Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
White House Will Share Some Covid Tech With WHO
The Washington Post: U.S. To Share Some Coronavirus Technologies With World Health Organization
The Biden administration will share U.S. government-devised coronavirus technologies with the World Health Organization, a policy shift intended to allow other countries to replicate some American scientific breakthroughs and better fight the pandemic abroad, federal officials said Thursday. Under the plan, some technologies now being developed by the National Institutes of Health will be licensed to the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, senior NIH official Anthony S. Fauci told reporters. The technologies will also be sub-licensed to the United Nations-backed Medicines Patent Pool. (Diamond, 3/3)
Reuters: S.Africa Risks Destroying 100,000 Vaccine Doses By End-March Due To Slow Uptake
About 100,000 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine (PFE.N) are at risk of being destroyed by the end of this month due to slow uptake by citizens, South African health authorities said on Friday. South Africa has recorded the most coronavirus infections and deaths on the African continent, however inoculations have slowed and the country has ample vaccine stocks of about 25 million doses. (3/4)
NPR: Striking New Evidence Points To Seafood Market In Wuhan As Pandemic Origin Point
Over the weekend, an international team of scientists published two extensive papers online, offering the strongest evidence to date that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in animals at a market in Wuhan, China. Specifically, they conclude that the coronavirus most likely jumped from a caged wild animal into people at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where a huge COVID-19 outbreak began in December 2019. Scientists who weren't involved in the research papers are calling the new data "very convincing" and a "blow" to the lab-leak theory — that the virus somehow escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which does research on coronaviruses. In reaction to the papers, they say the newly published data is tipping the scales toward wildlife sold at the market. (Doucleff, 3/3)
In other global developments —
Bloomberg: Mosquito-Borne Virus Spreads From Pigs To Humans In Australia
A mosquito-borne disease that can cause brain inflammation has emerged in Australia and infected at least one person, prompting officials to issue health alerts for people working with pigs and horses. The confirmed Japanese encephalitis case in Queensland state, along with three suspected human infections in Victoria, follows the detection of the virus earlier in the week across multiple pork farms. On Friday, the nation’s health department declared the situation a Communicable Disease Incident of National Significance. (Gross, 3/4)
