Category: Vaccine

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Alarming 45-fold rise in measles in Europe – WHO – BBC.com

January 24, 2024

23 January 2024

Image source, Getty Images

There was an "alarming" nearly 45-fold increase in measles cases in Europe last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

Health chiefs are warning that cases are still rising and "urgent measures" are needed to prevent further spread.

Some 42,200 people were infected in 2023, compared to 941 during the whole of 2022.

The WHO believes this is a result of fewer children being vaccinated against the disease during the Covid pandemic.

In the UK, health officials said last week that an outbreak of highly contagious measles in the West Midlands could spread rapidly to other towns and cities with low vaccination rates.

More than 3.4 million children under the age of 16 are unprotected and at risk of becoming ill from the disease, according to NHS England.

Millions of parents and carers are being contacted and urged to make an appointment to ensure their children are fully vaccinated against measles. The measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is given in two doses - the first around the age of one and the second when a child is about three years and four months old.

The vaccine is very effective at protecting against measles, but only 85% of children starting primary school in the UK have had both jabs.

Speaking about the situation in Europe, Dr Hans Kluge, regional director at the WHO, said: "We have seen, in the region, not only a 30-fold increase in measles cases, but also nearly 21,000 hospitalisations and five measles-related deaths. This is concerning.

"Vaccination is the only way to protect children from this potentially dangerous disease."

Measles can be a serious illness at any age. It often starts with a high fever and a rash, which normally clears up within 10 days - but complications can include pneumonia, meningitis, blindness and seizures.

Babies who are too young to have been given their first dose of vaccine, pregnant women and those who have weakened immune systems are most at risk. During pregnancy, measles can lead to stillbirth, miscarriage and a baby being born with a low birth weight.

All countries in the European region are being asked to detect and respond to measles outbreaks quickly, alongside giving vaccines to more people.

The WHO said measles had affected all age groups last year - young and old alike.

Overall, two in five cases were in children aged 1-4, and one in five cases were in adults aged 20 and above.

Between January and October 2023, 20,918 people across Europe were admitted to hospital with measles. In two countries, five measles-related deaths were also reported.

Vaccination rates for the first dose of the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, slipped from 96% in 2019 to 93% in 2022 across Europe. Uptake of the second dose fell from 92% to 91% over the same period.

That seemingly small drop in vaccination take-up means more than 1.8 million children in Europe missed a measles vaccination during those two years.

"The Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted immunisation system performance in this period, resulting in an accumulation of un-[vaccinated] and under-vaccinated children," the WHO reported.

With international travel booming once again, and social-distancing measures removed, the risk of measles spreading across borders and within communities is much greater - especially within under-vaccinated populations, it said.

Even countries that have achieved measles elimination status are at risk of large outbreaks, the WHO warned.

It says that 95% of children need to be vaccinated with two doses against measles in all communities to prevent the spread of the highly-contagious disease.

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Alarming 45-fold rise in measles in Europe - WHO - BBC.com

Novavax’s Updated COVID-19 Vaccine Authorized in the United Kingdom – Jan 24, 2024 – Novavax Investor Relations

January 24, 2024

GAITHERSBURG, Md., January 24, 2024 Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX), a global company advancing protein-based vaccines with its Matrix-M adjuvant, today announced that the United Kingdoms (U.K.) Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has granted marketing authorizationi for Nuvaxovid XBB.1.5 dispersion for injection, COVID-19 Vaccine (recombinant, adjuvanted) (NVX-CoV2601) for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 in individuals aged 12 and older.

Todays MHRA authorization is recognition of the role our vaccine can have in protecting the British public against COVID-19 this year, said John C. Jacobs, President and Chief Executive Officer, Novavax. We are in ongoing conversations with additional U.K. partners to identify potential opportunities to offer our protein-based non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to all eligible individuals who want one. We believe this is critical to supporting long-term, broad uptake of a seasonal COVID-19 vaccine in the U.K.

Authorization was based on non-clinical data showing that Novavaxs updated COVID-19 vaccine induced functional immune responses for XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16 and XBB.2.3 variants. Additional non-clinical data demonstrated that Novavaxs vaccine induced neutralizing antibody responses to subvariants JN.1, BA.2.86, EG.5.1, FL.1.5.1 and XBB.1.16.6 as well as CD4+ polyfunctional cellular (T-cell) responses against EG.5.1 and XBB.1.16.6. These data indicate Novavaxs vaccine can stimulate both arms of the immune system and induce a broad response against circulating variants.1,2

In clinical trials, the most common adverse reactions associated with Novavax's prototype COVID-19 vaccine (NVX-CoV2373) included headache, nausea or vomiting, muscle pain, joint pain, injection site tenderness, injection site pain, fatigue and malaise.

i. Additional efficacy and safety data are being collected.

This medicine is subject to additional monitoring. This will allow quick identification of new safety information. If you are concerned about an adverse event, it should be reported on a Yellow Card. Reporting forms and information can be found at https://coronavirus-yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/ or search for MHRA Yellow Card in the Google Play or Apple App Store. When reporting please include the vaccine brand and batch/Lot number if available.

Trade Name in the U.S.

The trade name Nuvaxovid has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Important Safety Information: U.K.

For more information on Nuvaxovid, including the Summary of Product Characteristics with Package Leaflet, adverse event reporting instructions, or to request additional information, please visit the following websites:

About Nuvaxovid XBB.1.5 dispersion for injection, COVID-19 Vaccine (recombinant, adjuvanted) (NVX-CoV2601)

NVX-CoV2601 is an updated version of Novavaxs prototype COVID-19 vaccine (NVX-CoV2373) formulated to target the Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant. It is a protein-based vaccine made by creating copies of the surface spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19. With Novavax's unique recombinant nanoparticle technology, the non-infectious spike protein serves as the antigen that primes the immune system to recognize the virus, while Novavaxs Matrix-M adjuvant enhances and broadens the immune response. The vaccine is packaged as a ready-to-use liquid formulation and is stored at 2 to 8C, enabling the use of existing vaccine supply and cold chain channels.

