The University of Chicago reported a COVID-19 outbreak at the beginning of April. (WTTW News)
Students at a Chicago university who traveled during the schools spring break sparked an outbreak of COVID-19 that sickened 158 people, according to areport from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionreleased Thursday.
Dr. Allison Arwady, the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, warned that the study should prompt unvaccinated Chicagoans to drop any plans to travel over the Labor Day holiday weekend.
The best way to protect yourself if youre traveling is by being vaccinated, Arwady tweeted. Period.
Chicago health officials began investigating the outbreak in early April after being notified by the university, which was not identified by the CDC in its report.
However, the University of Chicago reported a COVID-19 outbreak at the beginning of April and responded by advising students who lived on campus to stay in their dormitories for one week and held all classes remotely. The university at the center of the CDC report took the same steps at the same time.
None of the students who contracted COVID-19 were hospitalized or died, according to the report. Three of the students who got sick, two of whom experienced symptoms, were fully vaccinated. Vaccines did not become available to all Chicagoans until April 19.
University of Chicago officials initially blamed off-campus parties held by fraternities for the outbreak but later acknowledged it was concentrated among students who traveled for spring break..
The investigation by Chicago health officials attributed approximately 64% of the COVID-19 cases identified during the outbreak to spring break travel, while the rest of the cases were likely transmitted at indoor social gatherings, according to the report.
As part of the investigation, genomic sequencing of the virus found multiple distinct lines of COVID-19 that were not widely detected in Chicago before or after this outbreak, suggesting several nearly simultaneous introductions.
These results demonstrate the potential for COVID-19 outbreaks on university campuses after widespread student travel during breaks, at the beginning of new school terms, and when students participate in indoor social gatherings, according to the report. To prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission, colleges and universities should encourage COVID-19 vaccination; discourage unvaccinated students from travel, including during university breaks; implement serial COVID-19 screening among unvaccinated persons after university breaks; encourage masking; and implement universal serial testing for students based on community transmission levels.
However, the authors of the report warned that it was incomplete because some students with COVID-19 refused interviews, omitted critical details, or provided false and conflicting information, such as denying travel when other students indicated that they had traveled together.
In addition, only students who lived on campus were tested by university officials, according to the report.
Vermont is the only state not covered by thecitys COVID-19 travel advisory as the surge of COVID-19 driven by the delta variant of the virus continues.
Contact Heather Cherone:@HeatherCherone| (773) 569-1863 |[emailprotected]
WINK NEWS
There are many families that have loved ones hospitalized due to the coronavirus, and they cant see them or provide comfort to them. We spoke a family that is heartbroken they might never see their loved one again.
Shirley Phillips is 81 years old. She was living at her nursing home not long ago. But Thursday, she is in a hospital bed at NCH with COVID-19, struggling to breathe.
When my mother would call her and try to speak to her, she was just crying out in pain, moaning and groaning, and my mother was standing outside of the hospital, and they wouldnt let her in, granddaughter Elizabeth Siefman said. And she will just cry and say, Please, get me out of here, or come see me, you know?
Siefman prefers to remember her grandma surrounded by her loving grandchildren.
We have a lot of great memories Sunday dinners at her house, holidays and sleep overs always been very close to her, Siefman said. said. Shes loving, and she can be fun, and she definitely is a very good cook.
But Siefman fears she will never taste another one of her grandmas meals again.
Its horrific is what it is, Siefman said. Just knowing that the grandmother Ive known my whole life, the mother that raised my mother, is there alone, possibly dying? You know, she, if she dies, she will die alone without her family.
A Siefman prays for the chance to see her grandma again, she offers a warning to others with elderly loved ones. Siefman doesnt know if her grandmother was vaccinated for COVID-19. She encourages everyone to help protect their elderly and not take time with loved ones for granted.
If they get sick, and theyre admitted to the hospital, and theyre in really bad shape, theres a chance youre not gonna see them again, Siefman said. This is a real thing. This is a serious, serious thing.
Los Angeles County recorded eight coronavirus outbreaks last week in its K-12 schools up from three the previous week. The latest outbreaks led to 72 student infections, an increase from 40 the week before.
