The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a glitch in its bird flu test hasn’t harmed the agency’s outbreak response. But it has ignited scrutiny of its go-it-alone approach in testing for emerging pathogens.
Many respiratory virus illnesses peak during the winter due to environmental conditions and human behaviors. COVID-19 has peaks in the winter and also at other times of the year, including the summer. This is driven in part by new variants and decreasing immunity from previous infections and vaccinations.
CDC's respiratory virus guidance has steps you can take to protect yourself and others from COVID-19 this summer.
...researchers found that the lowest rates of long COVID (3.5%) were in people who were vaccinated against COVID-19. Of the people who were unvaccinated, 7.8% developed long COVID.
July 24 (Reuters) - The World Bank's fund to help developing countries better prepare for pandemics has raised $667 million from the United States and $54 million from Germany, moving it closer towards its goal of reaching at least $2 billion in new funding.
The fund, set up in September 2022, is expected to award a second round of funding later this year. It is one of the several global initiatives that was set up to help prevent a COVID-19 rerun. ...
In research recently published in Nature Medicine, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Jianxi Gao, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science, and his team measured the resilience and adaptability of our health care system to disruptions caused by COVID-19. Resilience is a system's ability to absorb and recover from disruptions. Adaptability is a system's ability to learn from previous disturbances where there are recurrent disruptions. ...
"We found that our health care systems in the United States exhibit substantial adaptability, but only a moderate level of resilience," said Gao. "Our findings can inform the design of resilient and sustainable health care systems to prepare for future disruptions, whether they are caused by pandemics, climate change, conflicts, or anything else."
