Kai KupferschmidtVarmennettu tili

This may not sound spectacular, but ultimately this is what all the grandiose goals of global surveillance of pathogens come down to: People like @vmcorman testing samples and generating the info that can inform doctors and public health experts locally.

Given (lack of) travel history and the genome sequences these appear to be infections acquired here: „The virus genomes are distinct from each other but highly similar to that of strains obtained from birds and humans in eastern Germany in 2018-2020“

A little update (especially for listeners of our @pandemiapodcast): Three cases of West Nile virus infections here in Germany this August. One hospitalized patient in Berlin and two blood donors in Berlin and Brandenburg (donations are screened for WNV spring to late autumn)https://twitter.com/vmcorman/status/1433214461041594371 …

https://twitter.com/mvankerkhove/status/1432417126879531017 …

Call me a pessimist, but I‘m gonna start brushing up on my astronomy…

We will see what ends up on the list (examples in the first tweet were just from me to illustrate it). Probably best not to call a variant „sirius“ variant since that might lead to some misunderstandings ;)

„They will be less common stars/constellations, easy to pronounce“, @mvankerkhove wrote me. „We are just checking internally with our regional colleagues to ensure none of them cause any offence or are common names in local languages.“

Since this question comes up quite a bit: Once the @WHO runs out of Greek letters to name variants of #sarscov2 it plans to start using the names of stars or constellations such as say Virgo, Draco or Orion.

Trust and transparency are real issues, says @drmikeryan. But the biggest holes in the system currently are lack of infrastructure, lack of frontline data collection, lack of laboratory capacity and the like

I asked about the lack of surveillance infrastructure in many countries and lack of willingness to share in others. A suspension bridge has to be built from both sides, says @DrMikeRyan. Hub will seek to increase global collaboration but also build up local capacity, he says.

Q: how will hub deal with lack of transparency that has characterised the pandemic? @DrMikeRyan says that’s a mischaracterization. "Certainly, all countries need to look at how we share information”, he says and how to share it faster. But lots of collaborations going on.

Waning immunity may make third shots necessary in the most vulnerable populations such as immunocompromised people, says @drtedros. “But for now, we do not want to see widespread use of boosters from healthy people who are fully vaccinated."

“Last week, the number of #COVID19 cases and deaths reported to WHO declined for the first time in more than two months”, says @DrTedros. “This is welcome, but it does not mean much.” Cases still increasing in many countries and shocking inequities persist, he says.

.@DrTedros just called Angela Merkel someone "who says what she means and means what she says”. Probably not how most people in Germany looking at the entirety of her political career would describe her.

So the „surprise“ were videos from @antonioguterres, @melindagates and @CyrilRamaphosa thanking Merkel for her leadership. (Some people did not manage to send videos on time, geopolitics apparently not being that different from organizing any old birthday surprise…)

Goal is to turn our greatest weakness in face of an infectious disease, our interconnectedness, into a strength, says @DrMikeRyan. "How can we turn that into our greatest strength: the connectedness that allows us to collaborate, innovate, to share data, insights and solutions?"

The idea of the hub is to use the extraordinary amount of data that is available around the world to improve public health, says @DrMikeRyan "How do we create new ways to analyse information, while at the same time ensuring equitable access to these tools?"