This week’s Pandora Report discusses the WHO’s activation of the Global Health Emergency Corps, updates on H5N1 in the United States, a reported Lassa fever death in Iowa, and USAID’s recently-launched Strengthening Infectious Disease Detection Systems project.
WHO, Partners Activate Global Health Emergency Corps in Response to Mpox Outbreaks
The WHO and partners, in collaboration with Member States, announced this week the activation of the Global Health Emergency Corps (GHEC) for the first time in response to mpox outbreaks in several countries. The GHEC is a group of professionals whose goal is to strengthen response to health emergencies. It also functions as a collaboration platform for countries and emergency health networks. The WHO explained in a press release that, “In collaboration with the International Association of National Public Health Institutes, GHEC is assessing the emergency workforce capacities in 8 countries affected by the mpox outbreak, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, the two most affected countries. The assessment has so far identified 22 areas that need strengthening, including epidemiology and surveillance, laboratory capacities, infection prevention and control, risk communication and community engagement. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Health Cluster partners have joined in strengthening the coordination set up by the Ministry of Health under the leadership of the public health emergency operations centre.”
H5N1 Updates
US Detects H5N1 in Backyard Swine
H5N1 infection in a pig on an Oregon backyard farm was confirmed this week, the US Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday. The farm does have a mix of poultry and livestock, so the infected pig did share an environment with poultry, including water sources, housing, and equipment. Because the detection was found on a small farm, the USDA says risk to the nation’s pork supply and to the general public is low.
In addition to concerns about impact on farming and the food supply, this is concerning because pigs can be a mixing vessel for zoonotic and human influenza viruses as they are susceptible to avian, swine, and human influenza A viruses (IAV). Notably, the novel IAV that caused the 2009 H1N1 pandemic included two separate segments from the H1N1 swine virus lineage. However, it is unknown whether the animal had a systemic infection or if contamination caused positive nasal swab results.
NIAID: “Bovine H5N1 Influenza from Infected Worker Transmissible and Lethal in Animal Models”
“A highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus, isolated from the eye of a farm worker who became infected through contact with dairy cows, was lethal in mice and ferrets infected in a high-containment laboratory environment, according to a new study in Nature. The study investigators also found that the virus isolated from the worker, who experienced mild inflammation of the cornea (conjunctivitis), could be transmitted through the air between separated ferrets and might be capable of binding to and replicating in human respiratory tract cells.”
Read more here.
Further Reading:
- California announces 16th human case: “November 1, 2024: H5N1 Bird Flu Confirmed in 203 Dairies in California”
- KFF reports on struggles to track cases: “Exclusive: Emails Reveal How Health Departments Struggle To Track Human Cases of Bird Flu”
Lassa Fever Death Reported in Iowa
This week, the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services announced a fatal imported case of Lassa fever. The deceased woman, a middle-aged resident of eastern Iowa, had recently returned from a trip to West Africa, where she is thought to have contracted the disease. There have been just eight travel-associated cases of Lassa fever in the United States in the last 55 years, and about 80% of those that contract this illness will have mild or no symptoms. Cases most often are reported in Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ghana, where there are up to 500,000 cases and 5,000 deaths annually.
USAID Announces Strengthening Infectious Disease Detection Systems Project
The United States Agency for International Development announced this week a new project aimed at strengthening the capacity of the United States’ and partner countries to “prevent, detect, and respond to the increasing occurrence and severity of epidemics, pandemics, and novel infectious disease threats.” The new project, Strengthening Infectious Disease Detection Systems (STRIDES), will allow USAID to work with partner countries to build more reliable, safe, and secure laboratory and disease surveillance systems. It will also help provide more effective data management and reporting platforms. Read more about STRIDES here.
Responding to Radiological Threats
The risks to nuclear power plants in Ukraine posed by Russia’s military actions has raised the salience of radiological threats. In the most recent issue of CBNW, Mary Sproull (Biodefense PhD ’22), a research scientist in the Radiation Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health. explores the potential of biodosimetry as an essential medical countermeasure in the management of radiation injuries. As the initial step in medical management of any exposure is to determine whether radiation exposure has occurred and subsequently differentiate the degree of exposure, particular attention has been focused on research and development of biodosimetry diagnostics, to firstly alleviate the logistical problem of the worried well, and secondly to enable more efficient radiation-specific medical triage. Her article, “MCMs for Radiation Exposure: The Importance of Biodosimetry Diagnostics,” can be accessed here.
“Schar School’s Mahmut Cengiz: On the Frontlines of Global Security and Terrorism”
“Mahmut Cengiz’s first exposure to the brutal realities of transnational organized crime, terrorism, and illicit economies was in films he saw as a young man growing up in Türkiye. But these were not abstract horrors: They were living nightmares, unfolding in real time. The images of suffering and devastation seared themselves into his mind, igniting a fire in him to fight back.”
