Zika Breaking News

New data published today by the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that over the last five years, measles outbreaks have hit 103 countries.

In 2023, nearly 35 million children had no or only partial measles protection.

In July 2024, the U.S. CDC listed the top ten international measles outbreaks led by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iraq, and India. In the United States, the CDC reported 167 measles cases in 24 jurisdictions this year.

On July 15, 2024, the WHO confirmed that only 83% of children worldwide received their first dose of a measles vaccine through routine health services, while the number of children receiving their second dose reached 74%.

These WHO figures fall short of the 95% coverage needed to prevent measles outbreaks.

“Measles outbreaks are the canary in the coal mine, exposing and exploiting gaps in immunization and hitting the most vulnerable first,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, in a press release.

“This is a solvable problem."

"Measles vaccine is cheap and can be delivered even in difficult places. WHO is committed to working with all our partners to support countries in closing these gaps and protecting the most at-risk children as quickly as possible.”

The CDC confirmed in 2024 that if you are unsure if you or your travel companions are fully protected against measles, schedule an appointment to see your clinician at least six weeks before traveling so that you have enough time to get vaccinated with an MMR vaccine. 

According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a joint Polio Independent Monitoring Board and Transition Independent Monitoring Board meeting will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, beginning July 15, 2024.

The goal of the meeting is to assess the challenges of eliminating polio in the endemic and outbreak countries.

Unfortunately, the GPEI reported three additional wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Afghanistan last week, bringing the country's total for 2024 to nine.

In 2023, Afghanistan reported six WPV1 cases. 

In this region, Pakistan, which is also fighting the speed of poliovirus, reported eight new WPV1 environmental detections last week.

In addition to these polio disclosures, the U.S. CDC says to interrupt poliovirus transmission, a renewed focus on increasing routine immunization coverage in endemic areas and implementing higher-quality supplementary immunization activities is necessary.

Over the last decade, about 10 billion doses of oral polio vaccine were administered worldwide, reports the GPEI.

The CDC's Global Polio Travel Advisory (May 2024) recommends that before visiting any of the 34 destinations, adults who completed the full, routine polio vaccine series may receive a single, life booster dose of polio vaccine.

In the United States, polio vaccines are generally available at pharmacies and travel clinics.

The board of directors of CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Limited announced on July 11, 2024, that the mRNA Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine candidate (SYS6016) has obtained approval from the National Medical Products Administration of the People’s Republic of China to conduct human clinical trials in China.

Currently, there is no vaccine available in China that protects people from RSV infection.

In preclinical studies, SYS6016 translated into the prefusion conformation F-protein in vivo and induced high titers of long-lasting neutralizing antibodies.

CSPC wrote that this vaccine candidate exhibits good protection against RSV-A and RSV-B subtype viral strains and has a good safety profile.

CSPC confirmed it would endeavor to advance the clinical research and market SYS6016 as soon as possible to create value for society and shareholders.

As of July 13, 2024, three RSV vaccines and one monoclonal antibody for infants (Beyfortus) were approved for use in the United States.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says the Plague was first introduced into the United States in 1900. The plague bacterium (Yersinia pestis) is transmitted by fleas and cycles naturally among wild rodents. 

Over the decades, the Plague spread from urban rats to rural rodent species and became entrenched in many areas of the western U.S.

Almost all of the cases reported in the last 20 years have occurred among people living in small towns and villages or agricultural areas rather than in larger towns and cities, says the CDC.

As of 2024, the CDC estimates that seven human cases of Plague occur in the U.S. each year.

Recent plague cases include the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment confirming a human case of Plague in a Pueblo County resident on July 9, 2024.

And in February 2024, health officials in Oregon reported a case of bubonic Plague in a resident who they said likely contracted it from a pet cat.

Globally, the most human plague cases since the 1990s have occurred in Africa.

From a prevention perspective, plague vaccines are no longer available in the U.S. However, plague vaccine candidates are in development but are not expected to be commercially available in the immediate future.

In March 2023, the first mRNA-based, lipid nanoparticle vaccine was found effective against lethal bacteria in mice.

