respond to the virus. But the categorization does acknowledge that the SARS-CoV2 virus that causes COVID will continue to circulate and cause illness indefinitely, underscoring the importance of people getting vaccinated and taking other steps to reduce their risk for the foreseeable future.
There’s no way to put a price on the pain and suffering prevented by childhood vaccines. But as it turns out, you can pinpoint the savings to the country.
For nearly three decades, childhood vaccines — including those that target measles, tetanus and diphtheria — have saved the United States $540 billion in health care costs, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Routine childhood vaccinations have prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths, the agency estimated on Thursday.
“These vaccine programs, when you create the right infrastructure to implement them, they pay for themselves right away,” said William Padula, a health economist at the University of Southern California who was not involved in the new research.
The savings estimate includes money that would have been spent on treating the initial infection and managing later, related conditions. The figure dwarfs the cost of developing the shots.
But vaccine-preventable illnesses can also cause indirect economic effects if children become permanently disabled from an infection, or parents miss work while caring for their sick children.
When factoring in those costs, the C.D.C. bumped the estimated savings to $2.7 trillion.
Dr. Padula said those figures are on par with savings from medical breakthroughs like curing hepatitis C, or major pieces of public health legislation like the Clean Air Act.
Despite the considerable health and economic benefits, attitudes toward childhood vaccines are shifting. A Gallup poll published earlier this week found that just 40 percent of Americans think it’s important for children to get vaccinated, down from about 64 percent in 2001.
How Dangerous is Avian Flu, Officially Known as “Highly pathogenic avian influenza A H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b genotype B3.13.”?
Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Dr. Rick Bright, former CEO of the Pandemic Prevention Institute at the Rockefeller Foundation and director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) recently discussed the growing risk of avian influenza spreading in North America among poultry, dairy cows – and a small number of farm workers in direct contact with infected animals.
Dr. Nuzzo reminds us that this disease, called Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) influenza virus H5N1, is a closely related strain of the H1N1 influenza A virus that infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920 – resulting in an estimated 17 to 50 million people dying from the virus
BIRD FLU CHECK-IN — More cows and humans continue to test positive for avian influenza, but the CDC maintains that the risk to the public remains low.
We checked in with several infectious disease experts to learn more about what the recent outbreak at poultry farms in Colorado means for the U.S. response to the virus.
There have been several infections at two poultry farms in Colorado. What should the public take away from these cases?
Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health: “The number of cases that we’re seeing in Colorado, and the involvement of a large number of people with symptoms at the same time at multiple farms, screams at us that this virus is not going away — that this is becoming a recurring hazard for farmworkers.”
For nearly four months, the spread of bird flu in the nation’s dairy cattle has stoked fears that, if left unchecked, the virus could eventually unleash a pandemic.
The recent cluster of human cases connected to poultry farms in Colorado only underscores that the threat remains real.
Genetic sequencing of the virus collected from the sickened poultry workers closely resembles what’s circulating in dairy herds, suggesting that cattle somehow introduced the virus into the poultry flock.
At one massive poultry facility, workers culled the birds under particularly dangerous circumstances.
The outdoor temperature flirted with 100 degrees and heat advisories blanketed the region earlier this month as workers arrived at a commercial poultry operation in Weld County to start killing chickens.
Of the 1.8 million egg-laying hens inside the operation’s barns, at least some were infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza — bird flu. The strain of the virus that is now circling the globe has shown a remarkable ability to infect all kinds of animals, from seals to skunks to mountain lions. But it spreads most rapidly and lethally in wild birds and domestic poultry.
When a commercial flock is infected, standard practice is grim but efficient: Kill all the birds at the farm, devastating one operation in the hopes of stopping the virus and sparing the rest of the industry. By the time the workers in Weld County were done, though, some discovered that the virus had survived at least for one infection longer. It had found a new host: Their own bodies.
JUST HOW deadly is the H5N1 avian flu? The virus, which is currently sweeping through U.S. dairy herds, rarely jumps to human beings, at least for now. But when it does the consequences can be grave: The World Health Organization reports that 52 percent of people known to be infected with H5N1 have died from the disease.