About Matrix-M Adjuvant

When added to vaccines, Novavax's patented saponin-based Matrix-M adjuvant enhances the immune system response, making it broader and more durable. The Matrix-M adjuvant stimulates the entry of antigen-presenting cells at the injection site and enhances antigen presentation in local lymph nodes.

About Novavax

Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX) promotes improved health by discovering, developing and commercializing innovative vaccines to help protect against serious infectious diseases. Novavax, a global company based in Gaithersburg, Md., U.S., offers a differentiated vaccine platform that combines a recombinant protein approach, innovative nanoparticle technology and Novavax's patented Matrix-M adjuvant to enhance the immune response. Focused on the worlds most urgent health challenges, Novavax is currently evaluating vaccines for COVID-19, influenza and COVID-19 and influenza combined. Please visit novavax.com and LinkedIn for more information.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements herein relating to the future of Novavax, its operating plans and prospects, the scope, timing and outcome of future regulatory filings and actions, including the availability of its updated XBB version of its Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted (2023-2024 Formula) (NVX-CoV2601) and the timing of delivery and distribution of its vaccine are forward-looking statements. Novavax cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, challenges satisfying, alone or together with partners, various safety, efficacy, and product characterisation requirements, including those related to process qualification and assay validation, necessary to satisfy applicable regulatory authorities; difficulty obtaining scarce raw materials and supplies; resource constraints, including human capital and manufacturing capacity, on the ability of Novavax to pursue planned regulatory pathways; challenges or delays in obtaining regulatory authorisation for its product candidates, including its updated XBB version of its COVID-19 vaccine in time for the fall 2023 vaccination season or for future COVID-19 variant strain changes; challenges or delays in clinical trials; manufacturing, distribution or export delays or challenges; Novavaxs exclusive dependence on Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. for co-formulation and filling and the impact of any delays or disruptions in their operations on the delivery of customer orders; challenges in obtaining commercial adoption of our updated protein-based non-mRNA XBB COVID-19 vaccine, NVX-CoV2373 or any COVID-19 variant strain-containing formulation; challenges meeting contractual requirements under agreements with multiple commercial, governmental, and other entities; and those other risk factors identified in the "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" sections of Novavax's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this press release. You are encouraged to read our filings with the SEC, available at http://www.sec.gov and http://www.novavax.com, for a discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements in this press release speak only as of the date of this document, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of the statements. Our business is subject to substantial risks and uncertainties, including those referenced above. Investors, potential investors, and others should give careful consideration to these risks and uncertainties.

Contacts:

Investors Erika Schultz 240-268-2022 [emailprotected]

Media Ali Chartan 240-720-7804 [emailprotected]

References:

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Novavax's Updated COVID-19 Vaccine Authorized in the United Kingdom - Jan 24, 2024 - Novavax Investor Relations

‘This is urgent’: the UK is scrambling to stem an alarming tide of measles – The Guardian

January 24, 2024

In September 2017, Britain was basking in the glory of a public health success story. No indigenous cases of measles had been recorded for three years. Decades after a sham study threatened to permanently undermine trust in the MMR jab, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella, the World Health Organization declared the disease had been eliminated for the first time in the UK.

Dr Mary Ramsay, then head of immunisation at Public Health England (PHE), expressed delight. This is a huge achievement and a testament to all the hard work by our health professionals in the NHS to ensure that all children and adults are fully protected with two doses of the MMR vaccine.

The WHO accolade came with a warning shot, however. We cannot become complacent, said Zsuzsanna Jakab, then WHO regional director for Europe. Outbreaks continue to cause unnecessary suffering and loss of life. Routine immunisation coverage is decreasing.

Less than two years later, the UK had been stripped of its measles-free status.

Today, the country is in the midst of a measles emergency. Public health officials are scrambling to stem an alarming tide of infection. And the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which replaced PHE during the Covid pandemic, has been forced to declare a national incident, signalling a major public health risk from one of the worlds most contagious viruses.

Hundreds of children have been sickened by measles in recent weeks. Officials fear a growing outbreak in the West Midlands could spread to other towns and cities unless urgent action is taken to boost vaccination uptake.

A staggering 3.4 million under-16s are at risk of getting the virus, officials believe, and letters are being sent to parents of unvaccinated children. GPs are setting up extra clinics and vaccine buses are targeting communities with low vaccination rates.

The unfolding crisis has alarmed the UKs top health officials.

Were at a point where theres a very large susceptible population of children, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told the Guardian in an interview this week. To keep measles at bay, we need to have over 95% of children vaccinated. The NHS figures suggest that were at about 85%.

Data released by the UKHSA showed there have been 216 confirmed measles cases and 103 probable cases in the West Midlands since 1 October last year. Four-fifths (80%) were found in Birmingham, while 10% were identified in Coventry. Most were in children aged under 10.

Now that its got started, with a virus that is so infectious its much more infectious than Covid was then if there are people who are unvaccinated, it can spread like wildfire, said Pollard. The reason why thats so worrying is that it then finds individuals who rather than just getting a horrible illness, will actually get serious complications or die from it.

In some people, measles can affect the lungs and brain and cause pneumonia, meningitis, blindness and seizures. Pollard said: There are some risk groups: people whose immune system doesnt work well, children on cancer treatments for example. Younger children are more at risk than older children from severe complications. But there will also be some completely healthy children who can get very severe illness or even die from this virus.