Tiba Biotech LLC today announced its new partnership with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) through the initiation of an EZ-BAA contract to develop groundbreaking therapeutics against influenza.

The U.S. $749,999 BARDA contract supports early-stage therapeutic platform development for the Flexible and Strategic Therapeutics program.

This BARDA initiative aims to advance cutting-edge therapeutic platform technologies, such as RNA-mediated interference, which could be rapidly deployed in response to emerging viral threats. The therapeutic will target the highly conserved viral nucleoprotein and will be delivered via Tiba’s RNABLTM platform.

Tiba Biotech’s initial focus will be developing a prototype RNAi-based therapeutic for H1N1 influenza (swine flu), a type of influenza A virus.

Every year, there are rare, sporadic human infections with influenza viruses that usually circulate in pigs and not people, says the U.S. CDC.

On June 28, 2024, the CDC reported the second and third U.S. human infections in 2024.

This initiative is a natural extension of Tiba’s ongoing work combating influenza pandemic threats, most notably in the form of a novel multi-antigen mRNA-based H7N9 flu vaccine funded under a Phase II SBIR award from the National Institutes of Health and ongoing collaborations with the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers.

Tiba was also recently accepted into BLUE KNIGHT™, a joint initiative between Johnson & Johnson Innovation—JLABS and BARDA. The initiative aims to harness innovation to combat future known and unknown health threats.

Texas public health officials announced today that they are urging Texans to protect against mosquito bites after confirming ten travel-associated dengue cases for 2024.

As of July 11, 2024, all of the dengue cases reported in Texas this year were acquired while traveling internationally.

However, a small number of dengue cases have been acquired from mosquito bites in southern Texas in recent years. Mosquitoes that carry the dengue virus are found in both Mexico and Texas.

The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) confirmed the new dengue cases were reported in Collin, Dallas, Fort Bend, McMullen, Montgomery, and Travis counties.

In 2023, there were 79 cases of dengue in Texas, including one locally acquired case in Val Verde County.

To the south of Texas, Mexico has reported about 1,000 dengue cases in 2024. In 2023, Mexico reported over 277,000 dengue cases.

“Unfortunately, many mosquitoes in Texas can spread diseases, such as West Nile and dengue. These diseases are often mild, but some people will develop severe illness,” said DSHS Commissioner Jennifer Shuford, MD, MPH, in a press release.

According to DSHS, about 25% of dengue infections become symptomatic.

Most people recover completely within two weeks. However, about one in 20 symptomatic people develop a severe infection called Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever that can be fatal if untreated.

From a prevention perspective, two dengue vaccines are used in various countries but not in the U.S. as of July 11, 2024.

Biotechnology company Apriori Bio recently announced it was awarded $1.1 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to advance its biology-informed artificial intelligence platform Octavia™, aimed at protecting humanity against rapidly evolving viruses by designing variant-resilient vaccines.

The new seed funding from CEPI will focus on pandemic influenza strain H3N2, which has previously affected pigs, birds, and humans.

The Octavia platform works by characterizing large libraries of viral variants on their ability to bind to cells in the human body and evade the immune response. Then, using machine learning, Octavia generates maps to identify the mutations that have the greatest ‘escape potential’ and could, therefore, pose the greatest threat.

Octavia builds and trains its algorithms using computational insights and experimental biological data. This includes studying viral evolutionary trees to identify the point at which viral variability is most likely to occur and exploring how mutations could affect each other.

These insights can guide the design and updating of new vaccines and existing vaccines so that they can protect against worrisome variants for years to come.

Lovisa Afzelius, Ph.D., MBA, Co-founder and CEO of Apriori, said in a press release on July 7, 2024, “We are honored to be recognized by a global leader in pandemic preparedness who shares our commitment to better protecting humanity from rapidly evolving viruses."

CEPI’s 2022-2026 plan, known as CEPI 2.0, will help the world make the scientific progress needed to respond to the next Disease X threat with a new vaccine in just 100 days. This goal is known as the 100 Days Mission.