But in a sign that school-based COVID-19 safety measures are showing promise, fewer students and staff members were exposed to the coronavirus in these outbreaks: 211 people were exposed last week, down from 238 in the prior week the week that classes began in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the nation.
This most likely reflects improved understanding of who is exposed, and great work by schools working to mitigate exposures and unnecessary quarantine of students by using cohorting, distancing strategies and seating charts in their classrooms, L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.
Many of the outbreaks are tied to athletic activities or failures to follow COVID-19 protocols. An outbreak is defined by linked cases involving three or more people in which transmission probably occurred at schools or school activities.
Of 17 school outbreaks identified since the beginning of August, eight were tied to youth sports, and another eight to classrooms. The classroom outbreaks have resulted in the infections of 117 students and seven staff members; one person has been hospitalized, Ferrer said.
The risk factors for transmission in schools include inconsistent and incorrect mask use indoors, visibly sick people showing up to school, lack of ventilation measures and a lack of physical distancing in places including hallways, cafeterias, break rooms and playgrounds, as well as in classrooms, where distancing often isnt possible due to a lack of space. State and county guidelines encourage but do not mandate physical distancing in classrooms.
Findings from these outbreaks suggest that transmission risk is highest where there is close, unmasked contact with symptomatic people, Ferrer said.
Between Aug. 15 and Aug. 29, 5,207 coronavirus cases were reported among 1.5 million students, and 729 cases among 200,000 staff members.
But many of the coronavirus cases that are being identified are occurring at schools or sites where there are only one or two cases. Of 1,871 schools and related sites reporting coronavirus cases, 720 of them reported three or more cases.
L.A. Unified has launched an ambitious coronavirus testing program, which requires the screening of every student, teacher and staff member more than half a million people once a week for the foreseeable future. The effort is so vast that the number of tests done weekly through L.A. Unifieds program is equal to more than 50% of the countys weekly test results, according to data provided by the Department of Public Health.
The largest portion of these cases are identified through routine screening, and these are really people who are, in fact, asymptomatic, Ferrer said.
Still, its important to identify these cases so that infected people are removed from the classroom until they recover and are no longer contagious, she said.
Even as many schools in L.A. County have reopened, the overall number of new coronavirus infections countywide has actually declined.
Overall, L.A. County has reported an average of 2,596 new cases per day over the last week. Thats down 25% from two weeks ago, when many schools began to reopen.
The test positivity rate a metric measuring the proportion of tests that confirm coronavirus infection has also decreased notably, from 3.5% on Aug. 17 to 2.5% as of Tuesday.
Los Angeles Countys school-aged children remain in a better position than children in other parts of the country. There are some parts of the nation where pediatric COVID-19 hospitalization rates are at the highest point in the pandemic.
But in L.A. County, COVID-19 hospitalization rates for children are nowhere near [what] they were during our winter surge, Ferrer said.
This pattern may reflect the fact that many adults are vaccinated and that most people are wearing masks, Ferrer said.
Still, the concern about the Delta variant has caused L.A. County health officials to retain a stricter quarantine standard in schools than required by California for at least a few more weeks.
L.A. County officials have ordered unvaccinated students who had close contact with an infected person for at least 15 minutes in one day while within six feet of that person to be sent home and quarantined for at least eight days.
The state, meanwhile, does not require a quarantine for the close contact if both the infected person and close contact were wearing masks during the entire time of exposure.
Ferrer said she wanted to see a couple more weeks of data before relaxing the quarantine standard, to be sure that youre not creating an unintended consequence of creating a lot of spread in schools. COVID-19 vaccines are authorized only for those age 12 and older.
L.A. County health officials, however, did recently eliminate weekly testing requirements for all youth athletes or associated staff if they are fully vaccinated or have a documented coronavirus infection within the last 90 days. Also, weekly testing is no longer required for children younger than 12 if playing outdoors.
The Department of Public Health also removed a requirement that youth athletes and staff get a coronavirus test within 72 hours of a game.