Its extremely worrying to be in this situation where the spark of this fire has started, we dont quite know where it will end, but we could stop it if we got vaccines out there to protect children.

So how did Britain go from eliminating measles to the brink of a measles catastrophe? Why have MMR vaccination rates fallen? And how can the country get out of this mess?

Experts say a combination of factors is likely explain the fall in vaccination rates and the measles crisis now engulfing Britain.

The rise in cases is partly a legacy of the pandemic, says Prof Stuart Neil, head of the department of infectious diseases at Kings College London. Vaccinations against many diseases, including measles, were neglected as people focused on Covid. Vaccine uptake has fallen across the board over the pandemic partly because of hesitancy to go to doctors during it, he said.

Another challenge is that the children who missed their first jabs between 2020 and 2022 are now older than the age group typically seen routinely at GP surgeries for vaccination programmes. In the UK, children are offered two MMR doses first at age one, then at three years and four months. But if your child was born during the pandemic, they may have been missed and need to catch up.

It is never too late to get vaccinated, said Dr Doug Brown, chief executive of the British Society for Immunology. We encourage parents to ensure their children are up to date with their MMR vaccines and catch up on any missed ones as soon as possible.

Pollard said there had been a gradual decline in MMR coverage for years before the pandemic, which had cumulatively increased the threat of a full-blown measles crisis.

In one year thats manageable but successively over years you build up this increasing pool that allows the virus to transmit, he said. If you think about the accumulation of cohorts of children over several years, each year that you have low coverage, theres more and more children added to this pool of susceptible people, which means that when the virus does arrive, you can have these explosive outbreaks.

Falling vaccination rates and the demise of Britains measles-free status also stems from people not knowing or forgetting about the risks of measles. Due to the success of the UK immunisation programme, many parents will have no first-hand experience of measles, said Dr David Elliman, a paediatrician at Londons Great Ormond Street hospital. It would be a great tragedy if we have to learn from the sad deaths of children, before the disease is taken seriously.

Bogus claims made in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield about the MMR vaccine still have an impact, says Prof Helen Bedford, professor of childrens health at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. Not because the false claims still hold weight with the public, but because children not vaccinated due to the scare are now adults and may be helping the virus to spread.

Over 25 years ago, MMR vaccine uptake fell because of highly publicised but subsequently discredited research suggesting a link with autism, said Bedford. Unsurprisingly, given the intense media coverage at the time, many parents preferred not to have their children vaccinated. Those children are now young adults.

Over the years, the number of unvaccinated people has accumulated in the population, enabling measles to take hold and spread quickly within communities.

Most experts agree that misinformation about the MMR jab is very unlikely to play a significant role in declining vaccination rates. It is too easy to blame anti-vaccine sentiment for the measles outbreaks, said Bedford. Although some mistrust of vaccines may play a small part, research shows that parental vaccine confidence remains high, she added.

Asking questions about vaccination is to be encouraged, but we need trained staff to do this, and the NHS and general practice are under significant pressures, with cuts to funding and staffing.

Pollard believes families struggling to access vaccination programmes is a much bigger factor than misinformation. We know the greatest pockets of low coverage are in the parts of the country where families find it hardest to access vaccination services, he said.

Nationally, strategies promised by the NHS and government to boost vaccination rates urgently need to be enacted, says Dr Ronny Cheung of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

NHS England recently published its vaccination strategy, which focused on addressing challenges around access and included proposals to provide flexible and convenient vaccination services. This is an extremely welcome development but we are concerned that implementation plans for this strategy are not nearly as ambitious as we need them to be, said Cheung. The current aim is full implementation by 2025-26.

Two years seems an unacceptably long wait. Were already arriving late to this work and are feeling the effects of low uptake, particularly in the MMR vaccine. This is urgent we must get to work straight away.

Pollard points out that the UK is not unique when it comes to rising cases of measles. Seven years after the WHO warned the then measles-free UK against complacency, this week it warned of a 30-fold rise in cases across Europe.

More than 30,000 cases were reported by 40 of the regions 53 member states between January and October last year, compared with 941 cases in the whole of 2022. Two in five cases were in children aged one to four, while one in five were among people aged 20 and over.

There are measles outbreaks happening all over the world, said Pollard. This is a worrying moment globally.

The only way out? Increase vaccination rates by encouraging parents to get their children jabbed against measles, experts say. The virus is spreading today so we need to be vaccinating children today, says Pollard. There isnt any time to wait. This is urgent and tomorrow may be too late.

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'This is urgent': the UK is scrambling to stem an alarming tide of measles - The Guardian

Why diphtheria is making a comeback : Goats and Soda – NPR

January 24, 2024

The potentially fatal disease diphtheria is caused by bacteria the club-shaped, Gram-positive, Corynebacterium diphtheriae bacilli shown in this microscope photo. CDC via AP hide caption

The potentially fatal disease diphtheria is caused by bacteria the club-shaped, Gram-positive, Corynebacterium diphtheriae bacilli shown in this microscope photo.

It had been over 30 years since the last case of diphtheria was seen in Guinea. So when patients began showing up six months ago with what looked like flu symptoms fever, cough and sore throat doctors weren't alarmed. Until the children started dying.

That's when they realized that this longtime scourge, long quashed by vaccination, was back.

As of December 2023, there have been around 25,000 cases of diphtheria in West Africa and 800 deaths. In Guinea, the cases were clustered in Siguiri, a rural prefecture in the country's northeast, and early data showed that 90% occurred in children under the age of 5.