Read more in The George.
“100 Days to Save Eight Million Lives”
In this piece, CEPI discusses the implications of modelling research recently published in The Lancet Global Health which found that “…a successful 100 Days Mission in response to COVID-19’s emergence would have had by far its greatest impact on the lives and livelihoods of people in the Global South – preventing 800 million COVID-19 infections, averting 15.7 million COVID-19 hospitalisations and saving 4.8 million lives in lower middle-income countries.”
The researchers estimate that the 8.3 million lives saved would represent monetary savings as high as $14.3 trillion. They further estimate that productivity losses due to illness totaling nearly $1.4 trillion and $63 billion in hospitalization costs could have been averted globally. CEPI CEO Dr. Richard Hatchett says the findings should supercharge global commitments to the 100 Days Mission of his organization.
“Animal-to-Human Viral Leap Sparked Deadly Marburg Outbreak”
Max Kozlov breaks down yet-to-be-published research on Rwanda’s Marburg outbreak that indicates it was caused by a single jump of the virus from an animal to humans in this Nature News article, explaining it part “To help inform outbreak control, researchers at the Rwanda Biomedical Centre in Kigali sequenced the Marburg virus genome of several infected people. They found that all samples closely resembled one another, suggesting that the virus spread rapidly in a short period of time and that they shared a common origin. They also found that the virus strain is closely related to one detected in Uganda in 2014 and to one found in bats in 2009, Yvan Butera, Rwanda’s minister of state for health, who co-led the research, tells Nature.”
“Optimizing Federal, State, and Local Responses to Public Health Emergencies: Lessons from COVID, Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief”
From NASEM: “The COVID-19 pandemic raised challenging legal and policy issues – as reflected in numerous, often inconsistent, health-related decisions made in the United States at the national, state, and local level and in COVID-related judicial opinions issued after the onset of the pandemic. The response to the pandemic provides an opportunity to consider whether federal, state, and local governments had the necessary authority to deal with the crisis, how authority was applied, whether there was sufficient clarity as to responsibility, and what should be changed for the future.”
“On May 30-31, 2024, an ad hoc committee under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Science, Technology, and Law convened a virtual workshop to examine the allocation of responsibility among levels of government when dealing with a public health crisis; the extent to which federal, state, and local governments have the necessary authority to act; whether there is sufficient clarity as to which levels of government are responsible for particular actions; and lessons that can be learned from the pandemic to inform government responses to pandemics in the future.”
Read the proceedings here.
“Global Catastrophic Risk Assessment”
From the RAND Corporation: “Global catastrophic and existential risks hold the potential to threaten human civilization. Addressing these risks is crucial for ensuring humans’ long-term survival and flourishing. Motivated by the gravity of these risks, Congress passed the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act in 2022, which requires that the Secretary of Homeland Security and the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinate an assessment of global catastrophic risk related to a set of threats and hazards. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and the Federal Emergency Management Agency requested the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center’s support in meeting this requirement. The authors of this report document findings from the resulting analysis.”
“This report summarizes what is known about the risks associated with six threats and hazards: artificial intelligence; asteroid and comet impacts; sudden and severe changes to Earth’s climate; nuclear war; severe pandemics, whether resulting from naturally occurring events or from synthetic biology; and supervolcanoes.”
“The risk summaries cover the following aspects: where feasible, estimates of the likelihood and potential consequences of each risk; factors causing the risk and associated uncertainties; and whether the risk is likely to change in the next decade.”
“Because the broader goal of the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act is to reduce risk to human civilization, the authors also identified known and potential mitigation strategies for the six threats and hazards and drew insights from the assessment relevant to managing the risks they pose to society.”
“Global Health Security Lessons from the U.S. Biodefense Response”
Sunny Jha and Robert Carter III discuss USAMRIID’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it demonstrates the important of collaboration between the military, public health, and private-sector during such situations in this Think Global Health piece. They write in part, “One of the most striking aspects of the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) response to COVID-19 was the rapid mobilization of scientific expertise and infrastructure across various military research institutions, including USAMRIID. In early 2020, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread globally, DOD laboratories, including USAMRIID, quickly adapted their existing facilities and research protocols to focus on understanding the novel coronavirus. High-containment laboratories, such as Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facilities, were repurposed across the DOD to analyze the structure and behavior of SARS-CoV-2. This rapid pivot was made possible by the combined readiness of military and defense assets, ensuring a coordinated and efficient response to the emerging crisis.”
