"Are we better prepared?" asks @EckerleIsabella as she closes #SSM@SwissMicrobe with her keynote on challenges in prevention & preparedness for emerging viruses. #SARSCoV2 & #monkeypox have highlighted these issues; what do we know & where do we stand?
1/N
Perhaps particularly of note are viruses that aren't entirely new, but keep popping up, or appear in new hosts, new places, or with new symptoms a while after identification. How & how often does this happen?
Others we know well & have fought before, but appear again!
2/N
Understanding viral emergence is also not just for viral biologists: there are so many factors that provide influence, from that virus and host to environmental, anthropic, and human-animal interface.
3/N
In #SARSCoV2 we have moved from a phase of very unexpected variants to one with many Omicron "babies". What might dominate next -- will it be the same everywhere? We see a lot happening but exact prediction is difficult.
4/N
What about #influenza#flu ? We saw little circulation during COVID measures, but it's made a big reappearance. This alone is a lot of pressure on hospitals & a lot of illness. What can we expect in the North, what should try & prepare for?
5/N
And of course... Emerging viruses are part of larger and interconnected issues like #climatechange & biodiversity loss - along with changing use of land - and misinformation, fragmentation of our societies, & loss of trust.
6/N
"We are jumping from virus to virus but never take time to invest in understanding & surveillance to fully understand them."
Surveillance often falls in a gap: research sees it as public health, public health sees it as research - nobody funds it though we would all benefit!
7/N
And a great quote to finish.
"Any new disease that is emerging faster than our understanding is never under control."
I would argue it can also be applied to "old" viruses that may reappear and/or change faster than we can keep up!!
Recently I've heard from collaborators in the US & Europe that #Enterovirus#D68#EVD68 cases are on the rise.
EV-D68 is what I worked on pre-pandemic, & hope to go back to.
A significant autumn 2022 wave has been a recent concern.
So what is D68 & what might this mean?
1/17
#EVD68 is a Picornavirus - a diverse family of viruses. And Enteroviruses are pretty diverse themselves: from Poliovirus, which can cause serious neurological illness, to Rhinovirus - what's behind the common cold 🤧 (and even more in between).
2/17
One of the most notable things about #EVD68 is that in Europe & North America it's historically had biennial autumn outbreaks: in 2014, 2016, & 2018. Also predicted in 2020... but that didn't happen due to pandemic!
Following that pattern, 2022 would be an outbreak season🗓️
Why is #opendata useful? It's much easier for scientists to share, create tools for, & publicly analyze open sequences.
For example, @Nextstrain creates the #monkeypox builds with open data & provides curated seqs+meta
Our paper on relabelling the internal clades of the #monkeypox to be non-geographical, & proposing a new lineage naming system within Clade IIb, is now out in @PLOSBiology 🙌🏻
This has been an international effort I'm humbled to be part of.
Because it seems like there's a lot of misunderstanding around this paper/proposal - our paper does *not* touch on renaming the #monkeypox virus itself.
We focus on switching to more structured, non-stigmatizing & standardized naming within the virus phylogeny.
2/8
Contrary to what many people believe, there are long-standing efforts to name new viruses, & re-label old virus-related terms (like clades/lineages/strains), to avoid potentially stigmatizing & often inaccurate names. But previously, you didn't hear of it in the media! 😁
3/8
To help your Friday be fantastic 😎, I'm happy to say that we've updated CoVariants with awesome new graphs that load on-demand, speeding up the browsing experience!
HUGE thanks to @richgoater for implementing! 🎉🙏🏻
1/3
With this new addition, graphs now load dynamically as you scroll, speeding up overall loading time & reducing the overhead (especially on older mobile devices 📱).
Check it out on covariants.org/per-country, or the Per Variant or Cases pages!
2/3
As we try to graph more data from more places over longer times, we're always interested in improving our graphs & website!
If you'd like to help, check out the issues on our Github or reach out with an idea - we love contributions! 🥰
Monkeypox:
- We've had warnings about it for years
- We have a vaccine
- We have antivirals
- We have experience w poxviruses
Pandemic Preparedness is a buzzword right now, but if we don't seem to be prepared to effectively combat #monkeypox... Is that what we want?
1/
I am not implying that combatting #monkeypox is easy - & the current outbreak has plenty new to figure out (cryptic transmission, new presentation & lesion locations, MSM spread, ABOBEC mutations).
But we've had so much opportunity to be better prepared than we seem to be.
2/
Very few viruses arrive with the headlines they do in movies.
But #monkeypox really did send heralds for years before the current outbreaks. 📣 The waning of smallpox vaccines. The signs of ongoing transmission.
22D (BA.2.75) is now available on CoVariants! It's visible as part of Per Country & Per Variant plots, on the shared mutation page - and of course, has a page of its own!
On the 22D page, you can read about some initial 22D / BA.2.75 work on things like immune-evasion, see a list of defining mutations, a plot of the variant growth, link to Aquaria protein viz, & see a list of other mutations present in the variant.