Diphtheria is a highly contagious bacterial infection spread through direct contact with infected sores or ulcers but primarily through breathing in respiratory droplets. The bacteria then releases toxins, causing inflammation that blocks the airways; a thick mucus-like substance (called a "pseudomembrane") can form at the back of the throat.

"This can kill by suffocating the patient," says Adlard Shyaka, medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Guinea. "But also the toxin moves through the body and can damage the heart, the kidneys, the nervous system." Such damage via suffocation, myocarditis, kidney failure and nerve malfunctioning means diphtheria is fatal in up to 50% of cases without treatment.

The disease, which was a global scourge for much of the 20th century, is also almost entirely preventable through vaccination. After the diphtheria inoculation was included on the World Health Organization's essential vaccine list in the 1970s, cases decreased dramatically worldwide. "Now, it's an almost forgotten disease," says Shyaka.

But that doesn't mean this outbreak is surprising, according to Ankur Mutreja, a global health specialist with the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease. "Diphtheria is and has always been a disease of poverty," he emphasizes, with social unrest and poor vaccination coverage explaining most outbreaks nowadays. "It's not just the West Africa outbreak but numerous other [recent] outbreaks after the earthquake in Haiti, after war in Syria, in Bangladesh when the Rohingyas were displaced in 2017," Mutreja says.

Guinea was particularly vulnerable because of its low diphtheria vaccination rate only 47% in 2022, with the hardest-hit Siguiri prefecture having even lower coverage at 36%. COVID-19 disrupted routine vaccination campaigns in West Africa and was associated with an uptick in vaccine mistrust, Mutreja says. But for diphtheria and other preventable childhood illnesses, the immunization problem predated the pandemic due to supply chain difficulties, insufficient funding, and complacency, among other reasons, leaving the region vulnerable to a cluster of cases swelling into an outbreak.

In Guinea, Doctors Without Borders says its staff has supported local health workers in addressing diphtheria. Together, they've reduced mortality at Siguiri's Center for the Treatment of Epidemics from 38% to 5% over the past few months. Patients with mild symptoms are sent home with antibiotics, while more severe cases are admitted to the hospital and treated with an antitoxin, as appropriate.

However, shortages of both vaccines and antitoxins continue to hamper a full-scale response to the diphtheria outbreak, according to Louise Ivers, an infectious disease physician and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. Presently, only two or three companies make the antitoxin, and each batch of 1,500 doses takes about four weeks to prepare, harvested from horse blood. "Nobody wants to make it," says Ivers, because of how rarely this antitoxin is usually needed there were fewer than 9,000 cases globally in 2021 and how impoverished communities facing diphtheria tend to be. "That puts it into the category of low likelihood of commercial profit."

The only sure way this outbreak ends is through vaccination, suggests Ivers, who has firsthand experience responding to diphtheria in Haiti between 2003 and 2012. However, similar market dynamics may help explain the global shortage of diphtheria vaccines. "If we can catch back up with DPT [vaccines] and diphtheria boosters and get our communities highly vaccinated," she says, "then we can prevent outbreaks."

But the scarcity of vaccines means they've only been available for patients and their close contacts in Siguiri. As diphtheria continues to spread in Guinea, Mutreja worries about growing antibiotic resistance and the spread of new variants, which could render existing antitoxins and vaccines ineffective. In fact, resistance has already been increasing, decade over decade, for the past 122 years, as Mutreja described in a 2021 study in Nature Communications. "We mustn't take our eye off the ball with diphtheria. Otherwise, we risk it becoming a major global threat again, potentially in a modified, better-adapted form," he says.

While this present surge of diphtheria cases is indeed unprecedented for West Africa, it is really a symptom of larger issues in global health, including insufficient infectious disease surveillance, poor vaccination rates and scarcity of public health resources, suggests Shyaka. He's not only worried about Guinea's current diphtheria outbreak but also what other diseases are on the horizon, including meningitis, measles and whooping cough.

"The resurgence of diphtheria is an important indicator that we are far in the red zone of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable outbreaks."

Simar Bajaj is an American journalist who has previously written for The Atlantic, TIME, The Guardian, Washington Post and more. He is the recipient of the Foreign Press Association award for Science Story of the Year and the National Academies award for Excellence in Science Communications.

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Why diphtheria is making a comeback : Goats and Soda - NPR

Urgent health alert as ‘very infectious’ passenger arrives at Aussie airport – Yahoo News Australia

January 24, 2024

NSW Health issued an alert on Wednesday advising people to look out for signs and symptoms of measles after a confirmed case was found to be infectious while travelling through Sydney International Airport, landing in the ACT.

The adult infected with the "very contagious" airborne virus was returning from Asia which, like Europe, has been experiencing ongoing outbreaks.

Director of Communicable Diseases Branch for NSW Health, Dr Christine Selvey, has said it is important to look out for symptoms if you, or someone you know, were on this person's flight or visited the below locations at the specified times.

People may have been exposed to the virus in the following locations:

Air India flight AI 302 from Delhi to Sydney, arriving in Sydney on Saturday January 20 at 8.10am,

Sydney Airport Terminal 1 International Arrivals (including baggage claim and customs) and Bay 9, bus and coach bays, on the morning of January 20.

Murrays Bus Sydney to Canberra Express, departing Sydney International Airport around 10.30am on January 20. ACT Health is contacting individuals who travelled on this bus service.

Measles is a vaccine-preventable viral disease that is spread through the air when someone who is infectious coughs or sneezes. It is "highly contagious" and can cause "serious complications", according to NSW Health. It remains a common cause of death in children under 5 in some parts of the world.

