Dr. Ashish Jha says the U.S. is seeing typically two COVID waves a year. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
As much as we would all love to ignore COVID, a new set of variants that scientists call FLiRT is here to remind us that the virus is still with us.
The good news: as of last Friday, the CDC says that the amount of respiratory illness in the U.S. is low.
The not-so-great news: the U.S. has often flirted with summer COVID waves because of travel and air-conditioned gatherings.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, returned to All Things Considered to speak with host Ailsa Chang about what the new variants could bring.
Ailsa Chang: So how concerned would you say scientists are about whether these FLiRT variants come with increased transmissibility or increased disease severity, compared to previous variants?
Ashish Jha: Were seeing exactly what we have expected: The virus continues to evolve to try to escape the wall of immunity we have built up through vaccines and infections. Is this more transmissible? It is. Thats why it has become more dominant. But the really important question is, is it going to get people to become more sick than previous versions? And all the evidence right now we have is no. If you have been vaccinated, or you had previous infections or youre one of the majority of Americans who have had both you are likely to have a mild infection and not get particularly sick. Obviously, we have to continue monitoring every new variant, but this is pretty expected.
Chang: Do you expect some sort of summer surge is on the way? And if so, do you have any advice for people who dont want COVID to disrupt their summer plans, even if they get a mild infection?
Jha: Every summer since the beginning of this pandemic, we have seen a summer wave. And therefore, my expectation is we probably will get a summer wave. We spend a lot more time indoors in the summer especially in the South, where it gets very hot so we tend to see those waves to be a bit bigger down in the southern parts of the country. When I think about whos at risk of having complications from these infections, its older Americans. Its immunocompromised Americans. For them, the two big things are: first, making sure theyre up to date on their vaccines. Second, if they do get an infection, we have widely available treatments. Obviously, if youre worried about getting infected at all, avoid crowded indoor spaces. You can wear a mask. Those things still work.
Chang: Weve now had four and a half years to observe this virus as it has spread. Im wondering what are some key patterns that you have seen over that time?
Jha: We are seeing pretty typically about two waves a year: one in the summer, one in the winter, all caused by ongoing evolution of the virus. Were seeing the people who are landing in the hospital. Theres still a lot of people getting very sick from this. The other thing thats worth thinking about is theres always a chance that this virus could evolve in some very substantial way, so that it could really cause more disruption and more illness. Weve got to continue monitoring and paying attention to that. I dont expect that to happen. But if it does, weve got to be ready.
Chang: In the long run do you think well be treating COVID much like we treat other seasonal respiratory illnesses? Like, there will be a new vaccine formulation every fall for expected seasonal surges and this is just what we are going to have to live with for the rest of time?
Jha: Yeah. The way I have thought about this is every year I go and get my flu shot. We have a new formulation. I will probably continue doing that for COVID. So Im going to have flu and COVID shots. And at some point as I get older, I will probably need an RSV shot every year as well. Its inconvenient. It can be a little bit annoying. But the bottom line is these are life-saving things and people should be doing them.
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Dr. David Morens, a former top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, appears during a House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing on Capitol Hill. Andrew Harnik/Andrew Harnik/Getty Images hide caption
At the start of a hearing on COVIDs origins last month, Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup said that the committee was not out to attack science.
Let me be clear, I support global health research; I support work that will make the world safer, Wenstrup said. Our concern is that this research, and research similar, does the opposite it puts the world at the risk of a pandemic.
In the three-hour exchange that followed, Wenstrup and his Republican colleagues excoriated Dr. Peter Daszak, a scientist at the center of the debate around COVIDs origins. Daszak is the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group that, prior to the onset of the pandemic, conducted research on bat coronaviruses. Some of that work was done in conjunction with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese-government laboratory that many Republicans believe may have started the pandemic.
Daszak was taken to task by both Republicans and Democrats for failing to comply with the terms of grants issued to EcoHealth. As a result of the ongoing hearings, EcoHealth Alliance recently had its access to federal grant funding suspended with an eye toward debarring them from receiving future funding. Both Daszak and EcoHealth say they will appeal the decision.