“Assessing the DoD’s Chemical and Biological Defense Program”
Al Mauroni discusses DOD’s CBD program’s evolution and challenges in this post on his Substack, Nuclear Weapons (and other WMD). He writes in part, “Things have changed radically over the past four years, and the rhetoric about COVID as a “biological threat” was a big factor in that change. The ASD office has increasingly used the claim of “other national security priorities” and “global health security” to move funds from service-validated programs to pet projects that they feel are justified as addressing “chemical and biological threats.” You can see this outlined in the OSD comptroller budget materials. They’re not hiding it at all.”
“Russia’s Upgraded Military Biological Research Facility and the Link to Bioweapons Disinformation in Ukraine”
This policy brief from GP WMD Counter Disinfo discusses recent reporting on Sergiev Posad-6: “Using satellite images from 2022 to the present day, Washington Post journalists recently documented evidence of what appears to be significant upgrades to Russia’s military biological facility at Sergiev Posad-6 near Moscow, with enhancements and enlargements to its high-containment facility, used to work on dangerous pathogens, and the expansion of the linked civilian site where scientists are housed.”
“The construction of this facility appeared to begin in May 2022 and coincided with an increase in biological weapons-related disinformation from Russia focused on Ukraine and its Western Allies, including false narratives around legitimate public health and biological research facilities. This briefing note explores this connection in more detail.”
“That 800-Year-Old Corpse in the Well? Early Biological Warfare”
Franz Lidz discusses the Well Man and how recent research has shed light on how he wound up in the well at Norway’s Sverresborg Castle: “In the dying days of the 12th century, with Norway in the grip of civil wars, the Baglers, a faction aligned with the archbishop, laid siege to Sverresborg, the castle stronghold of King Sverre Sigurdsson. The monarch was away, so the besiegers pillaged the castle, burned down houses and poisoned the water supply by heaving the corpse of one of the king’s men headfirst down the well and filling the shaft with stones.”
“This early biological warfare is recorded in “Sverris Saga,” a contemporaneous biography of the king, who reigned over much of Norway from 1184 to 1202. Scholars have long debated the chronicle’s reliability as a historical document, but a study published Friday in the journal iScience recounts how researchers unearthed the body of the “Well Man” and, with the help of ancient DNA, have provided fresh details about who he was.”
Read more here.
“Was Stone Age Scandinavia Struck by Plague?”
In this New York Times article, Franz Lidz discusses recent genetics research that points to a plague outbreak in Scandinavia more than 5,000 years ago, driving the Neolithic decline. Lidz explains in part, “A new genomic study published in July in the journal Nature makes the case for another candidate, which had been found in people living at the time but was never thought to have been widespread: the plague…Until now, it was unclear how virulent the Neolithic plague was within a human population. “There is a hypothesis that the oldest plague bacterium lacked epidemic potential,” said Dr. Seersholm, the lead author of the paper. “That hypothesis no longer holds.”’
ICYMI-“Lessons from History: A Conversation with Author John M. Barry”
“On Monday, October 28, a public seminar at the Brown University School of Public Health explored the history of pandemics and the lessons that apply to us today. The event featured a discussion with Brown alumnus John M. Barry ’68, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, which received the Outstanding Book on Science and Medicine for 2004 by the National Academies of Sciences.”
Read more about this seminar here.
NEW: “Preparing for the Next Outbreak: Designing Closer Collaboration between Healthcare and Public Health to Deploy Pathogen-Agnostic Testing as an Early Warning System”
From PNNL: “Please join us in welcoming Dr. Adi V. Gundlapalli, Senior Advisor for Data Readiness and Response in the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology at the CDC for his talk titled “Preparing for the Next Outbreak: Designing Closer Collaboration between Healthcare and Public Health to Deploy Pathogen-Agnostic Testing as an Early Warning System”. This webinar will take place Wednesday, November 13th, at noon PT.”
Learn more and register here.
NEW: Developing Guardrails for AI Biodesign Tools
From NTI: “Join us for a virtual webinar releasing the findings of NTI | bio’s new report, Developing Guardrails for AI Biodesign Tools, followed by a moderated discussion and Q+A with distinguished guest Claire Quereshi.”
“Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to revolutionize not only aspects of daily life but cutting-edge scientific research and development. Within the life sciences, AI biodesign tools (BDTs) have improved significantly in their ability to design biological molecules and make predictions about living systems, displaying potential for beneficial applications and posing significant potential risks if misused.”
This virtual event will take place on November 14 at 11 am EST. Learn more and register here.
NEW: Health Security Intelligence: Managing Threats Risks and Hazards Post-Covid 19
“As the acute impact of the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, many unaddressed questions remain for Australia about how to better prepare for the next likely health threat, risk or hazard.”
“In addition to how we enhance national public health capacity, what are the important lessons we can learn from the pandemic from national security and biosecurity perspectives?”
