Category: Covid-19

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Thursday that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Arkansas had fallen below 1,000 for the first time since early last month.

The new data shared by Hutchinson from the Arkansas Department of Health showed the current number of hospitalizations as 931, down 73 from the previous day. There was also a drop in patients on ventilators, falling 13 to 142.

There were 1,149 new cases of the virus reported Thursday, pushing the states pandemic total to 811,669. The state currently has 12,484 active cases of COVID-19, a drop of 482 from the previous day.

Hutchinson added that while it was good to see the decline in the number of COVID-19 patients in Arkansas hospitals, he was still saddened to report 45 additional deaths to the state count, which now rests at 10,235.

Health officials did offer a breakdown of the most recently reported deaths, which showed that out of 619 deaths in the last month, 467 of them, 75.4%, were people 65 years of age or older.

The governor pointed out the uptick in vaccinations seen in the state, noting that over the last 24 hours there had been 4,019 doses administered. The number of fully vaccinated Arkansas residents climbed to 1,560,933, with another 370,506 having partial immunity.

Hutchinson noted that there will no longer be a daily report of COVID-19 case numbers released by his office, noting the benchmark passed with hospitalizations dropping below 1,000. He did note that the numbers will still be updated daily on the ADH COVID-19 dashboard.

The governor also weighed in on the issue in the Canadian capital of Ottawa where a convoy of tractor-trailer drivers have been protesting for days and shutting down the city. Hutchinson restated his opposition to the mandates required by drivers crossing the U.S.-Canadian border and said he sent letters to both Pres. Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encouraging them to let the private sector set its own mandate rules.

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Hutchinson kicked off the briefing with the announcement of a new commission on the status of women in Arkansas. The commission will be led by Alison Williams, the governors chief of staff, who will be joined by 14 other commissioners, including Arkansas first lady Susan Hutchinson.

It will focus on studying labor force participation by women in the state, especially in STEM careers, as well as examine barriers to getting women into the workforce. It will compile the findings into recommendations and a final report that will be presented to the governor in December.

The governor also announced a 2% cost of living adjustment for state employees. Hutchinson said state economic indicators gave him the confidence to make this move, which will go into effect in paychecks starting February 25.

He noted that these pay increases were being issued in response to the record levels of inflation being seen in the U.S. and that the adjustments were not in lieu of merit raises for employees. The governor did not have a total for the number of state employees affected by this increase, and there was not a total cost announced for the adjustment.

Hutchinson also announced a new boost in funding for the Arkansas School of the Deaf and Arkansas School of the Blind. The $6 million will come from discretionary funds and will be used to improve the water and power service to the schools, as well as pay for a new health services building to be shared by the schools.

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COVID-19 in Arkansas: Hospitalizations fall below 1,000, 45 deaths added to state totals - KARK

Southern Research has 400 full-time employees, brings in $80 million in revenue and has an annual economic impact of $150 million.

Southern Research has 400 full-time employees, brings in $80 million in revenue and has an annual economic impact of $150 million.Before coronavirus vaccines and treatments proved their value in clinics worldwide, they had to prove their mettle in Birminghams Southside. Scientists at Southern Research, working under contracts with major pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies, received nearly $40 million in COVID-related testing and other research contracts after the pandemic began.

In their Biosafety Level 3, or BSL-3, lab, where highly pathogenic viruses such as those that cause COVID-19, tuberculosis and yellow fever can be safely studied, Southern Research scientists continue to study the effects of treatments against COVID-19 variants. The robotic arms in the High-Throughput Screening Center have sifted through tens of thousands of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration and helped identify dozens with the potential to slow down SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus. A COVID-19 vaccine co-developed by Southern Research and Tonix Pharmaceuticals is now in human clinical trials. Researchers at Southern Research are also collaborating with Tonix on a treatment that has proved to be 65 times more potent in early testing than remdesivir another antiviral drug refined at Southern Research, now used around the world to treat coronavirus.

How research creates major economic impact

But this is only the beginning, says Josh Carpenter, Ph.D., who was named CEO and president of Southern Research in May 2021. Carpenters vision is to expand the institutes facilities and leverage its successful partnerships with the University of Alabama at Birmingham to create a national center of excellence in pandemic preparedness in Birmingham. The same facilities will expand work on cancer drug development, Carpenter says.