On Monday, the committee will hear testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became the public face of science during the pandemic. Committee members are expected to grill Fauci on EcoHealth and other aspects of pandemic decision-making. They will also ask about e-mail exchanges between Daszak and one of Faucis senior advisors, Dr. David Morens. A subpoena by the committee recently turned up embarrassing exchanges between Morens and Daszak, in which they appeared to be trying to avoid public records laws.
Some in the scientific community see the hearings as the latest in an ongoing harassment campaign to discredit scientists who did their best to support the country during the worst pandemic in over a century.
"This select subcommittee could have tried to use its powers to try and understand the scientific evidence," say Michael Worobey, the head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. Instead, he says the subcommittee has chosen to interrogate scientists about grants and e-mails.
"It is a disservice to the American people to have a hearing on this topic but to not hear what the scientists who understand it best have to say," Worobey says.
The hearings are absolutely atrocious, says Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Parading prominent virologists in front of C-SPAN cameras to humiliate them is going to have long-term detrimental effects on science, biopreparedness and virology.
But others, particularly those who believe that lax laboratory safety practices in China may have sparked the pandemic, say the hearings and the punishment of EcoHealth are appropriate.
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has called for the laboratory origins of COVID to be probed more closely, welcomed the scrutiny.
EcoHealth Alliance should not receive any further federal funding until it turns over all exchanges with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and demonstrates that it can responsibly track research experiments paid for with taxpayer dollars, she said over email.
Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies biotechnology and has investigated possible laboratory origins of the virus, agrees.
Both Peter Daszak and EcoHealth have not lived up to the standards of U.S. government grantees, he says.
Daszak and EcoHealth have been at the center of the debates of COVIDs origins since the very beginning of the pandemic. As an expert in both bat coronaviruses and the work done at the Wuhan laboratory, he was often quoted by media in the pandemic's early days. He also helped organize a letter in the Lancet that labeled the idea of a laboratory origin for the COVID virus as a conspiracy theory.
The committee has probed the relationship between EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured). HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images/AFP hide caption
But Daszaks connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology brought scrutiny, particularly from the political right. Although he says his work never involved gain-of-function research to make coronaviruses more contagious in humans, journalists uncovered a proposal for a grant to conduct gain-of-function work in 2018. The grant was denied, but many pointed to the application as evidence of a cover-up.
In its hearing with Daszak in early May, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic revealed new evidence that EcoHealth had not properly maintained an existing grant with NIH to fund work at the Wuhan Institute. Among other infractions, the committee showed evidence that EcoHealth had failed to properly upload an update on the grant to NIH servers, and that it had failed to obtain lab reports from Wuhan about the work being done there with NIH money.
In response, the Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding to EcoHealth and has proposed barring the organization and Daszak from federal grants. Debarment generally lasts three years or less, but can be extended depending on the circumstances.
Daszak says that both he and EcoHealth will fight the suspension. The people who are promoting the idea that theres some sort of coverup and backroom deals have done a great job of presenting every little snippet they can, Daszak said in an interview with NPR. But, he says, the allegations against his group are without merit:
Is there something illegal or unethical that EcoHealth Alliance has done? No way, he says.
In addition to the scrutiny it has brought to EcoHealths funding, the committee has also probed communications between EcoHealths Daszak and Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci.
Through a subpoena, the committee obtained emails from Morens that appear to show the two joking about taking a cut from EcoHealth grants and evading public records requests. At one point, Morens wrote: "I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I'm FOIA'd."
In a hearing on May 22, Morens said that the emails were part of a misunderstanding because his personal email and NIH email were on the same phone.
I was thinking I was communicating in privateNot as a government employee but as a private citizen, he told committee members.
Daszak says that Morens never directly supervised EcoHealth grants, and that the pair wasnt conducting official communications via Gmail.
David Morens was not and is not involved in the management of any of EcoHealth Alliances NIH grants or awards, he says. Hes been accused of doing NIH business with us via Gmail, and thats simply untrue.
