Author: Claudinne Miller
A Crucial Early Warning System for Disease Outbreaks Is in Jeopardy
Wired Internal dissent within the mostly volunteer disease-news network known as ProMED—which alerted the world to the earliest cases of Covid, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and SARS—has broken out into the open and threatens to take down the internationally treasured network unless an external sponsor can be found. The struggle for the future of the low-tech site, which […]
Aug 8, 2023
Long-running ProMED email service for alerting world to disease outbreaks is in trouble
Science Money woes and a staff strike threaten dispatches valued by researchers and public health experts. The first news about the COVID-19 pandemic came not from a government or a scientific publication, but in an email from a disease-alert system called ProMED. This fateful missive in December 2019 about a few cases of a mysterious pneumonia […]
Aug 8, 2023
Covid or a summer cold? Without free tests, many won’t know.
Washington Post The United States is experiencing a bump in coronavirus transmission for the first time since the public health emergency ended in May, exposing the challenges of avoiding the virus when free testing is no longer widely accessible. The Biden administration stopped mailing test kits to households in June. The ones Americans stockpiled over […]
Aug 8, 2023
How the pandemic messed with our perception of time
Vox A neuroscientist explains how history, mood, and surprise can make life feel like a slog — or go by in a blur. It’s tempting to imagine memory as a videotape that stores and plays back the past just as it happened. But the workings of the mind are not so simple. Memory is more of a […]
Aug 8, 2023
E.R. Visits for Teenage Girls Surged During the Pandemic
New York Times The proportion of teen girls visiting emergency rooms in mental health crisis rose 22 percent in the pandemic’s second year, while the proportion of teen boys visiting declined. As the coronavirus pandemic dragged through its second year, an increasing number of American families were so desperate to get help for depressed or […]
Aug 1, 2023
Scientists develop breath test that rapidly detects COVID-19 virus
Washington University School of Medicine Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a breath test that quickly identifies those who are infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. The device requires only one or two breaths and provides results in less than a minute. The study is available online in the journal ACS […]
Aug 1, 2023
Cases of leprosy, ‘historically uncommon’ in US, surge in central Florida, CDC says
Fox News Florida The letter said that the number of reported leprosy cases in southeastern states has more than doubled in the last decade. Citing the National Hansen’s Disease Program, it said 159 new cases were reported in the U.S. in 2020, with Florida among the top reporting states. Central Florida accounted for 81% of […]
Aug 1, 2023
NIH Opens Phase II Clinical Trials on Four Potential Treatments for Long COVID
Inside Precision Medicine On Monday, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it opened phase II clinical trials on four potential treatments for long COVID spanning drugs, medical devices, biologics, and other therapies. The trials are a part of the NIH’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, a $1.5 billion research program launched in 2021 to […]
Aug 1, 2023
Launch of the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy
US Dept of State Today the State Department is officially launching a new Bureau of Global Heath Security and Diplomacy. The Bureau’s overarching mission is to fortify the global health security architecture to effectively prevent, detect, control, and respond to infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. By leveraging and coordinating U.S. foreign assistance, the Bureau aims to […]
Aug 1, 2023
Mauritania reports a death case of Congolese Crimean fever
Sahara Media (machine translated) Today, Friday, the Mauritanian Ministry of Health announced the death of a person due to the Crimean-Congolese hemorrhagic fever, after it was discovered that he was infected with the epidemic during his treatment in a neighboring country for a health condition. The Director General of Public Health, Muhammad Mahmoud Ould Eal […]
Aug 1, 2023