The project is expected to yield not only scientific advances but also economic gains for Birmingham and Alabama.

Southern Research was founded as an economic development institute to create jobs through research and produce new discoveries and innovations, Carpenter said. That original impetus from 80 years ago is what we want to return to now.

Southern Research has 400 full-time employees, brings in $80 million in revenue and has an annual economic impact of $150 million. One of Carpenters first moves as CEO was to sell the Southern Research facility in Frederick, Maryland, to its strategic research partner Tonix Pharmaceuticals and shift these operations to Birmingham. The sale brought $17.5 million in capital investments in Birmingham, nearly 50 new jobs in Alabama with an average salary of $100,000 per year, and $45 million in recurring direct and indirect economic impact.

Before joining Southern Research, Carpenter served as director of Innovation and Economic Opportunity for the city of Birmingham.

During the pandemic, about 85,000 workers in Jefferson County filed for unemployment, Carpenter said. I knew that, in my next role, I wanted to focus on quality jobs that provide sustainable family wages and benefits. What the economic development research tells us is that the development and maintenance of high-quality institutions is directly correlated with, and maybe even a driver of, economic growth.

Carpenter is in talks with state and local leaders to support an $84 million new facility on the Southern Research campus in Southside that will double its BSL-3 lab space. The new facility could create nearly 200 new permanent scientific jobs, $26.2 million in new annual payroll, and $84.7 million in new spending and other economic output, Carpenter says. It also will expand the institutes drug discovery and drug development partnerships with UAB in key areas of infectious diseases and cancer immunotherapy.

We have a state-of-the-art facility where we can handle COVID-19 and any other highly pathogenic virus, said Subash Das, DVM, Ph.D., who joined Southern Research as director of Infectious Disease Research in July 2021. Many of our studies need BSL-3 containment labs. We have so much work contracted and could do more with more space.

Das is among several important hires at Southern Research made possible through the sale of the institutes Frederick facility and whose expertise will allow Southern Research to aggressively expand research related to coronavirus and influenza.

Carpenter says strategic hires such as these create incredible potential for Southern Research, especially in concert with partners such as UAB.

UAB leads more than $600 million in external research each year, and Southern Research does $40 million on the Southside campus, he said. That is a total of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in biological research within a 25-block radius. Extend that to 40 blocks and you have UAB Medicine, Childrens of Alabama, the VA Medical Center and St. Vincents, which see nearly 3.5 million patients per year. That concentrated patient care and research and development expertise means more effective clinical trials and opportunities to create many quality jobs.

Joint ventures create powerhouse ROI

Southern Research partners with UAB in three main ways, Carpenter says: joint ventures, sponsored research collaborations and organic research collaborations.

The prototype joint venture is the Alabama Drug Discovery Alliance, which was launched in 2009 with the goal of translating innovative research in the UAB Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine labs into new treatments by leveraging the expertise in drug discovery and development at Southern Research. In the past 12 years, 38 projects have been initiated through the ADDA, and there are currently six drugs in the alliance pipeline, including potential treatments for cancer, Parkinsons disease and diabetes.

I believe we are the only major academic medical center with a partner specializing in drug discovery located just up the block, said Richard Whitley, M.D., Distinguished Professor at UAB. Southern Research has high-throughput screening, medical chemists and structural biologists with extensive experience in working with the FDA to get drugs approved. They have a terrific history, and with Carpenter as CEO, the close partnership between UAB and Southern Research is poised to get stronger.

The ADDA builds teams of specialists from UAB and Southern Research around each new potential drug project, with funding of $50,000 per year for two years. Just as in the pharmaceutical industry, the projects are held to strict timelines and regular go/no-go decisions at each significant testing milestone. Working with Southern Research allows UAB investigators to carry innovative ideas from their labs across the so-called valley of death, in which projects are too commercially focused to receive federal research funding but not yet promising enough to attract significant pharmaceutical or biotech investment. UAB specializes in basic research and clinical trials, and Southern Research specializes in drug discovery and drug development, said Stephanie Moore, Ph.D., associate director of the ADDA. These partnerships make sense. The translational research opportunities of the ADDA are a significant recruitment tool when UAB is recruiting promising investigators to Birmingham, Whitley adds.