Both Daszak and Morens maintain that the correspondence came during a dark time for Daszak, who found himself at the center of numerous conspiracy theories.
We were being attacked; we had people breaking into our offices, we had threats my childrens names had been put up on a 4Chan kill list, Daszak says.
In the hearing, Morens says much of the correspondence was meant to help lift the mood of Daszak, who he counts as a personal friend.
I was trying to help a friend by cheering him up with black humor and things like that, he says.
Mondays hearing with Fauci will likely see the former NIAID director grilled about the emails between Morens and Daszak and about EcoHealths suspended grant. Some Republicans may also probe whether Fauci himself profited in any way from the pandemic.
Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has promoted far-out theories about the origins of COVID, including the unfounded idea that Anthony Fauci played a role in the creation of the virus. The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Im/The Washington Post hide caption
That questioning feeds into a conspiracy theory that EcoHealth was somehow doing Faucis bidding to seed the pandemic. Its an unfounded claim that Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene openly hinted at during the May 22 hearing: I personally believe that Peter Daszak at EcoHealth had a lot to do with the fact that COVID was raging, Greene said. Greene has previously promoted conspiracy theories around COVID vaccines, called the coronavirus a manufactured plague and called for the firing of Anthony Fauci.
Metzl says that he doesnt believe such far-out theories about COVIDs origins. But he nevertheless feels that the hearings are appropriate and have turned up evidence that deserves public attention.
Tony Fauci [is] not directly responsible for COVID-19, he says. We should still be asking very tough questions. We should still be investigating everything.
But Worobey says the hearings are creating a political football out of a vital scientific question understanding where COVID came from and how it spread. He says the evidence is "overwhelming" that COVID began in nature and then was transmitted to humans at a handful of live animal markets in Wuhan.
Now another animal-borne virus, the H5N1 bird flu, is spreading through the U.S., Worobey says but "no one's talking about what should we be doing to prevent these ticking time bombs?"
Hotez says he fears that the hearings are doing little more than damaging the reputation of scientists to score political points. The committee said on their official Twitter website, get your popcorn ready, he says. They are not even pretending this is anything other than political theater or Fox News soundbites.
(CNN) Another new version of the Covid-19 vaccine will probably be coming this fall.
The US Food and Drug Administrationscommittee of independent advisersvoted unanimously Wednesday to recommend that the agency tell vaccine manufacturers to update the Covid-19 shots so they will be more effective against the JN.1 lineage of the coronavirus.
The committee voted on the question, For the 2024-2025 Formula of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S., does the committee recommend a monovalent JN.1-lineage vaccine composition? All 16 of the advisers voted yes.
The decision now goes to the full FDA. If the agency agrees with its advisory committee, the new shot will be a monovalent vaccine, offering protection against one coronavirus variant. Some previous vaccines have been bivalent, meaning they were formulated to protect against two variants.
There are a few virus variants in circulation now, but they are relatively similar.
JN.1 and its descendants KP.2 and KP.3 are the versions of the virus that are most common in the US right now, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The FDA told the advisory committee Wednesday that studies have shown that currently available Covid-19 vaccines appear to be less effective against the variants that are now in circulation.
When manufacturers updated their vaccines last year to better match the variants that were in circulation then, it seemed to offer better protection. Match does matter somewhat, said Dr. Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products in the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
JN.1 has continued to evolve, and it makes it somewhat difficult to pick the particular specific strain to be used this year, he told the committee. Because of manufacturing timelines, experts have to make predictions now if they want a new vaccine for fall. This is what the FDAs committee has done for the past couple of years, and I think its worked pretty well, Weir said.
Covid-19 cases are relatively low right now. Only 3% to 4% of people who are getting tested are positive for the virus, said Dr. Natalie Thornburg, acting chief of the Laboratory Branch of the Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. By comparison, at the peak of the Omicron surge in late 2021, test positivity rates were at 30%.
Hospitalization rates are also the lowest they have been since March 2020, Thornburg said.
Many people have some protection against the disease through vaccination or because theyve had Covid before.