The figure has been widely cited in academic papers, public health communications, and media reports, where it can provoke apocalyptic visions. “Bird flu pandemic could be ‘100 times worse’ than COVID,” claimed one New York Post headline. An article in The Guardian leads with the WHO’s “enormous concern” about the spread of H5N1, which, according to one lead scientist quoted, has an “‘extraordinarily high” human mortality rate.
The Race to Protect Condors Against Bird Flu
The actual picture, while still alarming, is more complicated. The WHO’s H5N1 mortality figure, an average of wildly different death rates from past outbreaks, doesn’t factor in mild cases that went undetected. Even less certain is how lethal H5N1 would be if it evolves to spread not just from animals to humans, but also from person to person.
The first step in combating any infectious disease outbreak is detection. Without widespread testing, health officials have little sense of who is infected, when to treat patients and how to monitor their close contacts.
In that sense, the bird flu outbreak plaguing the nation’s dairy farms is spreading virtually unobserved.
As of Monday, the virus had infected 157 herds in 13 states. But while officials have tested thousands of cows and are monitoring hundreds of farmworkers, only about 60 people have been tested for bird flu.
Officials do not have the authority to compel workers to get tested, and there is no way for workers to test themselves. In the current outbreak, just four dairy workers and five poultry workers have tested positive for H5N1, the bird flu virus, but experts believe that many more have been infected.
Five people who work at a poultry farm in northeastern Colorado have tested positive for the bird flu, the Colorado public health department reported July 14. (One of the cases awaits confirmation by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) This brings the known number of U.S. cases this year to nine.
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The workers were likely infected by chickens, which they had been tasked with killing in response to a bird flu outbreak at the farm. The endeavor occurred amid a heat wave, as outside temperatures soared to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The barns in which culling occurs were no doubt even hotter,” said CDC principal deputy director Nirav Shah at a July 16 press briefing. Wearing N95 respirators, goggles, and other protective gear was a challenge. Industrial fans whipped feathers around the facility that could have carried the virus, Shah added.
In this environment, the farmworkers collected hundreds of chickens by hand and placed them into carts where they could be killed by carbon dioxide gas within two minutes.
Dairy farmworkers often spend 10 to 12 hours a day milking dairy cattle in crowded, wet environments. They are in constant, intimate contact with unpasteurized cow milk, a known carrier of H5N1, the viral strain of bird flu that jumped from poultry to cows back in March.
But despite being the most exposed population to the virus, farmworkers are also offered few protections. To prevent the spread of bird flu among the general public, experts say we need to first protect the health of farmworkers.
“I don't want us to ignore what is happening right now, which is that farmworkers are getting infected with this virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University.
As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland’s move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn’t do the same.
“Farmworkers, veterinarians, and producers are handling large volumes of milk that can contain high levels of bird flu virus,” said Kay Russo, a livestock and poultry veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado. “If a vaccine seems to provide some immunity, I think it should be offered to them.”
As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland’s move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn’t do the same.
Excerpt: "We're flying blind," said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. With so few tests run, she said, it's impossible to know how many farmworkers have been infected or how serious the disease is. A lack of testing means the country might not notice if the virus begins to spread between people — the gateway to another pandemic.
Excerpt: And while the federal government has made efforts to try to bolster the stockpile of supplies, “there hasn’t been a lot of transparency. It’s hard to gauge the sufficiency of it,” said Jennifer B. Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
Guest essay by Jennifer Nuzzo, excerpt: How worried you should be about H5N1, the bird flu virus spreading on dairy farms in the United States, depends on whom you are.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described the current H5N1 risk to the general public as low. The risk that the virus poses is tempered by the fact that it doesn’t spread easily among people — yet.
Right now public-health experts have the difficult task of urging authorities who can do something about H5N1 to take action, while maintaining public trust. Americans have just been through a pandemic that resulted in over one million U.S. lives lost. They may feel weary of more bad news or fear-based messaging. Communicating that while the threat level for most people is low, but if nothing is done it could become quite high, is not easy but is important.
Excerpt: “The concern about H5N1 has always been there,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “But in the last couple of years, [the virus] started doing things that have been a bit unusual.”