Whitley has built on the ADDA model to successfully compete for major funding from the National Institutes of Health. In 2019, his Antiviral Drug Discovery and Development Center, was awarded a five-year, $37.5 million grant from NIAID to study and develop treatments for high-priority infections, including influenza, dengue, Zika and the coronaviruses SARS and MERS. Initial testing that led to the approval of the antiviral drug remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19 was carried out by the AD3C at Southern Research, Whitley says. Another UAB-Southern Research-sponsored research partnership is the UAB Research Center of Excellence in Arsenicals. It was awarded $18.9 million in 2018 to develop countermeasures against chemical warfare threats.

Through the efforts of UAB and its partners, philanthropic support, internal funding from Southern Research, and state funding, the ADDA has received about $15 million in investment. Thanks to that investment, UAB has received more than $100 million in grants and Southern Research has received more than $60 million, Carpenter says. Thats a 20-to-1 return on investment to UAB and a 12-to-1 return on investment to Southern Research, he said. We can jointly combine efforts on these hugely competitive grants.

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COVID-19 breakthroughs, personalized medicine at scale and thousands of quality jobs in Birmingham: Southern Research prepare - The Mix

Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida, reflects on lessons learned and best practices moving forward

Flexibility and adaptability are terms that come to mind for me when I think about the ideal candidate in a job interview someone who can jump into any situation, make sense of it and deliver a quality outcome.

For many in the health care field, weve been doing things the same way for so long that we were a bit stuck in the past. We had a vision in our back pocket for more flexible and adaptable health care, but it was something that seemed to belong to a distant future. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to embrace rapid change and declare that the time is now to achieve those future goals. We were at the mercy of a devastating disease and had to act fast to save lives.

At Baptist Health, we fully embraced telehealth and virtual care, launched expanded home health care and reinvested in our team members. We also have embraced the power of using predictive analytics daily to plan our next move and have changed the way we handle crises as we tackle a disease that is ongoing and ever-changing.

We have been using telehealth at Baptist Health since 2015 to enable our acute care providers particularly those caring for stroke and pediatric patients to bring their expertise into community-based emergency departments in northeast Florida and southeast Georgia. The pandemic helped convert the use of telehealth from nice to have to need to have to maintain physical and mental health for many patients.

In March and April 2020, Baptist Health and our medical groups quickly coordinated telehealth visits at nearly 100 physician practices to safely continue caring for patients via virtual doctor visits. We continue to offer virtual visits at most physician offices, including Baptist Behavioral Health, where providers are still seeing a high percentage of patients via telehealth visits currently above 80%. We also introduced HealthPlace On Demand powered by Telescope Health last year. The HealthPlace On Demand app connects patients 24/7 via video chat to trusted, board-certified emergency and family physicians.

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we needed a new model of enhanced home support to prevent unnecessary emergency room visits and hospitalizations at our five hospitals. The solution was to replicate a certain level of care that COVID-19 patients would receive in the hospital but safely administer it in the home setting.

In a matter of a few weeks, Mary Leen, vice president of clinical operations, spearheaded the development of an enhanced home support model featuring in-home assessments by home health nurses and virtual visits by Baptist Health primary care physicians. Taking care of COVID-19 patients who needed oxygen therapy in their homes was something we had never done before, so we stood up a clinical transformation workgroup made up of team members from across the health system and developed clinical guidelines for treating these patients in the home setting.

The results speak for themselves. Only 10% of the more than 1,800 COVID-19-positive patients treated through Baptist Healths enhanced home support model since March 2020 have been admitted to a hospital.

Like health systems across the country, we have relied on the support of travel nurses throughout the course of the pandemic to supplement our staffing needs. But as the pandemic continues, we want to focus more on supporting our own nurses and team members. We have invested millions of dollars into increasing wages as just one way of emphasizing the value we place on the health care heroes within Baptist Health.

With all that has happened in the last two years, embracing flexibility and adaptability will remain key skills for us all.

