Many posts have discussed COVID and pandemic preparedness.
An international effort is underway to contain an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda that has infected hundreds of people and caused dozens of suspected deaths, as the United States looks to relocate a “small number” of its citizens affected.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern.” The latest outbreak does not yet meet the criteria of a “pandemic emergency,” but WHO warned the high positivity rate and increasing number of cases and deaths across health zones point toward “a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported.”
More than 100 suspected deaths have been linked to the outbreak in the DRC, the director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Jean Kaseya, told CNN on Monday.
Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization.
A little more than a year ago, Emily Mullin reported at Wired:
A research facility within the US National Institutes of Health that is tasked with studying Ebola and other deadly infectious diseases has been instructed by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to stop research activities.
According to an email viewed by WIRED, the Integrated Research Facility in Frederick, Maryland, was told to stop all experimental work by April 29 at 5 pm. The facility is part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is located at the US Army base Fort Detrick. It conducts research on the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases that are deemed “high consequence”—those that pose significant risks to public health. It has 168 employees, including federal workers and contractors.