People who got the current Covid-19 vaccine which was updated last fall have protection from serious disease and death across all age groups, but as with past formulations, that protection wanes over time, Dr. Ruth Link-Gelles, vaccine effectiveness program lead with the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told the committee.
The advisers agreed that more people need to get updated vaccines. Only about 25% of adults have gotten the most recent shot, according to a presentation to the committee.
In only the fall and winter months last season, Covid sent more than half a million people in the US to the hospital and killed 40,000, according to data presented at the meeting.
The people most likely to get seriously ill or die were unvaccinated, Link-Gelles said, and among the children who were hospitalized, half had no underlying conditions.
This, I think, emphasizes the need for vaccination regardless of underlying condition, status or age, she said.
The Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers told the committee that they have done some work to prepare for the FDAs decision on the composition of the vaccine. Animal and lab studies show that shots made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax that target the JN.1 variant seem to work well and are safe, the companies said.
Novavax said its updated shot would need to be the JN.1 version because its protein vaccine takes about six months to make, and thats the version it has been working on. The company said it could get the shot to US warehouses by August.
Pfizer and Modernas mRNA vaccines can be developed more quickly, and those companies said they could have either a JN.1 shot or a KP.2 shot ready for fall. Moderna said it could supply the US market by mid-August, and Pfizer said its shot could be immediately ready upon approval.
The committee discussed but did not vote on whether the shot should match JN.1 or KP.2. Most of the members preferred JN.1 so Americans would have an option to get an mRNA vaccine or a more traditional protein-based vaccine.
Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told the committee that the FDA will take these recommendations into consideration as it makes its final choice.
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WASHINGTON Anthony Fauci, the former top U.S. infectious disease official and a longtime foil for congressional Republicans, on Monday came out forcefully against GOP accusations on a host of Covid-related issues, and said debate about the coronaviruss origin had been seriously distorted.
Fauci, in one of his most closely watched appearances before a congressional committee, said allegations that he sought to influence scientists research about Covids origins so that they would not conclude the virus was the result of a lab leak were simply preposterous. But he also played down accusations that work funded by the National Institutes of Health had led to the emergence of the virus.
One thing I can be sure [about], the viruses that were funded by the NIH bio-genetically could not be the precursor to SARS-CoV-2, he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Later, he added: I dont think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory. What is conspiracy is the kind of distortion of that particular subject. Like it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne.
Fauci also sought to explain a previous comment to the panel that the 6-foot distancing guideline just appeared at the start of the pandemic and that he was not aware of studies backing it up. He told the panel Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the distance and the studies he was referring to were clinical trials. He maintained that social distancing definitely helped save lives.
In other comments to the committee, Fauci, who is now retired, was quick to distance himself from David Morens, the senior adviser recently targeted in the committees investigation for emails in part revealing he advised the president of an infectious disease research group, EcoHealth Alliance, to avoid email correspondence with government accounts, which can be obtained by the public. The warning was sent when discussing the furor over a grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency Fauci led, to a EcoHealth to study coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Morens and Fauci worked together on scientific papers over the years but Morens was not an adviser to me on institute policy, Fauci said. He later added that it is possible that he and Morens corresponded over personal email about their paper but not for business.
I dont have any idea what hes talking about, theres no backchannel at NIAID, Fauci said. I do not do government business on my private email.
Republicans pushed back, asking Fauci if Morens directly reported to him and if he had knowledge of Morens advice to evade federal records requests and did so himself in communications. Committee leaders have asked for a new trove of Faucis correspondences during the pandemic and launched a probe exploring tactics NIH officials could have used to evade federal records searches.
Fauci told the committee that what you saw, I believe, with Dr. Morens was aberrancy and an outlier.
The longtime infectious disease doctor appeared before a packed hearing room. A line for public seating snaked through the hallway; among the attendees filing in was a cluster wearing Got Ivermectin? T-shirts, a reference to the drug that was initially promoted as a way to treat or prevent Covid infections. Studies later showed it was not an effective therapy or preventative tool.
