Tag: vaccines

Pandora Report 5.24.15

by juliadhomstad, posted in Pandora Report

Two quick updates before we get into the weekly wrap-up.

First, the Early Registration Deadline for the Pandemics, Bioterrorism, and International Security professional education course at the GMU Arlington Campus has been extended to June 15. For more information and registration, please click here.

Second, we here at Pandora Report wanted to let you know about a new website designed to provide resources for biosecurity professionals and practitioners and key stakeholders. The International Biosecurity Prevention Forum (IBPF) brings together the world’s leading experts from the health and security communities to share expertise on key biosecurity and bioterrorism prevention issues. Registering to join IBPF is free and easy. Go to http://www.ibpforum.organd click the “Request Membership” button to request an IBPF member account. Members get access to a discussion section and projects, resources, and best practices submitted by other members. Contact the IBPF support team at IBPForum@ic.fbi.gov if you have any questions or problems.

Now, onto the news. This weekend we have stories about British nuclear submarines, anti-vaccine legislation in California, the development of bird flu vaccines, and other stories you may have missed.

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!!

Britain Investigates Sailor’s Disaster Warning Over Nuclear Subs

Able Seaman William McNeilly—a weapons engineer who served aboard HMS Vanguard, one of the four British submarines carrying Trident missiles—wrote a “lengthy dossier” released on the internet which says that the “Trident nuclear defense system was vulnerable both to enemies and to potentially devastating accidents because of safety failures.” McNeilly has since gone AWOL and both police and naval officials are trying to locate him.

The Japan Times—“The Royal Navy said it totally disagreed with McNeilly’s “subjective and unsubstantiated personal views,” describing him as a “very junior sailor.” But it added it was investigating both his claims and the “unauthorized release” of his dossier. “The naval service operates its submarine fleet under the most stringent safety regime and submarines do not go to sea unless they are completely safe to do so,” a spokeswoman said.”

A Blow to Anti-Vaxxers: California Approves Forced Vaccination Bill

By now, we all know that the measles outbreak that started last winter at Disneyland was a result of unvaccinated individuals. In California, the State Senate has passed a bill which limits parent’s use of the “personal belief exemption” in order to get out of getting their children vaccinated. Under the bill, parents who don’t get their children vaccinated would not be able to send their kids to state-licensed schools, nurseries, or day care centers.

State Column—“Only children who have a medical reason for why they can’t be vaccinated would still be allowed to attend schools without receiving their vaccinations under Senate Bill 277, which was sponsored by a California Sen. Dr. Richard Pan (D-Sacremento), a pediatrician, and Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), a former school board member and the son of a survivor of polio, according to a Forbes report.”

Vaccines Developed for H5N1, H7N9 Avian Flu

Findings appearing in the Journal of Virology indicate that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases have developed a vaccine for both H5N1 and H7N9—two strains of avian influenza which can be transmitted from poultry to humans. The vaccine was developed by cloning the Newcastle disease virus and transplanting a small section of the H5N1 virus into it; the same method was used for the H7N9 vaccine.

Toronto Sun—“‘We believe this Newcastle disease virus concept works very well for poultry because you kill two birds with one stone, metaphorically speaking,” Richt said. “You use only one vector to vaccinate and protect against a selected virus strain of avian influenza.’”

Stories You May Have Missed

  

Image Credit: UK Ministry of Defence

Pandora Report 2.7.15

by juliadhomstad, posted in Pandora Report

Whatta week, right?! Let’s jump right in to the stories. We’ve got the Subway, flu forecasting, American chemical weapons, and stories you may have missed.

Have a great weekend and a safe and healthy week!

A Close Look at the Germs Crawling Around the Subway

Every single day I ride the metro to work, and every single day, the first thing I do when I get to the office is wash my hands. And, really, that’s what everyone should be doing. A research team from the Weill Cornell Medical College spent the summer of 2013 swabbing turnstiles, subway poles, kiosks, benches, and other “human penetrated surfaces” in all 466 NYC subway stations.

Gothamist—“And they found quite a few signs of life—15,152 types of DNA, in fact—nearly half of which they identified as bacteria. Shocking!

[They] did manage to find some scary stuff, with E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus (skin infections, respiratory disease and food poisoning), Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), and even Yersinia pestis, which is associated with the bubonic plague, popping up in some swabs. Nearly all the stations harbored an antibiotic resistant bacteria called Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, one that often causes respiratory infections in hospitals.”

