Jennifer Nuzzo is a nationally and globally recognized leader on global health security, public health preparedness and response, and health systems resilience. Together with colleagues from the Nuclear Threat Initiative and Economist Impact, she co-leads the development of the first-ever Global Health Security Index, which benchmarks 195 countries’ public health and healthcare capacities and capabilities, their commitment to international norms and global health security financing, and socioeconomic, political, and environmental risk environments.
In addition to her scholarly work, Nuzzo regularly advises national governments and for-profit and nonprofit organizations on pandemic preparedness and response, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a pandemic advisor for Impact Assets’ Stop the Spread Campaign. She is currently a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Standing Committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Center for Preparedness and Response.
Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fox News, Politico, The Hill, and The Boston Globe. She was featured in Debunking Borat, a television series on Amazon Prime Video, and her work was featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She served as COVID Advisor for the Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
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
Word count: 679
Copyright 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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.
Health officials are making a renewed call for vigilance against bird flu, but some experts are puzzling over why reports of new human cases have stopped.
Has the search for cases been weakened by government cuts? Are immigrant farm workers, who have accounted for many of the U.S. cases, more afraid to come forward for testing amid the Trump administration’s deportation push? Is it just a natural ebb in infections?
“We just don’t know why there haven’t been cases,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. “I think we should assume there are infections that are occurring in farmworkers that just aren’t being detected.”
The H5N1 bird flu has been spreading widely among wild birds, poultry and other animals around the world for several years, and starting early last year became a problem in people and cows in the U.S.
Peering into wastewater for public health has a history dating back at least to the late 19th century, when a biologist in Boston cultured sewage in beef jelly, bouillon, boiled potatoes, and milk to see if anything would grow. Later, scientists in Scotland looked at wastewater to assess the spread of typhoid. After injecting monkeys with sewage in the 1930s, American researchers realized that wastewater polio virus concentrations correlated with community infections. It was the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that led to skyrocketing investment in wastewater disease surveillance in the United States—this time with the aid of modern biotechnology and without bouillon or monkeys.
As COVID transitioned from a deadly novelty to something closer to a mundane nuisance, testing for the virus fell off a cliff. Wastewater surveillance became central to public health officials’ ability to track COVID. The same is true for other threats, like H5N1 avian influenza. Bird flu has now spread from wild birds, to poultry, to cattle, and, worryingly, to a wide variety of other mammals, including people. Still testing remains limited. The federal government has invested at least $500 million in building wastewater-surveillance capacity since 2021. But that funding expires in September. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist who is the director of The Brown University Pandemic Center, told me we may soon be left with an even murkier understanding of how diseases like COVID and bird flu are spreading.
With the United States facing its largest single measles outbreak in 25 years, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will direct federal health agencies to explore potential new treatments for the disease, including vitamins, according to an H.H.S. spokesman. The decision is the latest in a series of actions by the nation’s top health official that experts fear will undermine public confidence in vaccines as an essential public health tool.
The announcement comes as Mr. Kennedy faces intense backlash for his handling ofthe outbreak. It has swept through large areas of the Southwest where vaccination rates are low, infecting hundreds and killing two young girls. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 930 cases nationwide, most of which are associated with the Southwest outbreak.
Jennifer Nuzzo, professor of epidemiology and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health, leads the conversation on complex public health emergencies.
This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
On Monday, the Director of the Pandemic Center Jennifer Nuzzo presented a lecture titled “Pandemic-Proofing the Future” at a Presidential Faculty Award Lecture. Five years after a state of emergency was declared for COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, Nuzzo discussed ways we can better prepare for future pandemics.
President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 opened the event and Nuzzo was introduced by Francesca Beaudoin PhD’16, the academic dean of the School of Public Health.
Nuzzo, who is also a professor of epidemiology, opened her lecture by recognizing the devastating “failures” of the American health care system after nationwide shutdowns left cities, such as New York City, desolate.
“I don’t want to imply that New York was wrong to (shutdown),” Nuzzo told The Herald in an interview after the event. “The fact that it had to come to that was a failure.”
Cambridge Forum takes an incisive look at America’s public health system in the light of another potential pandemic, and the prospect of an incoming president who is set to dismantle our current public health care science regarded by many, as the best in the world. Alarm bells were sounded early last December when The Lancet, the world’s top medical journal, published an issue dedicated to U.S. public health lauding its remarkable global record and worrying for its future, under a second Trump administration.
Undoubtedly, America’s health achievements have changed world history in terms of the lives saved. Victories against polio and yellow fever, HIV-AIDS and malaria, infant mortality and TB are often taken for granted, along with the virtual eradication of smallpox. But all this may soon change dramatically, if Trump follows through on his disastrous choices for top government healthcare appointments.
According to an analysis by Canadian health and science writer, Crawford Kilian, the breakdown in America’s public health system is just getting started – The Tyee December 20, 2024. Future health care spending at home and abroad is slated for drastic cuts, says Killian, and “Trump’s impending return seems likely to collapse American health science with consequences as disastrous for the rest of the world, as for the 346 million Americans.”
Defense against dangerous epidemic outbreaks requires constant vigilance, and public support for public health safety measures, like vaccinations. No one can afford a repeat of Covid-19, the worst global pandemic in a century, which ended up costing the lives of over 1.2 M. Americans. Our speakers include Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, infectious disease specialist and global health physician, who advises the W.H.O on emerging diseases and Crawford Kilian, science and health reporter, who has blogged about H5N1 avian flu and other potential hazards to global health since 2005. Our discussion will address the looming public health crisis and discuss the best ways forward.
Also joining the Forum is Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and a nationally and globally recognized leader on global health security, public health preparedness and response, and health systems resilience.
In addition, Nuzzo regularly advises national governments and for-profit and non-profit organizations on pandemic preparedness and response, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a pandemic advisor for Impact Assets’ Stop the Spread Campaign and a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) Standing Committee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Center for Preparedness and Response. Her articles have appeared in NYT, The Washington Post, USA Today, Politico, The Hill, and The Boston Globe.
Audio from this event presented at the link provided