In the Wednesday briefing, Debra Duardo, the superintendent of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said three L.A. County school districts have adopted vaccination mandates. Two of the three districts she named, ABC Unified and the Palmdale School District, said the information was incorrect and they do not have a student mandate. The third district, Culver City Unified, has approved a mandate for students, but it has not yet gone into effect.
A county spokesperson later corrected this information.
Duardo also named 13 districts that are considering vaccination mandates, but the spokesperson said this information is not confirmed and may have changed since an Aug. 19 school district survey.
But there are school systems exploring the option, including Los Angeles Unified and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, according to officials in those districts.
The L.A. teachers union has called for mandating vaccinations for students.
Times staff writer Laura Newberry contributed to this report.
Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
When the security guard at Methodist Hospital San Antonio met the visitor at the door of the childrens emergency room on a Saturday afternoon in early August, the officers request was simple: The man needed to get a temperature screening to make sure he showed no early signs of COVID-19 before entering the hospital.
The man refused, became agitated and began angrily shouting, pulling out his camera to record the guard and hospital staff.
The scene got so tense that San Antonio police were called, but the man whose identity and reason for wanting to enter the hospital werent included in a police account of the incident stormed off in anger before the officer could arrive.
It was, relatively speaking, a small blow-up, but Texas hospital workers and health care officials say incidents like it have been rising in both number and intensity this summer as tensions boil during the delta-fueled fourth surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Our staff have been cursed at, screamed at, threatened with bodily harm and even had knives pulled on them, said Jane McCurley, chief nursing executive for Methodist Healthcare System, speaking at a press conference five days after the incident in the childrens ER. It is escalating. Its just a handful at each facility who have been extremely abusive. But there is definitely an increasing number of occurrences every day.
Nurses and hospital staffers are historically vulnerable to workplace violence due to the nature of their jobs, where they deal with people who are having bad reactions to street drugs or mental breaks and often have to give bad news to patients or family already in extreme pain or emotional distress.
Half of all Texas nurses reported verbal and physical abuse at work in 2016 - the last year Texas health officials surveyed them about it.
But the pandemic has exacerbated the stress that can escalate into threats and violence, as people are now contending with not just the virus but also job loss and other stresses, said Karen Garvey, vice president of patient safety and clinical risk management at Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas.
Garvey said confrontations at Parkland just this year have included people being punched in the chest, having urine thrown on them and inappropriate sexual innuendos or behaviors in front of staff members. The verbal abuse, the name-calling, racial slurs weve had broken bones, broken noses.
Visitors and patients assaulting hospital staff was an epidemic before the pandemic it was just silent to the public, she added. Health care workers have been dealing with this for years, and its become more pronounced with the COVID pandemic.
The pandemic-related rise in tensions across the U.S. is not unique to the hospital industry. Airlines are reporting an increase in aggressive passengers as flight attendants take self-defense classes. Police are reporting an increase in violent crime and road rage incidents.
A similar phenomenon emerged last year when retail and grocery workers became front-line enforcers of mask mandates and limits on gatherings and indoor activities. And it resurfaced last month when parents aggressively confronted teachers at schools over oft-changing mask rules.
But unlike airlines, which can permanently ban passengers, hospitals are more limited in how they can respond or prevent those instances.
A 2013 Texas law made it a felony to assault an emergency room nurse, but legislation that would have expanded that to include nurses in other areas of a hospital died in the Texas Senate earlier this year. A bill addressing the issue is currently being considered in Washington by the U.S. Congress.
With hospitals reporting historic nursing shortages as the pandemic drags on, the fear is that the alarming rate of escalation will be the last straw for nurses who are physically worn out after fighting a pandemic for 18 months, thin on compassion for people who need care after choosing not to be vaccinated and afraid for their own personal safety, said Houston pediatrician Dr. Giancarlos Toledanes.
With the escalation of this violence toward health care workers, were going to lose the workers that are deemed essential, Toledanes said. If the problem continues to compound, then I think its going to make it much more difficult to staff these hospitals.
The Texas Department of State Health Services doesnt track incidents of aggression against hospital staff outside of its regular surveys, the next of which will be done next year, a spokesperson said.
But as health officials across Texas watch hospital ICUs and pediatric units overflow with record numbers of mostly unvaccinated people, they say the surge in aggression toward health care workers is obvious.
