See what we’re reading this week at Global Biodefense on topics including assessing the future bioweapons threat, contending with pockets with high vaccine refusal rates, and the impact of the Ebola response on public health programs.
POLICY, PRACTICES & POLITICS
- Antimicrobial resistance: an underrated biological threat (BOTAS)
- Trump administration may be woefully underprepared for pandemic (FA)
- A proposed methodology for assessing future bioweapon threats (AMSUS)
- Government must take action to protect against 21st-century health threats (Hill)
- Flight risk: Quarantining an entire plane would be a huge deal (Pulitzer Center)
- Sustainable model for public health emergency operations centers (CDC)
- Global biothreat and cross-border resource management (JofB&B)
- Frontline field epidemiology training programs (CDC)
CHEMICAL & RADIOLOGICAL THREATS
- Russia shuts down UN probe into Syrian chemical weapons (Pandora Report)
- Mysterious radioactive cloud over Europe hints at accident farther east (NPR)
MEDICAL COUNTERMEASURES
- Venezuelans suffer as malaria outbreak spreads in drug-short nation (Reuters)
- There are still pockets of alarmingly high vaccine refusal rates (Vox)
- Drug development could suffer from proposed NIH budget cuts (The Scientist)
- How flu shot manufacturing forces influenza to mutate (TSRI)
SELECT AGENTS
- Spotlight seminar on Japanese germ warfare (Pandora Report)
- Bio-detoxification of ricin in castor bean seeds (Nature)
- Bacillus anthracis gamma phage lysis among soil bacteria (MBC)
- Ebola response impact on public health programs, West Africa, 2014–2017 (EID)
- Ganglioside and cell membrane recognition of botulinum neurotoxin (Nature)
- Proteomic signatures differentiating B. anthracis Sterne sporulation on soil (RCS)
- Asian house shrew as a source of plague outbreaks in Madagascar (NCBI)
- Poxviruses: Slipping and sliding through transcription and translation (PLOS)
- Plague entomological and rodent surveillance in Iran (Semantics Scholar)
OUTBREAK NEWS & THREAT SURVEILLANCE
- Bird flu moves throughout Asia (Pandora Report)
- Study of H7N9 clusters finds no change in risk of human-to-human spread (CIDRAP)
RESEARCH & TECH
- Impact of aerosol dust on xMAP multiplex detection of pathogens (Frontiers)
- MRSA ventilator-associated pneumonia: Myth or reality? (Healio)
- Utility of NGS-based methods in BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratory (FuncGen)
SPECIAL INTEREST
- The elusive 1918 flu virus: Bracing for the return of another pandemic (MIMS)
- The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in Washington (Nisqually Daily News)