Two people were escorted from the hearing for causing disturbances, one of them after yelling, Fauci, you belong in prison. The hearing also briefly stalled over points of order after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) refused to refer to Fauci as a doctor.
Committee Republicans on Friday released nearly 500 pages of transcripts from Faucis January closed-door testimony. The records show that lawmakers questioned him extensively over the early days of the pandemic, when Fauci became the most visible face in federal health officials calls for shutdowns, masks, social distancing, and dismissals of the lab leak theory.
Many of the early questions Monday retread those issues, with some Republican lawmakers digging into the composition of the coronavirus and NIAIDs processes for funding viral research.
Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) began the hearing by commending Fauci for decades of public service and said that he, and other critics of Fauci, are not against science but the seeming dominance of his voice in pandemic policy.
Almost overnight, you became a celebrity and a household name, in addition to being a public health official, Wenstrup said. Americans from coast to coast and beyond listened to your words. And this is where we could have done better. This goes to both sides of the aisle. We should have been more precise and we should have been honest, especially about what we didnt know.
Democrats in the room blasted the hearing as the latest in an increasingly partisan effort to lay blame for the origins of the pandemic and its early fallout. Ranking member Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) lamented that under GOP leadership, the committee had probed the lab leak theory for 16 months without a shred of evidence for NIH officials involvement.
Ruiz did not learn a single thing from Mondays hearing, he told reporters outside the room. Just that [Republicans] want to continue to promote their false allegations and then continue to confuse the American people on Dr. Faucis word.
Yet there could still be ramifications for the retired infectious disease officials former agency. Besides the committees probe into email communications, several Republicans want to bar so-called gain-of-function research, a field of study in which researchers make viruses more transmissible to study their spread.
Fauci has maintained that the EcoHealth research, which was terminated during the Trump administration, did not meet this definition, but has also warned against broad bans on the field.
House Republicans attached such a ban to a funding package last year, before the measure and others were dropped in final negotiations. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has also sparred with Fauci about gain-of-function, and the topic came up during a Senate budget hearing with current NIH officials last week.
Four years ago, when COVID was first smothering New York, the governor at the time and the mayor at the time set up 20 different committees and panels and task forces and working groups to deal with the unprecedented emergency that affected everything and which, as of last week, has claimed 83,352 lives.
Some of the assemblages never really got going, others wrote reports and recommendations, which may or may not have been read, but what New York needs now is a formal, legally established commission, with subpoena power granted by the Legislature, to prepare the definitive record of what happened and what went right and what went wrong.
Monday, Dr. Tony Fauci, who helped lead the federal COVID effort, appeared before a House committee to talk about COVID. While there was plenty of stupidity supplied from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the general concept of a look-back is welcome. As is the appearance of Andrew Cuomo before the committee next week to answer questions about what happened under his watch in New York, including the controversy about nursing homes in the harrowing first weeks and months.
Before the Legislature ends the 2024 session this week, lawmakers and Gov. Hochul should enact a state COVID-19 pandemic response study commission. The 16 members, half each appointed by the governor and the Legislature, would have the mandate to hold hearings and take testimony. After all the suffering, the heroism and the tragedies, New Yorkers should have this opportunity to speak out and be listened to.
The entirety of New Yorks response, from the availability of stockpiles of lifesaving medical equipment to lockdowns and restrictions to the operation of medical facilities and the vaccine program would be in the purview of the commission, which would prepare a draft report and final report.
How and when and why was the virus first spotted? Did the pre-existing syndromic surveillance systems of the city and state health departments work as intended? The medical, economic and social impact of COVID was profound, so the accounting must be complete.
The bill is being carried by Assembly Member Jessica Gonzlez-Rojas of Queens and state Sen. Julia Salazar of Brooklyn, who wrote in these pages last week:
Only a truly independent commission will ensure the assessment is objective and fact-based; only full subpoena power will ensure the findings are comprehensive and complete.
As elected officials, our constituents empowered us with the authority and responsibility to protect our communities and this includes protection from public health crises. If we allow the recent history of COVID-19 to go unexamined, we have failed to take every step possible to protect New Yorkers from similar tragedies in the future.
