The United Kingdom Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says there has been a confirmed human case of avian flu in southwest England, adding that the person had been in close contact with infected birds and there was no evidence of onward transmission.
"The person acquired the infection from very close, regular contact with a large number of infected birds, which they kept in and around their home over a prolonged period of time," the UKHSA said.
"All contacts of the individual, including those who visited the premises, have been traced and there is no evidence of onward spread of the infection to anyone else," it added.
"The individual is currently well and self-isolating."
The UKHSA said the risk to the wider public from avian flu continues to be very low but said people should not touch sick or dead birds.
"Bird to human transmission of avian flu is very rare and has only occurred a small number of times in the UK previously," it said.
The UK has recently registered a large number of bird flu outbreaks among animals, with the UK's Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss issuing warnings to bird owners over hygiene.
On December 21, she said the UK faced its largest ever outbreak of bird flu with more than 60 cases confirmed across the country since the start of November.
Some strains of bird flu can pass from birds to people but this is extremely rare, according to the UKHSA.
It usually requires close contact with an infected bird, so the risk to humans is generally considered very low.
Human-to-human transmission of bird flu is also very rare, the organisation said.
The case was detected after the Animal and Plant health Agency identified an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in a flock of birds.
The infected birds have all been culled.
As a precaution, the UKHSA swabbed the person involved and detected low levels of flu.
Further lab analysis showed that the virus was the H5 type found in birds.
The White House said on Thursday the decision to enact vaccine mandates for schools is up to local school districts.
"Those decisions related to schools .... will always be up to local school districts in terms of what steps need to be taken," White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
The White House also said it would continue to make the case for schools to be kept open, including in Chicago, where officials canceled classes in the nation's third-largest school district on Wednesday amid a dispute with the teachers' union.
China reported fewer COVID cases on Friday as several cities held back moves, while a senior official warned hospitals not to turn away patients after a woman miscarried during A lockdown in the city of Xian sparked outrage.
China reported 116 locally transmitted infections with confirmed clinical symptoms as of Thursday, mainly in Xian and Henan province, up from 132 a day earlier, according to official data released on Friday.
Xian, a city of 13 million people in northwestern China, has entered its 16th day of containment, although officials have said the outbreak has been brought under control there. Xian is in Shaanxi province which borders Henan.
“The risk of a large-scale rebound in (Xian’s) epidemic has been largely contained,” Xinhua’s official news service said quoting Li Qun, a disease control and prevention official, in an article published Thursday evening.
During Xian’s lockdown, residents complained about restricted access to food and medical care, and the story of a pregnant woman who lost her unborn baby after waiting outside a local hospital for two hours angered on Chinese social media and led to the punishment of city officials.
Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said she was “painted and deeply ashamed” of the difficulties people have in obtaining hospital services in Xian, the Xinhua News Agency said.
“Medical institutions (…) should not just turn away patients under any excuse during COVID screening,” Sun said.
The city government said on Friday that people without proof of a negative test result within 48 hours should not be barred from leaving their residential complexes to go to hospital, overturning a previous requirement.
Outbreaks in China remain minimal compared to many overseas, and the highly transmissible variant of Omicron has yet to be announced among local infections in Henan or Xian, but local governments have maintained a large vigilance.
A Chinese national and former Monsanto employee pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal trade secrets from the company to help the Chinese government, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.
Xiang Haitao, 44, was employed by the St. Louis company and subsidiary The Climate Corp. from 2008 to 2017, where he worked as an imaging scientist, the Justice Department said. Monsanto is now part of German pharmaceutical and chemical company Bayer AG.
Mr. Xiang pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit economic espionage and is scheduled to be sentenced April 7.
He faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a potential fine of $5 million, the department said.
French drugmaker Sanofi SA will partner with British AI firm Exscientia Plc to develop up to 15 drug candidates across oncology and immunology, in a deal worth up to $5.2 billion in milestone payments, the two companies said on Friday.
Exscientia will get an upfront cash payment of $100 million, leading discovery and design of small molecule drugs up to nomination of the candidate most likely to be viable. After that, Sanofi will take charge of clinical development.
Sanofi is among the many pharmaceutical giants venturing into artificial intelligence to improve accuracy and reduce time spent on research, with investment firms like SoftBank also betting big on the space.
Exscientia, which went public on the Nasdaq in October, uses artificial intelligence to discover drug molecules, especially focused on treating cancer and immune disorders, through partnerships with pharma firms such as Roche and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Sanofi and Exscientia have been working together since 2016, and if the French company commercializes a drug from the partnership, Exscientia will also be eligible for royalty payments of up to 21% of net sales.
"Typically, we have to synthesize 5,000 molecules to find that one right molecule which will be then become the clinical candidate. By applying AI, you can potentially do this by just looking at 500... So that can shorten timelines," said Frank Nestle, global head of research and chief scientific officer at Sanofi.
