Thread by @HelenBranswell

1. @WHO held a press briefing today. Some interesting but disparate points made at it.
Pediatric #hepatitis: To date 348 probable cases from 5 regions of the world have met the case definition; 70 more are being studied. Only 6 countries have reported more than five cases.

2. Of the pediatric #hepatitis cases, 70% have tested positive for adenovirus, mostly type 41. ~18% of the cases tested positive for #Covid19. @WHO's Philippa Easterbrook says while adenovirus is still the chief suspect, prior or current Covid as a cofactor is still in the mix.

3. @WHO's Easterbrook says "within the week" there should be data from a UK case control study comparing adenovirus rates between kids with hepatitis of unknown etiology and other hospitalized children. Will help to see if #adenovirus is an incidental finding, she said.

4. #Ebola: The case count in the outbreak in NW #DRC remains at 3; all 3 have died. Investigations are ongoing to find how the first case caught the virus. It was previously reported the first case had been vaccinated, but @SoceFallBirima says the man wasn't on the vax registry.

5. #Covid: @mvankerkhove says the world's ability to track evolution of the #SARSCoV2 virus is abating because of a substantial decline in testing & sequencing worldwide. "Our ability to track this virus, to understand its circulation is being diminished."

6. @mvankerkhove pointed to the BA.4 & BA.5 subvariants of Omicron as an example of how this is a problem. People are trying to understand the threat they pose but there are only a few hundred sequences of each available to study.

7. @WHO's @DrTedros was in #Ukraine on the weekend & met with child refugees. He said that from experiences in his own childhood, "I know war very well. I know the sound of it, the smell of it, the distraction associated with it."

8. @DrTedros said of the children he met who had fled #Ukraine: "You can see the impact of this conflict will be generational. Like other conflicts."