Symptoms "may appear between 7 and 18 days after exposure" and can include:

"It's important for people to stay vigilant if theyve been exposed," Selvey said. "[And] this should be a reminder for everyone to check that they are protected against measles, which is very infectious.

"Anyone born during or after 1966 needs to ensure they have received two doses of measles vaccine, this is particularly important prior to overseas travel, as measles outbreaks are occurring in several regions of the world at the moment."

Story continues

The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is "safe and effective" against measles, NSW Health advises. It is included in the National Immunisation Program (NIP) for children between 12 and 18 months of age and is also free in NSW for anyone born during or after 1966 who hasnt already had two doses.

Children aged 6 to 12 months can have their first dose of the MMR vaccine earlier if they are travelling to areas considered high risk for measles after checking in with their GP. Those who are unsure of whether they have had two doses "should get a vaccine as additional doses are safe".

If you, or a loved one, is experiencing measles symptoms, or have questions about measles, please call your GP or Healthdirect on 1800 022 222.

Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.

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Urgent health alert as 'very infectious' passenger arrives at Aussie airport - Yahoo News Australia

Disease X: Wetin e be and enof preparation dey for di next pandemic? – BBC.com

January 24, 2024

Wia dis foto come from, Getty Images

For future, scientists suppose fit use "vaccine recipes" wey already dey ground to make new vaccines

24 January 2024, 09:04 WAT

Health industry leaders for di World Economic Forum for Davos, Switzerland, don dey tok on top di importance to plan for anoda outbreak of global pandemic, wetin dem call "Disease X".

Di World Health Organization (WHO) don already warn before say di preparation dey important to take avoid di kain kasala wey di Covid 19 pandemic bin cause.

Di pandemic bin ova take medical systems wey bin no fit cope and di economy bin lose trillions of dollars.

Na hypothetical term wey WHO adopt to refer to some currently unknown infectious condition wey dey capable of causing epidemic or if e spread across multiple kontris or continents a pandemic.

Di term gan-gan bin start before di Covid 19 pandemic. E bin dey di list of priority diseases wey WHO bin bring come outside for 2018.

Di R&D Blueprint na global strategy wey sabi pipo bin collabo to put togeda. Na WHO bin arrange dis collaboration to make sure say preparation plans dey.

Di preparation na to make sure activation of research and development activities for epidemics happun sharparly.

Di reason behind am na to sharparly speed di reach of beta tests, vaccines and medicines wey fit save lives and avoid ogbonge kasala.

We don see some global disease outbreaks recently: Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), swine flu, Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), Ebola and Covid-19.

Health sabi pipo fear say di next major pandemic fit dey road dey come and fit worse pass wetin di Covid-19 do.

Wia dis foto come from, Getty Images

Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addresses world leaders for Davos

While Disease X no dey known say e de ground already, researchers, scientists, and sabi pipo hope say dem fit first am to come up with plan to fight di virus and prepare di health system if e turn pandemic.

For di World Economic Forum last week, one panel wey dem call Preparing for Disease X" wey WHO oga Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus bin lead tok about di "novel efforts wey dey needed to prepare healthcare systems for di multiple challenges ahead" if pandemic wey dey more deadly happun.

"Pipo dey wey say dis fit create panic. E dey beta to prepare for somtin wey fit happun becos e don happun for our history many times."

Di Covid 19 pandemic shock di world but as BBC Future tok for 2021, "but for years epidemiologists and oda sabi pipo don dey warn say we dey arrange for global pandemic."

Most of dose sabi pipo dey worry how di pandemics dey come from animals.

In fact 75% of new diseases wey dey come up dey called zoonotic, wey dem dey call diseases wey dey spread from animals reach human beings.

Covid 19 wey dey thought to come from pangolins wey dem dey sell for markets for China no dey different. But like Covid 19, zoonotic diseases don be like say e dey more at risk becos of wetin humans dey do.

Humans effect on climate, how dem dey enta wildlife house and global travel bin help di spread of animal borne diseases.

Dat one plus urbanisation, overpopulation and global trade, don make am di perfect setting for more pandemics to come, na wetin some sabi pipo believe.

Wia dis foto come from, PA

Di first Covid-19 vaccine bin dey delivered outside of a clinical trial setting for early December 2020

Dr Tedros tok for di World Economic Forum panel session say WHO don already start to dey implement measures to take prepare for anoda outbreak.

Dis include pandemic fund and "technology transfer hub" for South Africa wey go ginger di local production of vaccines and go help overcome issues of vaccine inequality throughout rich and poor kontris dem.

Di European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention recommend for 2022 report to strengthen existing systems instead of developing new ones for pandemic.

Dem also encourage make dem test any new systems before new pandemic start.

For June 2022, di WHO publish 10 proposals to ginger di continuous, systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of health-related data.

Di proposal say, "effective disease surveillance system dey important to find disease outbreaks sharp before dem spread, cost lives and become hard to control".

Di WHO also gree say di outbreaks no always dey come from identified source but "fit dey caused by pathogen wey neva dey sighted as somtin wey fit cause human diseases."

And most pipo dey hope for more advances for vaccine technology.

Plenti Covid 19 vaccines bin dey available all ova di world wit di year wey di outbreak start, wey be ogbonge moment for vaccine development sake of di speed wey dem make dem.

For future, scientists for dey able to quick arrange existing "vaccine recipes" to create new ones to help protect pipo.

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Disease X: Wetin e be and enof preparation dey for di next pandemic? - BBC.com

WHO issues measles warning as yearly cases in Europe rise more than 30-fold – The Guardian

January 24, 2024

MMR

UN agency calls for urgent vaccination efforts in region to prevent further spread of disease

The World Health Organization has issued an urgent warning over measles after an alarming 30-fold rise in cases across Europe.