Forecasts May Soon Predict Flu Patterns

What if we could predict the flu like we predict the weather? That is what teams of researchers are looking at; devising and testing methods to predict the start, peak, and end of flu season. How will they do this? By combining data from the present with knowledge of past patterns to project what might happen in the future.

The Boston Globe—“If the CDC had a flu-season preview in hand, the agency could better time messages on use of vaccines and flu-fighting drugs.

Hospitals could plan staffing for patient surges or make sure key personnel are not on vacation when it appears the epidemic will probably peak. Parents could even take flu forecasts into account in scheduling birthday parties and play dates.”

U.S. to Destroy Largest Remaining Chemical Weapons Cache

Syria isn’t the only country working on destruction of its chemical weapons cache. The Pueblo Chemical Depot, in Southern Colorado, will begin neutralization of 2,600 tons of aging mustard agent in March. This action moves towards American compliance with a 1997 treaty that banned all chemical weapons.

USA Today—“‘The start of Pueblo is an enormous step forward to a world free of chemical weapons,” said Paul Walker, who has tracked chemical warfare for more than 20 years, first as a U.S. House of Representatives staffer and currently with Green Cross International, which advocates on issues of security, poverty and the environment.”

Stories You May Have Missed

 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Pandora Report 1.11.15

by juliadhomstad, posted in Pandora Report

Dirt is all around, I mean, truly, all around. We wash it off our produce, get it smashed into the soles of our shoes, and vacuum it out of our homes. But is dirt really that bad? The stories this week look at dirt as a source of antibiotics and a disposal method for chemical weapons. We also look at Ebola and other stories you may have missed.

Have a fabulous week!

DARPA Wants to Turn Chemical Weapons Into Dirt

DARPA has a new idea for eliminating chemical weapons—breaking them into safe compounds like oxides and earth metal salts, in other words, soil. Considering the drawbacks for current disposal methods, the agency’s Agnostic Compact Demilitarization of Chemical Weapons program has put out a call for proposals for a weapons-to-dirt plan.

Popular Mechanics—“The defense research agency is looking for a transportable system that can fit in a 40-foot-long shipping container and process at least 55 gallons of chemical weapons and precursor material every hour for a 48-hour period. Processing will be conducted near the chemical weapons storage site, use local materials (such as dirt of plant matter), and produce no hazardous waste.”

New Class of Antibiotic Found in Dirt Could Prove Resistant to Resistance

A study published this week in Nature looks at a new antibiotic, called Teixobactin, which could keep working for “longer than any other” before bacteria could develop resistance. It is still at least four years away from availability and can only treat gram-positive bacteria like staph, strep, and TB. And where was this new antimicrobial found? Dirt from a grassy field in Maine.

The Washington Post—“Most microbiologists only ever work with around 1 percent of microbes—the ones that will grow politely in the lab. But the rest refuse to grow on traditional growth media, like petri dishes. But there are potential antibiotics all over the world being created by plants, fungi, and microorganisms. Lewis and his colleagues sandwiched soil between two semi-permeable membranes, effectively tricking soil microbes into growing in a “natural” environment that was actually a lab culture.

Among the 10,000 organisms and 25 antibiotics they grew in this new type of culturing method is Teixobactin. It successfully obliterated MRSA and drug-resistant TB in cell cultures and in mice, and did so without any signs that the bacteria might become resistant to it.”

This Week in Ebola

Ebola has reached beyond health. Since the outbreak began, in Sierra Leone a combination of curfew, a ban on public gatherings, plummeting GDP, and inflation have fueled economic freefall. And remember when Texas nurse Amber Joy Vinson got on a plane to Ohio to shop for bridesmaid gowns for her own wedding? Well the store, announced it will be going out of business due to flagging sales and stigma of being the “Ebola” bridal store.  The pharmaceutical industry is chugging along in creation of and testing of possible vaccines for the Ebola virus; all of this comes at a time where the number of deaths is over 8,200 and the number of cases stands at over 20,000. The Economist has an amazing series of charts, maps, and graphs that look at the scope of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, the British nurse diagnosed with Ebola is in critical, but stable, condition, and an American health care worker was transported to the Nebraska Medical Center’s specialized biocontainment unit for observation. Travelers from Mali will no longer face enhanced screening when they arrive in the U.S., as the last case in Mali was December 5 and there are no active cases in the country.