Many of the problems being reported in recent months include disagreements over masking and screening protocols that people dont have to follow in other places, particularly after most mandatory protocols were banned in recent months by Gov. Greg Abbott, officials said.
Confrontations are sometimes caused by hours- or dayslong waits in emergency rooms that are so full of COVID-19 patients that there is no room for anyone else, health care workers said.
Tempers are high, said Carrie Kroll, director of advocacy for the Texas Hospital Association. To the point where some systems are putting a security guard at check-in because family members are getting so abusive over the masking and some of the other screening things they need to do.
Families are often upset when they cant visit someone due to COVID-19 rules that limit the number of people who can be bedside or even come inside the hospital, said Serena Bumpus, director of practice at the Texas Nurses Association.
When our family members are sick, we want to be there by their side, and its not that easy to be by our loved ones side anymore because of this increase in the number of COVID patients in our facilities, she said.
At the Katy campus of Texas Children's Hospital west of Houston, Toledanes said some parents get verbally abusive over rules that require them to wait for COVID-19 test results before more than one parent is allowed into a room with a sick child.
With their child in the hospital and theyre the only ones handling everything, it obviously gets stressful, he said. Its escalated a lot more, especially now that weve gotten a little bit stricter with our policies due to the surge.
The threats follow health care workers online as well, and often have to do with philosophical differences over what have become political hot buttons such as masking and vaccinations, Toledanes wrote in a recent column for the online medical magazine MedScape.
Online, healthcare workers, who advocate for masking or vaccination, are often subject to death threats, threats to family members, and verbal abuse on social media, he wrote. Veiled threats of we know who you are and we will find you follow physicians who advocate for masking in schools.
At Parkland, some of the administrations actions to protect the workers include a staff of six mental health peace officers known as the Law Enforcement Intervention for Environmental/Patient Safety staff who are specially trained to respond to high-risk incidents, Garvey said. Administrators have developed a flagging system in the patient record which identifies patients who have been identified as known risks to staff, she said.
Some hospitals have hung signs in hallways reminding families to be courteous and patient with the overworked staff.
In mid-August, the escalating reports prompted the Texas Hospital Association to take to social media with an image of an exhausted nurses face, mask pulled below her chin.
Dont forget the person behind the mask, the image reads.
McCurley said that the increasing violence this year is made worse by the contrast in attitudes workers are seeing now compared with a year ago, when the public seemed to understand that nurses and hospital staff were standing between them and the deadly pandemic.
We were seen as health care heroes and our community responded with love and support, food and gifts, drive-by parades, buses and motorcycles and airplanes, and we felt so much love and support. It gave us the courage to go in and face our own fears of the unknown in the beginning, McCurley said at the August press conference. Today, those health care workers are experiencing abusive behavior by patient families. Its unfathomable that its occurring, and it has to stop.
Disclosure: Texas Children's Hospital and the Texas Hospital Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
Join us Sept. 20-25 at the 2021 Texas Tribune Festival. Tickets are on sale now for this multi-day celebration of big, bold ideas about politics, public policy and the days news, curated by The Texas Tribunes award-winning journalists. Learn more.
Health officials in Illinois have linked nearly 200 COVID-19 cases to two events a church camp for teens and a men's conference and the number of people who may have been exposed may be much greater and from multiple states.
An organization held a five-day church camp for teens and a two-day men's conference in June that have since been linked to a spike in cases following research by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Monday. The CDC did not name the organization.
As of mid-August, 180 COVID-19 cases had been linked to those who attended one of those events or to someone who had close contact with an attendee, the CDC said.
A majority of those cases, 122, were attributed to attendees, with 87 people contracting COVID-19 during the camp and 35 during the conference. Most of those cases, 104, were unvaccinated people.
Only five people were hospitalized, none of whom had been vaccinated, and no deaths were reported. But officials say that more than 1,000 people across at least four states could have been exposed through the two events, the CDC said.
The report points to these cases as an example of the dangers of hosting large events with little to no safeguards in place. Attendees at both events were not required to be vaccinated, and organizers did not require participants to get tested before allowing entry, the report says.