The UN agency reported an enormous increase in numbers affected by the disease, which it said had accelerated in recent months. More than 30,000 cases were reported between January and October last year, compared with 941 cases in the whole of 2022 a more than 30-fold rise.

Two in five cases were in children between one and four years old. One in five were in people aged 20 and over. The trend is expected to worsen if people do not vaccinate their children against the disease, the WHO said.

The warning came just days after the UK declared a national incident amid a surge in cases, and launched a campaign to encourage parents to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine for their children.

Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, said: We have seen in the region not only a 30-fold increase in measles cases, but also nearly 21,000 hospitalisations and five measles-related deaths (reported in two countries).

Vaccination is the only way to protect children from this potentially dangerous disease. Urgent vaccination efforts are needed to halt transmission and prevent further spread.

Measles can lead to serious complications, lifelong disability and death. It can affect the lungs and brain and cause pneumonia, meningitis, blindness and seizures.

It is vital that all countries are prepared to rapidly detect and timely respond to measles outbreaks, which could endanger progress towards measles elimination, Kluge added.

The WHO said that falling vaccination rates were to blame, but also that more people were travelling abroad after Covid-19, increasing the risk of cross-border disease transmission and spread within communities.

The WHO Europe region comprises 53 countries, including Russia and some in central Asia, and 40 of those registered measles cases in 2023, it said. Russia and Kazakhstan fared the worst, with 10,000 cases each. In western Europe, Britain had the most cases, with 183.

Vaccination rates for the first dose of the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, slipped from 96% in 2019 to 93% in 2022 across Europe. Uptake of the second dose fell from 92% to 91% over the same period.

About 1.8 million infants in the WHOs Europe region were not vaccinated against measles between 2020 and 2022.

Vaccination rates against measles have been dropping around the world.

In 2022, 83% of children received a first measles vaccine during their first year of life, up from 81% coverage in 2021, but down from 86% before the pandemic, according to the WHO.

In 2021, there were an estimated 128,000 measles deaths worldwide, mostly among undervaccinated or unvaccinated children under five.

In the UK, the head of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned last week that the UK was on a trajectory for everything getting much worse in the spread of measles.

Prof Dame Jenny Harries said concerted action was needed to tackle the virus, and suggested most people were not against their child receiving the MMR jab, but that they needed more information to feel confident about their decision.

She added: What we are seeing at the moment with measles is that people have forgotten what a serious illness it is We have had very high vaccination rates, especially for young families, but they are low at the moment.

Figures released by the UKHSA showed there have been 216 confirmed measles cases and 103 probable cases in the West Midlands since 1 October.

Last week the UKHSA declared a national incident, which it said was an internal mechanism signalling the growing public health risk and enabling it to focus work in specific areas.

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WHO issues measles warning as yearly cases in Europe rise more than 30-fold - The Guardian

UK ‘unsafe’ from future pandemic threats, says Oxford Vaccine Group director – Yahoo News UK

January 24, 2024

The UK is really unsafe from future pandemic threats, a leading academic has told MPs.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director at the Oxford Vaccine Group, said he was concerned that not enough work was being done to research different viruses and bacteria which pose a threat.

Sir Andrew, whose team created the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab during the pandemic, said there had already been decades of work into coronavirus vaccines before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

But we are nowhere near the beginning of that starting gun for other microbes, he told the Science and Technology Committee.

We already knew a lot about coronaviruses and how to make vaccines for them there had been decades of research on coronavirus vaccines, Sir Andrew said.

One of the problems that we have is most of those other microbes which are out there which could threaten us, we havent done any of that work.

If it were to take 10 or 20 years to do the research and development we are nowhere near the beginning of that starting gun.

I think thats one of the areas I see the most concern about are we doing enough to look at the different families of viruses and bacteria which we already know are a threat but we dont have enough understanding about?

And that work needs years of investment to try and move it forwards.

He added: If you think about the defence against something unknown, which is clearly a really important way to think about pandemics, we dont know when theyre going to happen were pretty sure they will happen again, it might be in a year or it might be in 50 years.

Then you think about other types of defence we have such as military defence I think the Governments figures (are) about 45 billion investment in a year into defence we recognise that we need to do stuff for peacetime, even though hopefully we dont have to deploy that.

Story continues

But for pandemics were putting a fraction of that, tiny fraction of that into preparedness.

And so for me, we are really unsafe at this moment for future pandemic threats, because we just dont have that knowledge base that you need to even start the gun as we did in 2020 and even then it took 11 months to have a vaccine.

Meanwhile the former chairman of the UK Vaccine Taskforce launched a scathing attack on the Government, telling MPs that ministers had destroyed almost all the work of the group of experts.

Dr Clive Dix, former deputy chair of the taskforce who took over as chair in late 2020, said the UK had not built upon the successes of the taskforce, adding: The reason the taskforce was formed was because there was no infrastructure to work across industry, academia and government to actually pull together what we did What Ive seen since April 2021 is a complete demise of all the activities that made that thing work, literally gone.

What weve seen is a whole list of incompetent decisions being made.

He said the Government trumpeted the success of the taskforce and then destroyed almost everything that was going on.

Dr Dix, who is now chief executive at C4X Discovery, added: We have less resilience now because a lot of the manufacturers have walked away from the UK because of how badly they were treated in the tail end of the Vaccine Taskforce.

He highlighted how the vaccine deal with French firm Valneva was terminated before the clinical trial results were even published, saying that the decision nearly put the company on its knees.

Meanwhile Dr Dix criticised the UK for not having a strong relationship with British vaccine manufacturer GSK.

