See what we’re reading this week at Global Biodefense on topics including global disease outbreak tracking, CBRN incident management, and perspectives on biosecurity in the Middle East and Africa.
BIOPREPAREDNESS
- Opportunities to finance pandemic preparedness (The Lancet)
- Preparing for (another) biological attack (Phys.org)
- Getting serious on global health security (Center for Global Development)
- GUMC launches Center for Global Health Science and Security (Reuters)
- Biosecurity and biosafety: Perspectives from the Middle East and Africa (CRDF)
- Illegal trade in wild-animal meat could cause next global pandemic (Quartz)
- Awareness can control zoonotic diseases (Financial Express)
- UB exercise to test biosafety preparedness (UB Now)
POLICY & POLITICS
- CDC whistleblower claims agency has been using wrong Zika test (WaPo)
- Reading the rules of gene regulation with CRISPR (Phys.org)
- Dispute within CDC over Zika testing (The Scientist)
SELECT AGENTS
- Securing anthrax – the risk of incomplete inactivation (GAO Watch Blog)
- Analysis identifies lethal strain of anthrax the Soviets produced as bioweapon (STAT)
- How the anthrax toxin forms a deadly ‘conveyer belt’ (Science Daily)
- Searching for Ebola’s hideout (Mosaic)
MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
- A guide to the changing science of flu shots (STAT)
- Considerations for developing a Zika virus vaccine (NEJM)
- K-State University contributes to potential Zika virus vaccine development (K-State)
- How a garbage fire could lead to new antibiotics (The Atlantic)
- Why a Zika vaccine is a long way off (The Conversation)
- Zika vaccine enters clinical trials (JAMA)
OUTBREAK NEWS & THREAT SURVEILLANCE
- The first documented case of Zika spread by physical contact (The Atlantic)
- How Los Alamos is learning to track disease outbreaks around the world (MIT)
- 10 people die from monkeypox disease in the Central African Republic (Africa News)
- AgConnect Emergency Exercise showcases system’s value (HPJ)
- AMR poses significant health risks, challenges to clinical care (Healio)
- Dynamic forecasting of Zika epidemics using Google Trends (BioRxiv)
CHEMICAL & RADIOLOGICAL THREATS
- Chemical weapon wasn’t used near U.S. troops in Iraq (USA Today)
- Psychosocial Aspects of CBRN Incident Management (PLOS Currents Disasters)
- Islamic State ‘dead set’ on using chemical weapons (VOA)
RESEARCH & TECH
- Vela Diagnostics gets emergency U.S. authorization for Zika test (Reuters)
- 12 DHS opportunities worth more than $100 million (Bloomberg)
- Bringing big data to bear on infectious disease (GCN)
HISTORICAL & SPECIAL INTEREST
- Smallpox in 1721 may have changed the course of American History (Biominute)
- A Bacillus anthracis genome sequence from Sverdlovsk 1979 autopsy specimens (mBio)