Hochul has already requested a review of New Yorks response to COVID by an outside firm, but the firm doesnt wield subpoena authority and lacks the power and credibility of a government commission, which is why she must push Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to pass this bill.
Before COVID, we couldnt have imagined that such a cataclysm could happen to the worlds greatest city and the state beyond. But it did happen and we need to prepare for the future. Gov. Hochul, make this happen.
An Ohio doctor who drew national attention when she claimed COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic is being sued by the federal government over claims she hasn't paid nearly $650,000 in federal taxes and late fees.
The lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in Cleveland, claims Sherri Tenpenny didn't pay taxes in 2001, 2012 and 2013.
Tenpenny, an osteopathic doctor, has been licensed in Ohio since 1984. She told Cleveland.com that she's tried to settle the dispute with the several times.
"This shows what the IRS can do to a person that they target," Tenpenny told the newspaper. "This is a total harassment case. They've been doing this to me for 23 years."
The lawsuit alleges that Tenpenny owes $646,929 overall, most of it late fees and penalties. It says she set up payment plans but didn't finish paying her taxes for the three years cited.
Tenpenny, who lives in Middleburg Heights, drew national attention when she urged Ohio legislators to block vaccine requirements and mask mandates during the coronavirus pandemic, claiming that the shots made their recipients "interface" with cell towers and interfered with women's menstrual cycles.
Roughly 350 complaints were soon filed about Tenpenny with the medical board, which can discipline physicians for making false or deceptive medical statements. Tenpenny refused to meet with investigators, answer written questions or comply with a subpoena ordering her to sit for a deposition.
Tenpenny's license was suspended in August 2023 on procedural grounds for failing to cooperate with the investigation. Her attorney had told the board she wouldn't participate in an "illegal fishing expedition."
The Ohio State Medical Board voted 7-2 in April to restore her license, with proponents saying she had met the requirements for reinstatement and had paid a $3,000 fine.
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Former National Institutes of Health official Dr. Anthony Fauci has faced many hostile questions from members of Congress, but when he appears before a House panel on Monday, hell have something new to answer for: a trove of incendiary emails written by one of his closest advisers.
In the emails, David Morens, a career federal scientist now on administrative leave, described deleting messages and using a personal email account to evade disclosure of correspondence under the Freedom of Information Act.
i learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foiad but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe, Morens wrote in a Feb. 24, 2021, email. Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.
The pressure is on as Fauci himself prepares to appear before a House subcommittee exploring the origins of COVID-19. The NIH, a $49 billion agency that is the foremost source of funding in the world for biomedical research, finds itself under unusual bipartisan scrutiny. The subcommittee has demanded more outside oversight of NIH and its 50,000 grants and raised the idea of term limits for officials like Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an NIH component, from 1984 to 2022.
Lawmakers are likely to put Fauci on the spot about Morens emails at a time when Republicans are questioning NIHs credibility and integrity. Even Democrats have cautioned the agencys leaders.
When people dont trust scientists, they dont trust the science, Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) told Morens.
The subcommittee has yet to turn up evidence implicating the NIH or U.S. scientists in the pandemics beginnings in Wuhan, China. Nor has its work shed light on the origin of the virus.
But in a May 28 letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli, the subcommittees chairman, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), said the evidence suggests a conspiracy at the highest levels of NIH and NIAID to avoid public transparency regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rep. Jill Tokuda, a subcommittee Democrat from Hawaii, said the evidence shows no such conspiracy. She predicted the bipartisan criticism of Morens, 76, will give way to a clash of intentions at the hearing as Republicans try to pin COVID on Fauci.
For them, I think this is their moment to, again, bring a lot of these baseless, false allegations to the front, Tokuda said.
On May 29, Wenstrup asked Fauci to turn over personal e-mails ahead of his testimony.
Here are things to know as the subcommittee gears up for Faucis appearance.
What Is the Subcommittee Looking For?
