• Can ‘Digital Traces’ from Internet Searches and Social Media Predict Outbreaks of COVID-19?

    Your Google searches and Twitter accounts alert marketers about what items you might like to  purchase—could they also serve as an early warning system when COVID-19 levels are about to take off?

  • Tackling Crowd Management in Subways During Pandemics

    Mass transit, and subways in particular, are essential to the economic viability and environmental sustainability of cities across the globe. Researchers are working with NYC’s MTA to develop machine learning and traffic models to optimize traffic flow during pandemics.

  • Pathogen Early Warning

    When COVID-19 struck in late 2019 and early 2020, governments worldwide were caught off guard. The systems that countries and international institutions established, particularly those designed to spot novel threats before they metastasized into something more dangerous, proved insufficient to halt COVID-19’s spread. Since then, the importance of effective early warning systems has only increased.

  • House Intelligence Panel Releases COVID-19 Reports

    The House Intelligence Committee released a declassified report examining the Intelligence Community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic following a two-year investigation. The report examines the IC’s posture to support global health security policymakers, the IC’s performance in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the steps the IC must take to strengthen any future pandemic response.

  • WHO Urges China to Share Data on Origin of COVID-19 Pandemic

    The World Health Organization has urged China to share data on the origin of the coronavirus that caused the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.

  • COVID Vaccine More Effective Than Infection Against Death, Hospital Care, Study Finds

    One of the first large studies to compare deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits among COVID-19 vaccine recipients versus those who were infected shows the vaccines were more effective in preventing negative outcomes, especially for adults aged 60 years and older.

  • Software Tracking Pandemics

    DHS has awarded $5 million to create tools to increase the nation’s level of preparedness for biological threats — including an infection rate tracking program for COVID-19 developed by a Sandia National Laboratories team in 2020.

  • Biodefense and Emergency Use Authorization

    Emergency-use-authorization (EUA) is the representative biodefense policy that allows the use of unlicensed medical countermeasures or off-label use of approved medical countermeasures in response to public health emergencies. The EUA policies of the United States and South Korea produced drastically different outcomes.

  • When Will COVID-19 Become Endemic?

    Government leaders are optimistic that COVID-19 is becoming endemic, meaning more predictable and manageable. But many scientists say it’s too soon to behave like the pandemic is over.

  • What Have We Learned from COVID-19? Apparently Not Much

    Even if it were true that COVID-19 is no longer a major part of our lives, the fact still remains that these numbers are as high as they are because of how poorly the US responded to the pandemic. This boom and bust funding cycle clearly does not work for public health.

  • How to End COVID-19 as a Public Health Threat

    Over 350 multidisciplinary experts from more than 100 countries reach consensus: A new global COVID-19 study provides actionable recommendations to end the public health threat without exacerbating socio-economic burdens or putting the most vulnerable at greater risk.

  • What Plagues of the Past Have to Tell Us About Current Crises

    One expert says that event system theory (EST) helps us understand Albert Camus’s classic 1947 novel The Plague; the Black Death of the 14th century and the lethal waves that followed; and societal response to disruptions like COVID. EST reframes societal disruptions from isolated events to being the result of slowly unfolding chains of connected events.

  • Bolstering Biosafety Education to Address Biosecurity Professionals Shortfalls

    Many countries face an severe shortages of biosafety and biosecurity professionals. To address these shortages, experts call for a multisectoral effort toward a future sustainable workforce by formalizing a biosafety & biosecurity career path within the higher education system.

  • Debate Over COVID Origins Continues

    Late last week, ProPublica published an article claiming to have unveiled new information from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) supporting the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origin. Now, the piece some have described as a train wreck is being heavily criticized for having faulty translations, mis-matched dates, misrepresenting the sources of the documents discussed in it, not understanding how common VPN usage is in China-related research, and more.

  • Senate Panel Minority Staff Report Argues for Lab-Leak Theory of COVID Origins

    The Republican minority staff of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee earlier this week issued a 35-page report contending that “SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 global pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident associated with coronavirus research in Wuhan, China.” The report has failed to win over prominent supporters of the lab leak theory, including Rutgers University’s Dr. Richard Ebright, who said that “there was no information in the report that has not been publicly presented in the media and discussed in the media previously.”