We are leveraging predictive analytics to look at local, regional, national and international health care trends on a daily basis and analyze how COVID-19 numbers are rising and falling globally. Doing so helps us prepare for the trends to come. We did leverage predictive analytics prior to COVID-19, but mainly to look at regional health care trends in our market.

Due to COVID-19, we also are rethinking how we respond to crises. In the first and second surges, we responded with an incident command system designed for crises that have a start and end, similar to what we set up in the past with hurricanes and Ebola. But after witnessing the chronic, ever-changing nature of COVID-19, we have adapted our approach, shifting our focus to managing the surges. This allows us to be better prepared to handle disruptions as they come.

We know that our field will continue to be challenged by COVID-19, but this pandemic has taught us a valuable lesson: The future is not going to wait for us, and instead we have to be ready to embrace it.

Matt Zuino is executive vice president and chief operating officer at Baptist Health, based in Jacksonville, Florida. Baptist Health was featured in the AHA Living Learning Networks The Pandemic: A Time of Challenges and Champions. Dedicated to helping participants recover from the pandemic, the LLN rebuilds and reimagines the public health and health care sectors, using a variety of platforms, such as messages boards, podcasts and virtual learning sessions. Learn more and apply to join the LLN.

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Embracing Flexibility and Adaptability in the Face of COVID-19 | AHA News - American Hospital Association

Indiana woman almost dies from COVID-19, now urges others to vaccinate

Debbie Burk didn't get COVID vaccination so she got COVID-19 and was hospitalized. Now she is getting vaccinated and hopes others will too.

Kelly Wilkinson, Indianapolis Star

One of the best defenses for people at high risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 aside from vaccination has been treatment with a class of therapies known as monoclonal antibodies. But omicron proved resistant to most of these.

Now Eli Lilly & Co. has won emergency use approval for a new monoclonal antibody treatment that promises to be effective not just against omicron but a broad spectrum of coronavirus variants, company officials said.

Mark Williams, senior medical director for Lillys global COVID-19 team, said it's a powerful antibody that the company calls broadly neutralizing.

It seems to work against every known variant of interest or concern that we have tested it with, said Williams. We think its just whats needed at this time in terms of the omicron, another tool in the tool box.

For subscribers: Anderson woman refused the vaccine and almost died of COVID-19

For subscribers: 'It would take a recession' to cool Indiana's record-high home-buying market

Last month the Food and Drug Administration at least temporarilyrevoked emergency use authorization for two treatments, one from Eli Lilly and one from Regeneron, saying that they were not effective against omicron. The agency left the door open for bringing these treatments back should a new variant arise against which they are successful.

Lillys new second generation monoclonal antibody, bebtelovimab performed far better than its predecessors when tested against both the initial omicron variant and the Ba.2 subvariant, which is 1.5 times more transmissible than the already highly transmissible omicron variant.

Because this new monoclonal antibody is so potent, just a small dose can be administered through a temporary IV, taking as little as 30 seconds to infuse. Previous treatments could take more than an hour.

Infusion centers could start offering the antibody, which the government is distributing, as soon as this week for those who are eligible. The treatment is geared people with mild or moderate COVID-19 who have not been hospitalized but who are at high risk of developing severe disease.

Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.

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Lilly's new COVID-19 treatment that works against omicron receives emergency use approval - IndyStar

FILE Finished solid bronze Actor statuettes are displayed during the 25th Annual Casting of the Screen Actors Guild Awards at American Fine Arts Foundry, Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019, in Burbank, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

(The Hill) Yellowstone actor Forrie J. Smith will not attend the Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony later this month because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and the event requires that all attendees are fully inoculated.

Smith, in a video posted to Instagram this week, announced that he would not be in attendance at the awards ceremony, which is scheduled for Feb. 27.

All individuals at theScreen Actors Guild Awards must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and must have received a booster shot if eligible. Attendees will also be required to submit a negative coronavirus PCR test that was taken within 48 hours of arriving at the ceremony.

A rapid test will then be administered to all attendees on the day of the event.