The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is supposed to be investigating how the pandemic started and the federal governments response. That includes such hot-button issues as vaccination policies and school closures.
A central question is whether the COVID virus leaped from animals to humans at a market in Wuhan, China, or spread from a leak at the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Wuhan lab received funding from an NIH grant recipient called EcoHealth Alliance.
The congressional probe is in some ways an extension of the nations political, cultural, and scientific battles arising from the pandemic.
The Republican-led subcommittee has been examining NIHs performance and that of Fauci, who advised both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, becoming the face of many of the governments most polarizing pandemic policies.
The panel called for the government to cut off EcoHealths funding, a process the Department of Health and Human Services recently initiated.
EcoHealths president, Peter Daszak, was Morens friend and the recipient of many of the emails under scrutiny. A wildlife biologist credited with helping to develop the first COVID antiviral drug, remdesivir, Daszak said he and his organization did nothing wrong.
We were so accurate in our predictions that a bat coronavirus would emerge from China and cause a pandemic, that when it did, were dragged in front of the crowd with their pitchforks and blamed for it, Daszak said in an interview.
Explosive Hearing Spotlights NIH Scientist's Emails About Evading FOIA
Whats at Stake for NIH?
The Republican-led subcommittee is challenging NIHs credibility. The agency performs and funds a wide variety of medical and scientific research, work that is often the foundation of new medicines and other treatments, and has long enjoyed bipartisan support from Congress. The agency is home to the Cancer Moonshot, a Biden priority.
As head of NIAID and a presidential adviser, Fauci helped guide the public during the pandemic on measures to avoid infection, such as mask-wearing and maintaining physical distance.
But at a May 22 hearing, Wenstrup said Faucis NIAID was, unfortunately, less pristine than so many, including the media, would have had us all believe.
In his letter to Bertagnolli, Wenstrup said there was evidence that a former chief of staff of Faucis might have used intentional misspellings such as a variant of EcoHealth to prevent emails from being captured in keyword searches by FOIA officials.
Wenstrups office did not respond to questions or an interview request.
An aide to the top Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Raul Ruiz of California, said he was unavailable for an interview.
Why Were Morens Emails Alarming?
The emails show a pattern of trying to shield communications from public disclosure.
We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldnt put them in emails, and if we found them wed delete them, Morens wrote on June 16, 2020.
The best way to avoid FOIA hassles is to delete all emails when you learn a subject is getting sensitive, he wrote on June 28, 2021.
Some of Morens emails included sexual or sexist remarks, including one from December 2020: Beverage is always good, and best delivered by a blonde nymphomaniac. In another email, discussing how former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky got her job, he remarked, Well, she does wear a skirt.
Morens apologized at the May 22 hearing and called some of what he wrote misogynistic.
Some of the emails Ive seen that you all have provided look pretty incriminating, he testified.
Asked if he ever sent information related to COVID to Faucis personal email, he said he didnt remember but might have.
Morens said some of his comments were snarky jokes intended to cheer up his friend Daszak, the EcoHealth president, who was receiving death threats over media coverage of his organizations relationship with the Wuhan lab.
Morens testified that he didnt knowingly delete official records.
Ross, the North Carolina representative, said the emails inflict serious damage on public trust for the entire scientific enterprise. She said the dangers can be seen in eroding public confidence in vaccines, contributing to recent outbreaks of measles.
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said Morens showed disdain for the Freedom of Information Act. The subcommittees investigation has been an unfounded effort to pin the blame for the pandemic on NIH and NIAID, and Morens emails have helped blur the issues, she said.
Do the Emails Reveal the Origins of COVID?
No, as Democrats have emphasized.
In a way, Morens correspondence undercuts allegations that people at the top of NIAID covered up a lab leak in Wuhan.
None of Morens emails describe any effort to suppress evidence of a lab leak and, in an email sent from a private account, he ridiculed the idea, calling it false to the point of being crazy. But the subcommittees senior Democrat, Ruiz, criticized Morens for dismissing the lab leak theory.
Unless and until we see specific evidence on the origins of the virus that causes COVID, the scientific process requires that we examine all possible hypotheses with objectivity, Ruiz said.