Nearly 300 teens between the ages of 14 and 18 attended the camp after traveling together in large groups on buses. They spent the week living and dining together and mingling with other campers, according to the CDC.
It's unclear whether masks were required, but the report says that a list of items to pack for the week did not include masks. Similarly, another 500 people attended the men's conference, where masks were also not required, the CDC says.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WJW) The Ohio Department of Health held a press conference Thursday on the spread of COVID-19 in the state.
On Wednesday, 7,102 new coronavirus cases were reported by ODH.
That included 1,021 cases that were delayed because of a lab reporting issue between Aug. 15 to Aug. 25 that has since been resolved.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 2,566 people in Ohio are hospitalized with COVID-19.
The Ohio Hospital Association says 1 in 8 hospitalized patients are being treated for coronavirus.
In intensive care that number is 1 in 5.
Ohio hospitals have 1,114 ICU beds available currently.
That includes both adult and pediatric hospitals.
ODH Director Bruce Vanderhoff, MD, MBA spoke at the press conference with Brian Taylor, MD, Inpatient Medical Director at Central Ohio Primary Care Hospitalists and Hector Wong, ICU Physician, and Head of Critical Care at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital.
Hospital staff is exhausted, Dr. Wong shared.
We can no longer say kids arent getting sick from COVID, Dr. Taylor said, comparing this stage of the coronavirus pandemic to 2020.
Were starting to see kids in the hospital, including the ICU, because of COVID, he shared.
Everyone in the ICU is seriously ill, and some of them are going to die, said Dr. Vanderhoff.
LIVE UPDATES
Parts of southern Illinois are continuing to see increases in COVID test positivity and hospitalization rates, with one region having just seven intensive care unit beds available to help treat an influx of coronavirus patients.
According to the latest data released by the Illinois Department of Public Health, Region 5, comprised of 20 of Illinois 102 counties and located in the southern tip of the state, has just seven, or 8.3%, of its 84 ICU beds currently open.
The region is seeing the highest test positivity rate in the state, at 11% as of Monday and still rising, and has seen increases in COVID hospitalizations on nine of the last 10 days, according to IDPH data.
The ICU metric is still a slight improvement from a week ago, when the region was down to just one open ICU bed, but challenges remain ahead for the area as COVID cases and hospitalizations rise.
Several other health care regions in central and southern Illinois are also feeling the squeeze. In Region 6, located in east-central Illinois and including cities like Champaign, Effingham and Watseka, the positivity rate has risen to 8.4%, and hospitalizations have increased nine of the last 10 days.
The region does have 25 ICU beds available, making up 17.5% of the total ICU beds in the region.
In Region 3, located in western Illinois in an area that includes Springfield, ICU bed availability has ticked upward in recent days, but still remains low, with 21, or 13.8%, of its beds available for critically ill patients.
One part of southern Illinois that is seeing progress is Region 4, located adjacent to St. Louis. The regions positivity rate is decreasing, dropping to 8.1%, and its COVID hospitalization rates have either dropped or remained steady on seven of the last 10 days.
The region has 21 of its 109 ICU beds available, according to IDPH data.
These metrics come as the state continues to cope with its worst COVID numbers since the beginning of the year. Wednesday saw the state record 5,178 new confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus, its highest single-day increase since Jan. 22, and 4,224 more cases were reported on Thursday.
The state currently has 2,254 hospitalized COVID patients, the most reported in a day since early February, and 537 of those patients are in ICU beds, also a high watermark since February.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) More than 500 new COVID-19 cases were announced in Thursdays update from theSouth Dakota Department of Health.
There were 535 new total cases reported on Thursday. The states total case count is now at 133,372, up from Wednesday (132,837).
Active cases are now at 5,688, up from Wednesday (5,370).
The death toll from COVID-19 is now at 2,071, up from Wednesday (2,069). The new deaths were two men; one wasin the 70-79 age group and the other is in the 80-89 age group
Current hospitalizations are at 218, down from Wednesday (229). Total hospitalizations are now at 6,870, up from Wednesday (6,835).
Total recovered cases are now at 125,613, up from Wednesday (125,398). The latest seven-day PCR test positivity rate for the state is 15.2% for Aug. 25 through Aug. 31.