Additionally, the organization is requiring that KN95 or FF94 masks be worn at all times during the event. Exceptions to the mandate include when people are participating in red carpet or media opportunities,are on camera in the showroom, or are eatingordrinking.

Smith, who is part of the Yellowstone cast nominated for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series, apologized for not being able to attend the event.

He said he has not received an initial COVID-19 vaccination series or a booster shot and appeared to mock the events mask mandate.

I mean no offense to anyone. Im not vaccinated, and its a requirement to be vaccinated to be at the Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony, he said.

The actor said he has not been vaccinated since he was a little kid, adding that he does not vaccinate his dogs or horses. He also said has never received and will never receive a flu shot.

Smith said he was looking forward to walking down the red carpet in my big black American hat and my Justin boots and representing my culture and heritage, but Im not gonna be able to do that, and I apologize to yall out there that are part of my culture and heritage.

I wont be representing us at the Screen Actors Guild Awards walking down the red carpet. But its no offense to anybody, anything. Its just my beliefs, he added.

I just dont believe in that stuff, he added, before saying that maybe next year he will walk the red carpet.

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Yellowstone actor wont attend awards ceremony over COVID-19 rules - KOIN.com

The Rangers put Patrik Nemeth on injured reserve Wednesday, after the veteran defenseman was sidelined for the five games leading up to their two-week recess and again in their first contest back against the Bruins on Tuesday.

Team policy prevents the Rangers from disclosing the reason, but it is believed that Nemeth is dealing with lingering effects from his bout with COVID-19 in late December.

Nemeth entered COVID protocol on Dec. 18, but the 30-year-old didnt miss a game due to a brief lull in the schedule for Christmas. Once he cleared COVID protocols, Nemeth admitted he had some cold-like symptoms the first two or three days before they dissipated.

After skating in the two games on the Rangers trip to Florida on Dec. 29 and 31, Nemeth sat out of the first two matchups of 2022 against the Lightning and Oilers before he was added to non-roster status on Jan. 5.

The non-roster status stretched over the next two games against the Golden Knights and Ducks. Nemeth then returned to the lineup in the Jan. 10 loss to the Kings and skated in the next five games. Prior to the 3-2 shootout win over Los Angeles, head coach Gerard Gallant said there was a banged up defenseman, which he later confirmed was Nemeth after the Swede was scratched.

Upon return from the All-Star break, Nemeth was a full participant in the practices leading up to the Boston game.

Nemeth, who signed a three-year, $7.5 million deal with the Rangers as a free agent this past offseason, has appeared in 38 games so far as part of the third pair. He has posted two assists while averaging over 17 minutes per game.

Tapping into their protective instincts on Tuesday against the Bruins, the Rangers have set the tone for how they will answer opponents who dare come near goalie Igor Shesterkin.

In the second period of the Rangers eventual 2-1 shootout win, Bruins star David Pastrnak embellished a shove fromdefenseman Adam Foxand knocked into Shesterkin, who was playing the puck. Pastrnak hadnt even gotten to the Bruins bench to change before Ryan Reaves upended the top-line forward.

Craig Smith was the next Bruin who came too close to Shesterkin, after the winger barreled into the Vezina Trophy favorite on a drive to the net. Without hesitation, Alexis Lafreniere swooped in and went after Smith.

Were obviously very confident in both goalies we have, defenseman Ryan Lindgren said. Theyve both played very well this year. Igor, hes had some games where hes definitely stole it for us. Especially early on in the year. Hes just been so good throughout the year. Were so confident in him and [Alexandar Georgiev].

The way that Igor plays the puck, especially as a defenseman, youre very confident. It helps you out a lot. When pucks get dumped in and hes out there and hes making plays, some of the saves he makes are incredible obviously.

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Rangers' Patrik Nemeth goes on injured reserve with lingering effects of COVID-19 - New York Post

As COVID-19 gains a foothold in the Pacific, countries, WHO and partners work together to save lives - World  ReliefWeb

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As COVID-19 gains a foothold in the Pacific, countries, WHO and partners work together to save lives - World - ReliefWeb

A girl making her way to school in Abuja, Nigeria, last year.Credit...Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

A new study of underreported coronavirus variants is serving as a reminder that early detection and frequent genomic sequencing are among the most effective arrows in the quiver of public health officials.