Asked whether the right lessons have been learned by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Government, he said: The lessons were learned by a small group of us that were running the Vaccine Taskforce, and it never really got transported into the current thinking of the Government.

Dr Dix also criticised ministers for putting key recommendations from the Vaccine Taskforce on the shelf.

The committee also heard from experts behind the Lighthouse Laboratories set up to aid diagnostics during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak, chief scientist at Health Scotland who was seconded to the Department of Health and Social Care to take on responsibilities for the Lighthouse Laboratories in 2020, said that putting the Rosalind Franklin Covid Laboratory in Leamington Spa up for sale was a missed opportunity.

Professor Chris Molloy, chief executive of Medicines Discovery Catapult, who was director of the UK Lighthouse Labs network during the pandemic, said the UK needed to keep potential lab space to fight the next war.

It comes as the UKHSA published its new Pathogen Genomics Strategy.

The five-year plan outlines how the UKHSA intends to integrate genomics into every aspect of infectious disease control.

UKHSA chief executive Dame Jenny Harries said: UK experts in the field of pathogen genomics made a vital contribution to the Covid-19 pandemic response and pathogen genomics remains central to the national and international effort to keep the public safe from many other types of infectious disease threats, from tuberculosis to mpox and avian influenza.

We know it will become even more important in the years to come, and our new strategy will ensure that UKHSA continues to be at the forefront of implementing this technology to keep our communities safe, save lives and protect livelihoods.

Excerpt from:

UK 'unsafe' from future pandemic threats, says Oxford Vaccine Group director - Yahoo News UK

Un-leveling the public health playing field – The Hill

January 24, 2024

1+1=2. The Earth is round. We went to the moon. Vaccines work.

You can argue about anything. But what’s the value of argument when all it accomplishes is elevating nonsense while simultaneously diminishing basic truths. There’s no value in “listening to both sides” when one side (no matter how well intentioned) is just plain wrong. It’s time to call it like it is. It’s time to un-level the public health playing field.

Such is the quandary over the current battle between the forces of misinformation (mistaken beliefs), disinformation (purposeful lies) and the science of public health. “Mis/Dis” has always been a thorn in the side of agencies like the Food and Drug Administration but exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic for a variety of reasons that are not useful to discuss in detail here. Why not useful? Because repeating a falsehood to debunk it only magnifies dangerous lies.

When it comes to Mis/Dis, the public health community is in an asymmetric warfare situation. In the real world, politics, polemics, tweets and threads trump advanced educational degrees, impressive academic affiliations and peer review. Nobels ring no bells with vaccine deniers.

It’s time we recognize that the best way to battle public health Mis/Dis is to focus on a few basic, truthful, urgent and understandable messages. Here’s one: Get a flu shot.

Why not lead with the importance of getting a COVID-19 booster? Yes, that’s urgent too but, let’s be honest, flying directly into the eye of the storm, the “COVID-Din,” isn’t the best strategy. Flu shots have been around for decades and though not perfect, they have been repeatedly shown to save lives. On the other hand, debating the antivaccine juggernaut that has developed delivers more to them than to us by helping them spread their messages of Mis/Disand suffers from the Law of Diminishing Returns. Want proof? The percentage of parents getting their children the basic vaccine schedule (i.e., the MMR — Measles, Mumps, Rubella vaccine) is on the decline. Basic childhood vaccination rates are lower today than before the pandemic and parents requesting exemptions for their kids are up. Be afraid. Be very afraid of the consequences.

So why focus on seasonal influenza? Because getting a flu shot will save lives — lots of them and particularly among high-risk groups (for example Americans age 65 and over, those with certain chronic medical conditions and communities of color). Sound familiar? It should. The public health community (regulators, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, school administrators, etc.) say it every year. Before the pandemic no one called it “fake news” or accused us of implanting microchips in flu shots. Not everyone followed our advice, (nobody ever does) but there weren’t potent political, religious, or social media communities actively committed to “fighting the flu shot.”    

But it’s more important than just protecting ourselves against the flu or about “just” saving 35,000 lives a year from this particular respiratory virus. It’s about reintroducing faith in the public health system and trust in vaccines. By actively promoting the annual flu shot, we’re focusing the message not to those most adamantly opposed to vaccines, but to the great “moveable middle.” In an asymmetric warfare situation, you want to fight where you can win.

As Sun Tsu reminds us, “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”

We are living on borrowed time. Previous COVID-19 shots aren’t highly effective against the current variants and new, effective booster rates are low. Childhood vaccination rates, a basic pillar of our public health strategy are declining, seasonal influenza kills, and the public health community is (at least presently) out gunned in the battle for public trust. To reverse this trend, we must first acknowledge it, recognize that trust is earned and, finally, realize there are no short cuts or magic bullets.

In the war against misinformation and disinformation, the public health community must fight the battles we can win in order to convince the great American moveable middle to move (slowly at first and then more swiftly and comprehensibly) to do the right thing. America. Roll up your sleeves and get a flu shot.

Peter Pitts, a former FDA associate commissioner, is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a visiting scholar at the New York University School of Medicine, Division of Medical Ethics.

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Un-leveling the public health playing field - The Hill

Ex-boss of Covid vaccine taskforce Clive Dix fights back tears as he tells MPs that ‘incompetent decisions’ ha – Daily Mail

January 24, 2024

By Emily Stearn, Health Reporter For Mailonline 15:02 24 Jan 2024, updated 17:09 24 Jan 2024

The former head of the Covid vaccine taskforce fought back tears as he accused ministers of making 'incompetent decisions' that have left the UK ill-prepared for another pandemic.

Dr Clive Dixsaid the Government 'destroyed almost everything that was going on' behind the scenes, despite lauding the scheme.