KFF Health News senior correspondent Arthur Allen contributed to this report.
KFF Health Newsis a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFFan independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more aboutKFF.
Photo: RNZ
Keep testing and stay home if you're unwell is an expert's advice as thousands more cases are notified.
Latest figures show more than 6000 cases, that's double the number of cases from the week before and as of Sunday there were 314 Covid patients in hospital.
The hardest hit regions are: Canterbury, Counties Manukau, Waitemat and Southern.
The country is experiencing its highest peak in Covid-19 cases since December 2022, Professor Michael Baker told RNZ in late May.
Otago University Biochemistry Professor Kurt Krause said it was important to continue testing for Covid-19 so that health experts knew if the cases were "a ripple" or "a major wave".
He believed a major outbreak was unlikely.
Kurt Krause Photo:
The data on cases also helped to protect vulnerable people in the community such as those who were elderly or had compromised immunity.
The latest strain was a distant Omicron variant. JN1 was the biggest strain at present with a few other minor strains which were closely related to it.
"It's just this continual drifting into new and different variants and combinations of Covid that we've been living through for the past three years.
"There's good evidence this latest strain is more contagious than previous strains but there really isn't good evidence that it's more dangerous than any of the other strains we've had."
Prof Krause said rapid antigen tests lasted about a year and it was not recommended to rely on expired ones.
However, some manufacturers had found old ones had lasted longer than they expected.
He recommended people keep a supply even though they will no longer be free after 30 June.
Asked what people should do if they suspected they might have Covid but a RAT test was negative, he said he would like a culture to develop that people stayed home if they were sick.
People should stay home to protect both themselves and their co-workers and if they needed to go out briefly wear a mask.
"Please stay home if you're sick."
People should also consider they might have another winter virus such as influenza-A or another respiratory virus.
"It's not just Covid out there."
How the COVID-19 virus came into existence remains a source of controversy more than three years after it first emerged in China. The mystery surrounding its origins comes down to two conflicting theories: Did it originate in wild animals and jump to humans, or was the virus created in a Chinese lab?
The first COVID-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China, which also happens to be where two places are located: the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab. The city is also the location of a so-called "wet market" that sells wild animals, like bats, which are known to carry viruses like COVID.
Add to that, Chinese secrecy over efforts by international health organizations to investigate the origin of COVID-19, and it all quickly became political.
The World Health Organization has said it believes COVID most likely spread from bats to humans, but Chinese authorities restricted their ability to thoroughly investigate it.
The FBI later said it had "moderate confidence" that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab leak, and the U.S. Department of Energy has said it believes albeit with "low confidence" that the virus escaped from a lab.
In his testimony before the House Oversight Committee today, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed the lab leak theory.
"I cannot account nor can anyone account for other things that might be going on in China, which is the reason why I have always said and will say now: I keep an open mind as to what the origin is," Dr. Fauci said.
The competing COVID-19 origin theories present a real problem because experts say that not knowing where the virus came from could impede how we prepare and handle future pandemics.
Congress
2:13 PM, Jun 03, 2024
"We're stuck on this origins debate and have lost sight of why we want to know the answer. The reality is, is even if we had definitive evidence there were a lab leak, there's very little one can do under international law diplomatically to hold China accountable for that," said Thomas Bollyky with the Council on Foreign Relations. "If we knew for sure it was the wildlife trade here too, that doesn't absolve the Chinese government. There have been restrictions on wildlife trade for a long period of time. What's ultimately important is that nations find a way to start working together on these concerns and to make outbreaks less likely."
Adding to all of this is an op-ed piece in Monday's New York Times by Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist from MIT and Harvard. In the article, she laid out five key points as to why she believes COVID-19 likely started in a lab.
However, there is still scant, public hard evidence of where COVID came from no smoking gun, so to speak.
In the end, that leaves everyone vulnerable, as countries have not come together to figure out what actually went wrong and what steps need to be taken to prevent another pandemic like COVID-19 from happening again.