Lastly, there were two interesting first-person stories from those who have returned from West Africa. First, an NPR correspondent in Washington DC writes about the terrifying moment when he woke up with a fever within 21 days of his return from Liberia. Then, an Australian MSF nurse wrote about the “sheer brutality” of the Ebola virus he experienced while in Liberia.

Stories You May Have Missed

 

Image Credit: United Nations University

Pandora Report 7.11.14

by juliadhomstad, posted in Pandora Report

Highlights from this week include, vaccines, plague, ISIS, and smallpox. Oh my!

The Price of Prevention: Vaccine Costs are Soaring

For all the talk around here about anti-vaxxers, there might be a larger threat to vaccine preventable diseases in the United States…lack of vaccines or vaccines that are no longer affordable. In this insightful piece, the complicated story of vaccine necessity, vaccine scarcity, and vaccine cost is told through the doctors at the front lines. States require students to be vaccinated to attend school but the vaccines are hard to find. For doctors, keeping vaccines that may not be used or may not be reimbursed has become a grave financial burden.

The New York Times—“Old vaccines have been reformulated with higher costs. New ones have entered the market at once-unthinkable prices. Together, since 1986, they have pushed up the average cost to fully vaccinate a child with private insurance to the age of 18 to $2,192 from $100, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

 

Deadliest, Rarest Form of Plague Contracted Near Denver

It’s baaaaack. In the state’s first reported case since 2004, a Colorado man has been diagnosed with pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague is the airborne version of the disease that can be transmitted through droplets from coughing or sneezing. In this case, the man has been treated with antibiotics while investigation of the source of the outbreak continues. Authorities think the man may have contracted it from his dog that had suddenly died and had been found to carry the disease. Many cases of plague in the U.S. come from contact with mammals and small rodents such as prairie dogs.

Bloomberg—“Plague in all of its forms infects only about seven people yearly in the U.S. The disease occurs when a bacteria named Yersinia pestis infects the body, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The difference between the pneumonic and bubonic varieties is that the bacteria takes hold in the lungs in the first case, rather than underneath the skin through insect bites. Both types are treated with antibiotics.”

 

ISIS Seizes Former Chemical Weapons Plant in Iraq

As the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) tears through Iraq taking over cities, they have taken over some other things, too. These include a science lab at Mosul University, where they took 88 pounds of uranium components, and a former chemical weapons facility north-west of Baghdad. According to Iraq, in a letter circulated at the United Nations, the Muthanna facility held 2,500 degraded chemical rockets that were filled with sarin nerve agent or their remnants. The U.S. government has not expressed fear that these materials could be used to create a viable chemical or dirty bomb.

The Guardian—“A U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, expressed concern on 20 June about Isis seizing the complex, but played down the importance of the two bunkers with “degraded chemical remnants”, saying the material dates back to the 1980s and was stored after being dismantled by UN inspectors in the 1990s.

She said the remnants “don’t include intact chemical weapons … and would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely use this for military purposes or, frankly, to move it”.”

 

Smallpox Virus Found in Unsecured Government Lab

On the heels of accidental anthrax exposure at the CDC, reports this week highlight a concerning trend of lack of lab precautions when it comes to dangerous biological agents. Vials of smallpox, one of the most deadly viruses known to man, were discovered in an unused storage portion of a lab in Bethesda, MD.

Time—“The vials, which date from the 1950s, were discovered by National Institutes of Health workers on July 1, CDC said in a statement. The lab […] had been neither equipped nor authorized to store the pathogen, which was eradicated in 1978. Upon discovery, the vials were secured in a containment laboratory before being transported to another lab in Atlanta on July 7, where workers confirmed they contained DNA for the smallpox virus. There is no evidence the vials were breached, CDC said, and experts have not identified any danger to the public.”

 

Image Credit: U.S. Navy

 

The Pandora Report 12.27.13

by Siddha Hover, posted in Pandora Report

Highlights include H1N1 in Texas, 59 people with TB, a H7N9 fatality, H5N2 in ostriches, and vaccines coming to a mountain train near you. Happy Friday, and as our last Pandora Report from 2013, Happy New Year!