Choking back tears,Dr Dix, who replaced Kate Bingham in December 2020, stated the current complacency was 'really scary'.

The taskforcewas regarded as one of the major successes in the UK's response to the pandemic.

In a high stakes gamble, it bought millions of vaccines from pharmaceutical titans who weren't sure they worked yet. Such deals meant that Britain had access to the jabs as soon as they became available at the end of 2020.

Dr Dix, the CEO of drug discovery company, C4X Discovery, also told MPs today that manufacturers had walked away from the UK over how badly they were treated in the wake of the Covid jab rollout.

He was appearing before the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee as part of its inquiry into emerging diseases and learnings from Covid.

He said: 'The team of people, the steering group, were a group of very experienced academics, industrial people and people with good strategic vision and ability to make things happen.

'What I've seen since April 2021 is a complete demise of all the activities that made that thing work, literally gone.

'It's very sad, I actually get very passionate about it because what we have seen is a whole list of incompetent decisions being made and given the amount of effort we put in to see that just disappear.'

The Government believe 'mRNA vaccines are a golden bullet', he added.'There's a complacency there that really scares me now. Really scares me.'

After committee chair andToryMP Greg Clark claimed 'the Government correctly trumpeted the success of the vaccines', Dr Dix interjected: 'And then destroyed almost everything that was going on'.

The 250-strong taskforce was set-up in April 2020 but closed in October 2022 once the threat of the pandemic had died down.

UK Health Security Agency bosses stepped in to take control of vaccine supply.

Dame Kate who chaired the taskforce between May and December 2020 was given a damehood in recognition of the success of her program to acquire Covid vaccines, enabling the UK to become the first Western country to begin a jab programme in December 2020.

But Matt Hancock, then the health secretary, clashed with her over the rollout, including Dame Kate's refusal to back a plan to buy tens of millions of vaccines from India.

Dr Dix told MPs today: 'There was a set of very strong recommendations that myself and Kate Bingham co-authored. They didn't see the light of day.'

In leaked WhatsApp messages published by The Telegraph last March, theformer Health Secretary branded the Government's vaccine tsar Dame Kate Bingham 'totally unreliable' and 'wacky' after she said only the vulnerable needed to be vaccinated against Covid.

Dr Dix became deputy chairman of the vaccine taskforce in June 2020 and took on the role of interim chairman at the end of 2020, when Dame Kate stepped down.

Dr Dix told MPs today: 'There were activities already going on which were then just stopped and all I see now is "we've got a nice deal with Modernafor 10 years".

'That's just not good enough. That's really scary.'

In further criticism, he also argued the government's post-pandemic decision to focus on the mRNA-type Covid vaccines such as those made by Pfizer and Moderna meant the UK's current stocks 'aren't good enough'.

He said: 'It's just not good enough. The mRNA vaccines will only work if we know what the virus is and we know the antigen.

'Without that, they've got to start from scratch. They've probably got to make every antigen in the virus and see whether they do anything in humans.

'We have less resilience now because a lot of the manufacturers have walked away from the UK over how badly they were treated in the tailend of the vaccine taskforce.'

Pushed by MPs on why the Government reacted this way, Dr Dix argued there was 'no strategic leadership'.

He added: 'I'm not saying I'm the great strategic leader but the taskforce had it in it.

'The group knew what they were doing, where they were going and they put together a plan for resilience. All of that has been stopped.'

Dame Kate herself has also previously slammed the 'dumbarse' decisions that have threatened the country's ability to deal with a future virus outbreak.

During the same session, Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, who was also called to give evidence, slammed the Government for failing to learn from its Covid mistakes.

He told MPs: 'In many ways we're not in a very different position. The question really is anticipating what the next pandemic looks like.

'Of course the danger here is that we look back at the pandemic we've just had and only think about preparing for another one that is exactly the same.

'It is important to remember that, with the disease we were dealing with, we already knew a lot about coronavirus. We knew how to make vaccines for them.

'One of the problems that we have is for most of those other microbes which are out there and could threaten us, we haven't done that work.

'If it were to take 10 or 20 years to do the research and development, we are nowhere near even the beginning of that starting gun.'

Work to combat the threat of different families of viruses 'needs years of investment', he argued.

'If you think about the defense against something unknown which is clearly an important way to think about pandemics and then you think about the other types of defence we have, such as military defence, the world feels very unsafe today, he said.

'The Government has, I think, a 45billion investment per year into defence. We recognise that we need to do stuff.'

He added: 'But for pandemics we're putting a tiny fraction of that in preparedness.

'For me, we're really unsafe at this moment for future pandemic threats because we just don't have that knowledge base that you need to even start the gun as we did in 2020. Even then it took 11 months to have a vaccine.'

It comes asEngland's chief medical officer, Sir ProfessorChris Whittyalso argued in November that theGovernment would have also paid far more attention to the risks posed by Covid if it was a terrorist or geopolitical threat, rather than a natural threat.

Giving evidence to the Covid inquiry, he said there was an 'opportunity where we could probably have moved up a gear or two across Government' in early February 2020 if the system had been 'electrified' by the information it already had on Covid.

Agreeing with inquiry counsel Hugo Keith that there was a 'systemic failure', he argued that ifMI5 had warned that 100,000 people could die in a terrorist attack, the chance the system would have carried on as it did would have been 'quite small'.

'The system is surprisingly bad, in my view, at responding to threats of this kind which are not in the national security system', he said.

'Hard geopolitical threats are treated in a different way' to natural threats.'

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Ex-boss of Covid vaccine taskforce Clive Dix fights back tears as he tells MPs that 'incompetent decisions' ha - Daily Mail

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