Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
Jan 30 5 tweets 4 min read
On Friday the @WHO's Emergency Committee on #Covid19 met for the 14th time. Their report was just published and they recommend keeping #covid19 as a public health emergency of international concern (#PHEIC) for now:
who.int/news/item/30-0…
@WHO But they also say "that the COVID-19 pandemic may be approaching an inflexion point" and recommend that WHO and partners "should develop a proposal for alternative mechanisms to maintain the global and national focus on COVID-19 after the PHEIC is terminated"
@WHO "The Committee also requested the WHO Secretariat to provide an assessment regarding the regulatory implications for developing and authorizing vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics if the PHEIC were to be terminated in the coming months."
@WHO .@DrTedros followed that recommendation, determining that the #covid19 pandemic still constitutes a PHEIC.
But as it says in @WHO's statement on this:
@WHO @DrTedros "The Director-General acknowledges the Committee’s views that the COVID-19 pandemic is probably at a transition point and appreciates the advice of the Committee to navigate this transition carefully and mitigate the potential negative consequences."

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More from @kakape

Jan 11
The Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution at @WHO just published their rapid risk assessment of the #SARSCoV2 variant #XBB15:
@WHO "Based on its genetic characteristics and early growth rate estimates, XBB.1.5 may contribute to increases in case incidence globally. To date, the overall confidence in the assessment is low as growth advantage estimates are only from one country, the United States of America."
@WHO As usual more questions than answers at this stage of assessing a new variant.
I will save you my usual long thread on living with uncertainty and warning you off people who pretend to have all the answers already.
Instead, here is a rough timeline for crucial studies:
Read 6 tweets
Jan 4
"Now into the fourth year of the pandemic, the world is in a much better place than it was several years ago, due to clinical care management, vaccines and treatments", @DrTedros starts @WHO's first press conference of 2023 acknowledging the progress made.
@DrTedros @WHO "#COVID19 will no doubt still be a major topic of discussion, but I believe and hope that with the right efforts this will be the year the public health emergency officially ends", says @DrTedros acknowledging one of the big questions of 2023: if, when and how the PHEIC will end
@DrTedros @WHO "Despite clear progress, the threat of #COVID19 persists. There are still major inequities in access to testing, treatment and vaccination and ultimately #COVID19 remains a dangerous virus for health economies and societies overall", says @DrTedros (Covid-19 is not the virus!)
Read 7 tweets
Jan 4
"No new variant or mutation of known significance is noted in the publicly available sequence data."

Interesting statement by WHO's Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution which met yesterday to discuss the #covid19 situation in #China:
who.int/news/item/04-0…
"The China CDC analysis showed a predominance of Omicron lineages BA.5.2 and BF.7 among locally acquired infections. ...These variants are known and have been circulating in other countries, and at the present time no new variant has been reported by the China CDC."
"Acknowledging the information shared so far, the TAG-VE reiterates the critical need for and importance of additional analysis as well as sharing of sequence data to understand the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and the emergence of concerning mutations or variants"
Read 4 tweets
Dec 29, 2022
It has been another busy sad interesting infuriating illuminating year in #globalhealth and #infectiousdisease.
Or as @DrMikeRyan told me: “2022 [was] kind of a mixed year, filled with terror and hope in equal measure.”
My colleague @SalmLaura and I asked doctors and researchers to look back at 2022 for an end-of-year episode of our @pandemiapodcast (and another episode to come soon on what 2023 may bring).
Podcast is here (in German) and a few main points to come:
viertausendhertz.de/pan52/
COVID...
of course dominated yet another year. As @DrMikeRyan told me: “I think we’ve all been a little surprised that the pandemic extended so fully through 2022.”
Read 24 tweets
Nov 24, 2022
At the end of this month @doctorsoumya is leaving @WHO.
I talked to her about her time as the agency’s first chief scientist, her biggest accomplishments, like the mRNA hub, and her biggest regret: not acknowledging earlier that #SARSCoV2 is airborne
🧵👇

science.org/content/articl…
First of all: Her departure is part of a larger shake-up in @WHO‘s top ranks with half the senior leadership slated to leave, as has been reported by @HealthPolicyW. Some - like Swaminathan - were planning to leave anyway, others not so much.

healthpolicy-watch.news/half-whos-seni…
It will be interesting to see how @DrTedros changes things. There’s been some pressure to reduce the number of assistant DGs so there may be some consolidation, but @drsoumya told me that she expected the chief scientist role to definitely be filled again even if takes some time
Read 18 tweets
Nov 18, 2022
Judging by the influx of new followers I am getting over at Mastodon, a lot of people are starting to think that Twitter's future looks really bleak. So a few thoughts on #RIPTwitter, the future of #sciencetwitter and all that:
First of all, I have no insight into what is going on at Twitter. I am simply someone who has been addicted to this particular platform for many years, really loves what it has allowed me to do and hopefully has contributed the kind of content that made Twitter valuable to many.
As others have pointed out Twitter is as unlikely to go up in flames tomorrow as it is to become a well-run, nicely moderated global town square. But like @oneunderscore__ I find it increasingly hard to see any good outcome at the end of all this

Read 12 tweets

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