“We’ve seen this virus start to infect mammals and a wide range of mammals,” she said, pointing at the different outbreaks throughout the world. “That’s a concern because humans are mammals, and so mammals are more like us than birds are.”
But what makes this recent outbreak the most concerning for Nuzzo is that the virus is now capable of infecting cows. “Cows are mammals that humans have a lot more contact with than all the other mammals that we’ve seen get infected,” she said.
Excerpt: “My highest level of concern right now is for the workers on the farms, who we know are being exposed to this virus and we know are already getting sick with this virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. “We need to be talking more about protecting the workers who are in harm’s way today.”
Excerpt: Seth Berkley, a longtime and widely respected global health leader, said Thursday that it has been “shocking to watch the ineptitude” of the U.S. response to the avian influenza outbreak among dairy cattle, adding his voice to a chorus of critics.
In a presentation in London about vaccine development, Berkley, the former CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, raised the issue of H5N1 bird flu when discussing whether the world was ready for another pandemic following its experience with Covid-19.
The Initiative's website collects hundreds of Pandemic Lamplighter stories and lessons learned from their innovation and ingenuity in the face of pandemic darkness
Opinion piece from Asa Hutchinson (fmr Governor of Arkansas) and Deval Patrick (fmr Governor of Massachusetts) on the American Democracy and Health Security Initiative.
Excerpt: “The Centre for Disease Control laboratory is one of a few labs where eye specimens can be tested for H5N1 – this needs to be fixed, easier access to eye swab testing is needed to protect and diagnose farm workers,” said Dr Jennifer Nuzzo, Director of the Pandemic Centre and Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University on X (formerly Twitter).
Excerpt: Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University’s School of Public Health, said she wished other states were looking for H5N1 cases as aggressively as Michigan is.
“If there’s any takeaway from this finding it’s that this is probably the tip of the iceberg because this is the one state that we know of that has done the most in terms of testing on farms of both cows and also monitoring workers that are on the farms where they found cattle infections,” she told STAT.
Excerpt: Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, said she was glad to hear that the CDC is pushing for continued flu surveillance.
“So many of our data points and response options are predicated on being able to find cases, and there are currently many holes in our ability to do that,” Nuzzo said.
Excerpt: “The more this virus circulates, the more there is a chance for mutations,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology who directs the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. And more mutations could mean a bigger risk of the virus becoming highly infectious among more people.
Excerpt: “We have no idea if this virus is going to evolve to become a pandemic strain but we know today that farmworkers are being exposed and we have good reason to think that they are getting sick,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health
Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd speaks with epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo about the bird flu that has recently sickened dairy cows in several states but so far only one dairy worker in Texas.
Professor Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, joins host Megan Hall for a timely update on the recent outbreaks of H5N1 Bird Flu.
Excerpt: The discovery of bird flu virus particles in milk has moved the federal government to take more aggressive action to prevent the further spread of H5N1 on dairy farms. The Agriculture Department has rightly issued new testing recommendations meant to keep the virus from spreading across state lines. But this additional testing will do little to address the primary threat that H5N1 poses to humans: the infection of farmworkers. Our failure to protect them threatens their health and gives the virus an opportunity to evolve into a greater threat to people, including those who live far from dairy farms.
Excerpt: "It does feel like Ground Hog Day," said Jennifer Nuzzo, who heads Brown University's Pandemic Center. "We still seem to be stuck in reactive mode. We shouldn't be waiting for evidence that the virus is devastating us. We should be trying to act now to prevent the virus from devastating us."
Excerpt: But it's still not clear exactly where the flu virus has spread or what it's capable of, said several experts, including Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.
"Our surveillance is inadequate to know where this virus is and where it isn't, which is critical for protecting farmworkers and people involved in the dairy industry ‒ but also important for staying ahead of this virus to prevent a future pandemic," Nuzzo said.
Excerpt: “More testing is better,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. “But in many ways this policy is very leaky in terms of how much virus it will allow to move. And because we still don’t know what’s driving transmission between cows, we should not pin our hopes on this policy making a major dent in the infections we’re seeing.”