H1N1 Causes Early Spikes in Flu Cases
The flu season is in full swing, a couple weeks earlier than expected, with five deaths in Texas already. Luckily, the vaccine for this year’s flu contains the H1N1 strain currently predominant. Everyone please get vaccinated!

KUT – “‘[H1N1] is actually in the vaccines this year. So we’re finding that people who have been vaccinated, even if they come down with the illness, have a less severe course of it,’ Hydari said. He added that vaccine shortages that complicated flu season in the past is not an issue this year. Hydari also said that flu vaccines take about two weeks to take affect, and because the flu season typically peaks in January it’s not too late to get a shot this year.”

Dozens Test Positive For Tuberculosis After Exposure at Hospital Neonatal Unit
Fifty-nine people have tested positive for TB following exposure at a hospital in Nevada. A mother and her newborn twins are thought to have brought the bacteria to the hospital over the summer. All three died in the hospital, and were not discovered to have TB until after an autopsy was performed on the mother. Following hospital staff falling ill, and 977 people potentially exposed and subsequently tested, just two had active infections – the 59  mentioned above are latent cases. TB is still very real, and very scary – as this case illustrates, as few as three people can potentially infect dozens.

ABC – “‘Unfortunately, this situation is a hospital epidemiologist’s worst nightmare as neonates are highly susceptible to contracting TB and their infections can progress quite rapidly,’ he said. A mother and her newborn twins died of tuberculosis at Summerlin Hospital over the summer, prompting an investigation by the Southern Nevada Health District. Hospital staff didn’t realize the infected woman had tuberculosis until after she and one of the twins died and they performed an autopsy, according to KTNV, ABC’s Las Vegas affiliate. The other twin was in the NICU being treated without being under quarantine. The second twin also tested positive for tuberculosis and died in August, health department spokeswoman Stephanie Bethel told ABCNews.com.”

 Hong Kong confirms first death from H7N9 bird flu
An eighty-year old male has died from H7N9 in Hong Kong. Still, no confirmed, sustained person-to-person transmission yet.

Reuters – “The man, the second person in Hong Kong to be diagnosed with the virus strain, lived in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and had eaten poultry there, media reported. The H7N9 strain was first reported in humans in February in mainland China, and has infected at least 139 people in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, killing more than 40. Experts say there is no evidence of any easy or sustained human-to-human transmission of H7N9, and so far all people who came into contact with the man had tested negative for the strain, authorities said.”

Low Pathogenic Bird Flu in Western Cape Ostriches
Small outbreaks of H5N2 have been reported in South African ostriches. The low pathogenic influenza strain has been reported in seven farms and roughly 2,000 birds. Authorities remain uncertain as to the source of the outbreaks.

Poultry Site – “The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) received follow-up report no. 4 on 23 December. The report states that the affected population comprises commercial ostriches. A total of 10,171 birds were involved, out of which 2,230 tested positive for the virus. None died or been destroyed. According to the OIE’s Animal Health Information Department, H5 and H7 avian influenza in its low pathogenic form in poultry is a notifiable disease as per Chapter 10.4. on avian influenza of the Terrestrial Animal Health Code (2013).”

Keeping Vaccines Fresh
Apparently silicon packets can keep more than your new shoes fresh – scientists at the University of Portland have managed to preserve virus pathogenicity over time by coating the little zombies in a layer of silica. Some viruses subsequently cleansed of the silica coating retained infectivity. While this apparently means viruses may actually be able to survive inside volcanoes (we definitely feel there’s a movie in this somewhere), it also is good news for developing vaccines for use in places lacking widespread refrigeration.

New York Times – “Most vaccines are made of weakened virus or viral bits, and many need refrigeration. Keeping them cold is a major challenge when it comes to protecting children living in villages without electricity.’It’s hard to put a fridge on the back of a donkey,’ said Kenneth M. Stedman, a biologist at Portland State and the lead author of the study. By recreating the chemical-laden hot-spring environment, Dr. Stedman’s team coated four types of virus with silica, stored them, then washed off the silica and tried to infect cells. One heavily studied virus, phage T4, which infects the cells of E. coli bacteria, retained 90 percent of its infectivity for almost a month. The virus used in smallpox vaccines also did well, but it is naturally able to be stored dry.”

(Image: Afrikanischer/Strauss/Wikicommons)