But that is precisely what is not happening in many countries, putting their own populations as well as the rest of the world at greater risk.

Researchers in the United States and Nigeria examined a variant of interest, Eta, that circulated in Nigeria in early 2021, as well as a rare Delta sublineage in the region that was different from the Delta variant that circulated in the rest of the world.

Eta may have warranted designation as a variant of concern had its growth potential been recognized earlier, wrote the researchers from Northwestern Universitys Feinberg School of Medicine and the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. Their research was published this month in Nature Communications.

We were just lucky that this variant did not spread globally, said Dr. Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who leads a Nigerian government committee on Covid-19.

Judd Hultquist, a co-author of the report and the associate director of the Center for Pathogen Genomics and Microbial Evolution at Northwestern, said tracking of variants was incredibly uneven across the world.

Less than 1 percent of sequences are from the continent of Africa, and less than 3 percent are coming from South America, he said in an interview.

On Thursday, the World Health Organizations Africa director, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, encouraged wider use of genomic-sequencing technology in Africa to help speed up the detection of new variants. The technology is available only in a few of the regions middle-income countries, like South Africa and Botswana.

Researchers from around the world use GISAID, the online global repository of coronavirus sequences, to share new genomes and scan for mutations in its hundreds of thousands of viral genetic sequences.

Nigeria, with a population of 220 million people, is the worlds seventh most populous country and the largest Black-majority nation. It is also one of the least vaccinated: Less than 3 percent of its population is fully inoculated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford.

The World Health Organization labeled Eta a variant of interest, meaning it was worth studying but not as dangerous as a variant of concern. But after Eta displaced the Alpha variant in Nigeria and the surrounding region early last year, the researchers found that it went largely unnoticed while Alpha remained the focus of much of the world.

Eta had all the characteristics of a variant of concern, and it was able to outcompete the Alpha variant in the region before the arrival of Delta, Dr. Hultquist said.

And after Etas rise and fall, a rare Delta sublineage (AY.36) appeared in the region that was different from the Delta variant that circulated in most of the world.

The study emphasizes the critical need to improve surveillance and monitoring coronavirus infections to ensure early detection of new variants in Nigeria and the West Africa region, said Dr. Moses Adewumi of the University of Ibadan, one of the collaborators.

Even now, the researchers said, there are only just over 1,400 coronavirus sequences from Nigeria available in public repositories. The United States, by comparison, is sequencing tens of thousands of specimens each week.

The variants that were scrutinized by researchers are no longer a threat. But at the time variants of Alpha and Eta produced the highest peak of new infections; and the rare Delta lineage caused the second peak, according to Dr. Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo of Northwestern, one of the studys authors. The peaks brought the highest death rates of the pandemic, he said.

Africa is not fully utilizing available lab resources, Dr. Tomori said. He said the continents labs had sequenced 70,000 viral genomes by the end of 2021.

There is inadequate sequencing going on in Africa, because many African governments have not appreciated the usefulness of such facilities in providing data for better control of epidemics, he said. Also, there is a lack of collaboration among African researchers, some of whom prefer to work with their past colonial colleagues.

One lesson is clear: Its never too early to try to tell what the impact of a variant might be. Researchers are already keeping a close eye on a new Omicron sub-variant, BA.2.

Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, who helped identify the Beta and Omicron variants, said: The bigger message here is that were not seeing everything, and that some of these places may not have control of Covid-19.

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Covid Updates: Neighboring Sheriffs Office Makes Recruitment Pitch to L.A.s Unvaccinated Deputies - The New York Times

January was quite the month for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. One moment it was a life in exile with Arsenal, the next a fresh start with Barcelona. I am living a dream, said Aubameyang after his chaotic deadline day yielded a grand personal prize.

Between the wilderness at Arsenal and a late escape to La Liga, though, came a spell of uncertainty.

Aubameyang had been due to spend much of January at the Africa Cup of Nations as captain of Gabon, only to test positive for COVID-19 upon his arrival in Cameroon. A subsequent examination, carried out by the Confederation of African Footballs (CAF) medical commission, then discovered cardiac lesions during routine scans.

