This isn’t reassuring…
BBC: “The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern Ituri province a public health emergency of international concern. The agency added that the outbreak, with around 246 suspected cases and 80 deaths reported, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency. WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned there are currently ‘significant uncertainties to the true number of infected persons and geographic spread’ of the outbreak.”
Guardian: “The hantavirus outbreak, while unlikely to spark the next big pandemic, is shining a spotlight on the ways public health has deteriorated in the US: its ability to test for rare diseases, its expertise on outbreak prevention and response, its ability to battle misinformation and restore trust. ‘Assuming everything goes well in containing this outbreak, which I hope it does, the takeaway from that should not be “we’re fine,”‘ said Stephanie Psaki, former White House global health security coordinator. ‘We’re not ready for this type of threat.’ Many of the people at health agencies who plan for a quick response to outbreaks, and the systems supporting them, are gone now, Psaki noted. Yet ‘this is just one of many, many pathogens. These types of things will continue happening.’ And, she pointed out, there’s a 50/50 chance of another pandemic at least as bad as Covid in the next 25 years, according to scientific models.”
DEVELOPING…