“Given the likelihood of another pandemic at some point, an increasingly uncertain geo-political order and the potential exploitation of biotechnology by bad actors how does Australia and its allies better prepare for a future of increasingly complex health security and biological security threats, risks and hazards?”
“This event is for all health security intelligence stakeholders (policy-makers, national security staff, scientists, researchers and clinicians) who work across the one health continuum and national security agencies.”
“It will introduce participants to Charles Sturt’s extensive research agenda across the one health biosecurity, health and biological security and discuss both their national security and scientific implications. You will hear briefings from key researchers across both STEM and social sciences disciplines working on assessing key health security threats, risks and hazards relevant to your work.”
This event will take place in-person and over livestream on December 4 from 2-4 pm AEDT. Learn more and register here.
Vision for Health Forum
From Johns Hopkins: We hope you can join us in November for the Vision for Health Forum with collaboration between Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Panel Discussion
Moderator:
M. Shafeeq Ahmed, M.D., MBA, F.A.C.O.G
President, Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center
Topic: Partnership between JHHCMC and APL
Jeanette Nazarian, M.D., Vice President, Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer- Johns Hopkins Howard County Medical Center
Topic: Revolutionizing Health through Science and Engineering
Sheri Lewis, MPH, Deputy Mission Area Executive, Global Health -Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
Topic: APL-HCMC Partnership for Project Firstline: Safeguarding Our Nation’s Frontline Healthcare Workers
Lucy Carruth, Ph.D, Assistant Program Manager- Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
Brian Damit, Ph.D, Project Manager- Johns Hopkins Applied Physic Lab
This event will take place at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on November 4 at 4:30 pm EST. Learn more here.
13th Annual Jonathan Tucker Symposium
“The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies cordially invites you to the 13th annual Jonathan Tucker Symposium on chemical and biological weapons issues on November 13th and 14th, 2024.”
Among this year’s speakers are Dr. Yong-Bee Lim, an alumnus of the Biodefense PhD Program and Deputy Director of the Converging Risks Lab and Biosecurity Projects Manager at the Council on Strategic Risks, who will give a talk titled “Technology Democratization and its Implications for CBW Safety and Security: Lessons Learned from Engagement with Non-Traditional Communities.”
Learn more and register here.
One Health and the Politics of COVID-19 Book Launch
The Writer’s Center is hosting a book launch for Dr. Laura Kahn’s new book, One Health and the Politics of COVID-19 (blurb below) on November 23 at 2 pm EST in Bethesda, MD. Learn more and RSVP here.
“One Health and the Politics of COVID-19 unpacks the mysteries of COVID-19’s origins to impart important lessons for future outbreaks. The One Health concept recognizes the interconnected links among the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment. By comparing the history, science, and clinical presentations of three different coronaviruses—SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)—Kahn uncovers insights with important repercussions for how to prepare and avoid future pandemics. The One Health approach provides a useful framework for examining the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the origins of this zoonotic disease requires investigating the environmental and molecular biological factors that allowed the virus to spread to humans. The book explores the many ways in which the wild animal trade, wet markets, and the camel industry contributed to the spread of the earlier SARS-CoV-1 and MERS coronaviruses. For SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), Kahn examines the biosafety, biosecurity, and bioethics implications of gain-of-function research on pandemic potential pathogens. This book is a must read to understand the geopolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
2024 CBD S&T Conference
From DTRA: “The CBD S&T Conference brings together the most innovative and influential chemical and biological defense community members from around the globe to share insights and collaborate on the emerging chem-bio threats of tomorrow.”
“Join the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Chemical and Biological Technologies Department in its role as the Joint Science and Technology Office (JSTO) for Chemical and Biological Defense, an integral component of the Chemical and Biological Defense Program, as we Focus Forward to uncover novel concepts and examine groundbreaking discoveries within the chem-bio defense landscape.”
“The 2024 CBD S&T Conference will be held at the Broward County Convention Center, December 2–5, 2024.”
Learn more and register here.
US AI Safety Institute Issues RFI on Responsible Development of Chem-Bio Models
From AISI: “The U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (U.S. AISI), housed within the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), released a Request for Information seeking insight from stakeholders regarding the responsible development and use of chemical and biological (chem-bio) AI models.”
“Input from a broad range of experts in this field will help the U.S. AISI to develop well-informed approaches to assess and mitigate the potential risks of chem-bio AI models, while enabling safe and responsible innovation.”
“Respondents are encouraged to provide concrete examples, best practices, case studies, and actionable recommendations where possible. The full RFI can be found here.”
“The comment period is now open and will close on December 3, 2024, at 11:59PM Eastern Time. Comments can be submitted online at www.regulations.gov, under docket no. 240920-0247.”
The Pandora Report 