The state health department has removed the total persons negative column from its COVID-19 Dashboard Tables tab. DOH spokesman Daniel Bucheli told KELOLAND News the department will providea Total Persons Tested and Total Tests Reported table each month.South Dakota Department of Health to report persons tested, total tests for COVID-19 in monthly report.
The DOH currently reports total tests each day. Theres been 1,377,384 total tests reported as of Thursday, up 4,793 from Wednesday (1,372,591).
57 of South Dakotas 66 counties are listed as having high community spread. High community spread is 100 cases or greater per 100,000 or a 10% or greater PCR test positivity rate.
The total number of cases of the Delta variant (B.1.617.2, AY.1-AY.3) detected in South Dakota is at 140.
There have been 172 cases of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha variant), 16 cases of B.1.429 and B.1427 variants (Epsilon variant), 3 cases of P.1. (Gamma variant) and 2 cases of the B.1.351 (Beta variant).
As of Thursday, 62.08% of the population 12-years-old and above has received at least one dose while 56.5% have completed the vaccination series.
There have been 416,523 doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered, 310,663 of the Moderna vaccine and 26,653 doses of the Janssen vaccine.
There have been 149,663 persons who have completed two doses of Moderna and 198,087 who have received two doses of Pfizer.
The number of people who completed the Pfizer vaccine went up by 465 patients; 150 people completed the Moderna vaccine series.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 218.4 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.54 million. More than 5.34 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
Australian doctors have warned that hospitals are not ready to cope with reopening plans even with higher vaccination rates as some states prepare to move from suppression to living with COVID-19.
Moderna has asked the US Food and Drug Administration to allow the use of a third booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine.
New Zealand has reported a fall in new COVID-19 infections, with authorities saying it was a sign that nationwide restrictions were working.
India has reported its biggest single-day rise in new COVID-19 cases for two months, with the state of Kerala worst hit.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll has shown that most vaccinated Americans want a booster COVID-19 vaccine dose.
It comes as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said yesterday there was no urgent need for vaccine booster doses.
Spain has reached a goal set by the government of vaccinating 70% of its population against COVID-19.
Turkey's new confirmed daily COVID-19 cases have hit a three-week high of 23,946.
Pfizer and Merck have announced new trials of their experimental oral antiviral drugs for COVID-19.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries
Image: Our World in Data
As many as 1-in-7 children might have symptoms linked to COVID-19 months after testing positive for the disease, according to an English study of long COVID in adolescents.
The study, led by University College London and Public Health England, found that 11- to 17-year-olds who tested positive for the virus were twice as likely to report three or more symptoms 15 weeks later than those who had tested negative.
The researchers said that while the findings suggested as many as 32,000 teenagers might have had multiple symptoms linked to COVID-19 after 15 weeks, the prevalence of long COVID in the age group was lower than some had feared last year.
"Overall, it's better than people would've guessed back in December," Professor Terence Stephenson of the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health told reporters.
The research is yet to be peer-reviewed.
The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is a coalition of 85 global leaders, hosted by the World Economic Forum. Its mission: Join hands in support of social entrepreneurs everywhere as vital first responders to the pandemic and as pioneers of a green, inclusive economic reality.
Its COVID Social Enterprise Action Agenda, outlines 25 concrete recommendations for key stakeholder groups, including funders and philanthropists, investors, government institutions, support organizations, and corporations. In January of 2021, its members launched its 2021 Roadmap through which its members will roll out an ambitious set of 21 action projects in 10 areas of work. Including corporate access and policy change in support of a social economy.
For more information see the Alliance website or its impact story here.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus inaugurated the new WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence yesterday.
The Berlin-based hub will work to build partnerships and develop technology that uses data to detect and tackle disease and future outbreaks.
The world needs to be able to detect new events with pandemic potential and to monitor disease control measures on a real-time basis to create effective pandemic and epidemic risk management, said Dr Tedros. This Hub will be key to that effort, leveraging innovations in data science for public health surveillance and response, and creating systems whereby we can share and expand expertise in this area globally.
Written by
Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