CAF chose not to take any risks and ruled Aubameyang, along with team-mates Axel Meye and Mario Lemina, out of their group game with Ghana on January 14. All three had tested positive for COVID-19 and all three, CAF said, had been found to have the same heart problem.

Meye was soon cleared to return and feature for Gabon in their games against Morocco and Burkina Faso but Aubameyang and Lemina were sent back to their clubs before the qualifying group had even reached its conclusion.

Then, mercifully, came the reassurance. I came back to London to do some additional checks, and Im very happy to say that my heart is absolutely fine and Im completely healthy! wrote Aubameyang on Instagram.

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Why football continues to tread carefully with COVID-19 and its dangers to the heart - The Athletic

The Covid-19 pandemic can be the last major pandemic humanity ever has to face--if we take action now to prepare for the next pathogen threat. That message comes from Bill Gates, who has laid out his recommendations for stopping the next deadly virus in his new book How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, to be published on May 3.

"We don't have to do this again," Gates writes in a blog post announcing the book. Thatmay sound like an ambitious claim, but he has been researching this stuff for a long time. In fact, in 2015, he warnedof the dangers an airborne virus could pose. Even at the time, he said humanity had the means to prevent a deadly pandemic from spreading--if we would preparefor it in the same way that we currently preparefor war, with standing armies, ongoing training, and simulations--"germ games"--that resemble the war games frequently held today.

What are his current recommendations for containing the next pandemic before it has a chance to spread? We'll have to wait for the book to get his detailed recommendations, but here are the three elements of his plan thathe describes in a brief video accompanying the blog post:

1. Improve healthsystems everywhere.

We need better healthsystems, particularlyin developing countries,Gates says. It's easy to see how this would help. At the time that the Omicron variant first appeared in South Africa, less than a quarter of its population was fully vaccinated, and very few people had received booster shots.

Some experts believe this low vaccination rate gave the virus much more opportunity to mutate into new forms. And while Omicron appears to be milder than earlier forms of Covid, it could have gone the other way. Better healthcare systems in developing nations would also mean more widespread testing, and less risk of people infecting others if they have the virus but don't know it.

2. Build a global pathogen surveillance system.

Early detection is the key to stopping the next deadly virus from spreading and becoming a pandemic, Gates explains. When the Ebola virus first emerged, there were no epidemiologists on tap to travel to the affected sites and study the pathogen. Case reports were delayed, inaccurate, and on paper, Gates said at the time.

Things are better now, but more improvement is needed. If we build worldwide pathogen surveillance capacity, he says, "no matter which country it shows up in, we can apply resources and understand what's going on very quickly."

3. Continue to innovate in detection, treatment, and prevention.

We need continuing innovation in three key areas: diagnostics (i.e. testing),therapeutics, and vaccines, Gates says. Innovation could mean thatvaccines, tests, and treatments are developed--and widely distributed--much faster than happened this time. "That will make it possible to make disastrous pandemics a thing of the past."

It may sound like an ambitious goal, but we're already partway there, he says. "The progress we've made over the last two years--including thehuge leaps forward we've made with vaccines and the knowledge we've gained about respiratory illnesses--has already set us on a path to success," Gate writes in his blog post.

Unlike in 2015, when Gates first proposed some of these measures, the world now knows how much damage a pandemic can cause in terms of lives lost, economic turmoil, and the disruption of whole societies. "Momentum is on our side," Gates concludes. "If we make the right choices and investments, we can make Covid-19 the last pandemic."

There's a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or idea. Often they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Interested in joining? You can learn morehere.) I've heard from many of them how this pandemic has severely disrupted their lives, just as it has mine, and most likely yours as well.

My father had me late in life, so here's something I've thought a lot about lately: He and his sisters lived through the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic as children. Their descendants have now lived through Covid-19. I don't know about you, but I don't want our children or grandchildren experiencing two years like the ones we've just had. If Gates is right and it is truly possible to make Covid-19 the last pandemic humanity has to face, I say we do whatever it takes.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Bill Gates Says Covid-19 Can Be the Last Pandemic in History If We Do These 3 Things - Inc.