In November, the company invested $180 million for a 10% to 15% stake in French startup Owkin, whose predictive algorithms aim to improve the research and development of new cures against cancer.
He’s right — and Catholic schools have demonstrated that most of the two years of lost learning and socializing, along with the attendant burdens families faced, were unnecessary.
While public schools got bogged down in pandemic politics, union-driven closures and a year and a half of mostly ineffective remote learning, Catholic schools in major cities have been continually open for in-person instruction since September 2020.
They followed the science: Faculty and students adapted to masking, social distancing, teaching in small cohorts and contact tracing. They demonstrated that safe in-person learning was possible despite the pandemic.
In the 2020-2021 school year, only one case of COVID-19 in New York’s Catholic schools was traced to in-school transmission. Similarly in Boston, Catholic schools reopened almost a year ahead of public schools without any COVID-19 outbreaks.
With New York schools adopting safety measures similar to the proven Catholic-school measures, Adams can say that “the safest place for children is inside school.”
When public schools shut down in early 2020 and fumbled with remote learning, Catholic schools scrambled to get students tablets and Wi-Fi hotspots. They kept regular schedules, traditions and instruction remotely while using technology to digitize schoolwork.
Catholic schools in major cities have been able to stay open by following COVID-19 protocols for most of the pandemic.Matthew McDermott
With the pandemic persisting, Catholic schools used summer 2020 to prepare to reopen safely with most students in class and a remote option for families uncomfortable with in-person schooling. For these remote students, Catholic schools did synchronous instruction as the best alternative to in-person participation, with uniforms and cameras on for virtual class.
Upon reopening, Catholic schools added counseling for the serious student problems closings caused, particularly for those from troubled homes and neighborhoods for whom their schools’ structure, activities and values provide safe passage through the day. On the academic side, Catholic schools used cutting-edge technology to identify and remedy individual education deficits resulting from closings and remote learning.
Meanwhile, New York’s public schools stumbled into the 2020-2021 school year woefully unprepared and two weeks late. Then, many schools still closed due to the low 3% positivity-rate threshold for closures the teachers union won by threatening an illegal strike.
Roughly 70% of the city’s students spent the school year entirely remote. It was a lost year for most, followed by weak catch-up programs.
It wasn’t for lack of funding: New York City spends the most of any large school district in the country, $28,000 per pupil — almost three times the $10,000 per student cost of the city’s Catholic schools, which have higher graduation and college matriculation rates generally and for similarly disadvantaged students.
Concerned parents voted with their feet. Gotham schools have lost 50,000 students since fall 2019, a 4.5% drop or quadruple the rate of decline from the two prior non-pandemic school years. Parochial-school enrollments, by contrast, were up for the first time in 27 years, with 2,500 students transferring from public schools despite the burden of tuition. In Brooklyn and Queens, after years of steady decline, 60% of parochial schools have expanded enrollments, with the share of non-Catholic students at an all-time high of 20%.
Boston’s parochial schools added more than 5,000 new students the last two school years, with 80% transferring from public schools. At about 32,500 students, Boston’s parochial-school system is a sizable alternative to Boston’s 46,000-student public-school system.
Mayor Eric Adams has remained committed to keeping schools open during the COVID-19 surge.Matthew McDermott
Without teachers unions and stifling bureaucracies, Catholic schools outperform public schools in good times — but institutions are truly tested in bad times, and under the stress of a once-in-a-century pandemic, Catholic schools stayed true to their charges, adapted and proved what worked.
For public schools, it’s a question of having the political will to stand up to teachers unions: Under public pressure for exploiting the pandemic to shutter schools to the detriment of our children’s education and well-being, unions have publicly changed their tune — but they still threaten closures.
After eight years of obeisance to the teachers union, it’s refreshing to have a mayor who puts students first.
Ed Cox was a founder and the co-chairman of SUNY’s Charter School Committee and has been involved with Catholic schools since 1985 as a founding director of Student Sponsor Partners, which sponsors needy students in Catholic high schools.
The Chief Executive Officer of Moderna said that he anticipates people will need a second COVID-19 booster shot this fall as the vaccine’s efficacy wanes over the next few months.
Stephane Bancel, speaking at a Goldman Sachs-organized healthcare conference on Thursday, said Moderna is working on a booster shot focused on the omicron variant of COVID-19, however it’s unlikely that it will be available in the next two months.
“I still believe we’re going to need boosters in the fall of ’22 and forward,” Bancel said.
A new study from Israel showed that a fourth dose of the vaccine boosts antibodies five-fold, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced on Tuesday. The country has already begun dosing immunocompromised individuals.
Moderna announced during its third quarter earnings results that commercial booster market sales could reach $2 billion in the United States in 2022.
