U.N. News: COVID-19: U.N. relief chief urges G20 to step up to avert ‘cascading crises’ in fragile countries
“The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession are set to trigger the first increase in global poverty in three decades, pushing 265 million people to the point of starvation by the end of the year, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official warned on Friday. Mark Lowcock called on the world’s leading industrial nations, the G20, to step up support, as he released an updated $10.3 billion appeal to fight coronavirus spread in 63 low-income countries…” (7/16).

U.N. News: World off track in meeting 2030 Agenda, U.N. deputy chief warns, calls for solidarity in COVID-19 recovery
“The world was off track in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, even before the COVID-19 crisis erupted, but can get back on course by increasing investment in public services, showing solidarity on financing, and ‘reshaping’ how people work, learn, live, and consume. ‘We can turn this around, if we stay true to the 2030 Agenda,’ said Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, as she closed the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) — an annual stock-take of the world’s progress in reaching the SDGs, but ‘the road ahead is now even steeper,’ she added…” (7/16).

VOA News: U.N. Raises COVID-19 Appeal to $10.3 Billion
“The United Nations raised its appeal Friday to combat the health and economic impacts of COVID-19 in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries to $10.3 billion, warning that inaction now could cost countless lives and trillions of dollars later. … In late March, the U.N. initially appealed for $2 billion for about 40 countries to cope with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. As the virus continued to spread, it raised that request in May to $6.7 billion. Only $1.64 billion of those funds have been received…” (Besheer, 7/16).

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CNN: The muddled public message on coronavirus isn’t just confusing. It’s harmful
“…The World Health Organization’s (WHO) apparent lack of clarity on whether people should wear face masks to help stop the spread of coronavirus is just one of its messages that has confused the public. … But a number of communication and behavioral science experts say the WHO is definitely not alone in bungling some of its communication around the pandemic. … This muddled messaging is a major problem…” (Kottasová, 7/16).

The Guardian: Protests predicted to surge globally as Covid-19 drives unrest
“The economic impact of coronavirus is a ‘tinderbox’ that will drive civil unrest and instability in developing countries in the second half of 2020, according to new analysis. Highest risk countries facing a ‘perfect storm,’ where protests driven by the pandemic’s economic fallout are likely to inflame existing grievances, include Nigeria, Iran, Bangladesh, Algeria, and Ethiopia, the analysis said. Thirty-seven countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, could face unparalleled street protests for up to three years, global risk firm Verisk Maplecroft warned…” (McVeigh, 7/17).

IPS: With Poverty & Hunger Skyrocketing, is a Global Economic Rescue Package the Answer?
“…Abby Maxman, President & CEO of Oxfam America, told IPS COVID-19 is the final straw for millions of people already struggling with the impacts of conflict, inequality, and climate change. She said Oxfam is calling on the international community to agree to an ‘Economic Rescue Package for All,’ which includes fully funding the U.N.’s humanitarian appeal to enable the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance…” (Deen, 7/16).

NPR: Coronavirus Around The World: How Countries Are Coping With COVID-19 Surges
“A look around the globe shows other countries — Brazil, South Africa, Iraq — are in turmoil as the relentless coronavirus pandemic takes its toll…” (Reeves et al., 7/17).

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Fox News: WHO taps ex-PM who blasted U.S. withdrawal to lead coronavirus inquiry, as Pompeo warns of whitewash
“The World Health Organization has appointed former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who criticized the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO as ‘foolish,’ to lead the embattled agency’s probe into the coronavirus pandemic — as the Trump administration says it fears a ‘whitewashed’ investigation. … On Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated that he was not hopeful for the upcoming investigation, particularly given the Chinese government’s lack of transparency in the past…” (Shaw, 7/16).

Reuters: Germany urges WHO to hasten review of its handling of pandemic
“Germany’s health minister urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to speed up its review of how it has handled the coronavirus pandemic, apparently signaling Europe taking a tougher line on the United Nations body. Berlin, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, has so far largely shielded the Geneva-based organization from the most intense criticism by Washington, which wants to leave the WHO because of its alleged excessive closeness to China. But now Germany seems to be taking a more assertive position…” (Guarascio et al., 7/16).

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The Lancet: New funds proposed to prevent pandemics
“…In May, a month after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his withdrawal from WHO, a bipartisan bill on global health security was introduced by Republican Senator Jim Risch and two Democrat colleagues. The bill seeks to ‘contain infectious disease outbreaks overseas before they become global pandemics.’ It calls for a commitment of US$3 billion over 5 years, part of which would finance a trust fund, possibly housed at the World Bank, to help boost low-income countries’ epidemic preparedness. … While the three senators work to gain bipartisan support, a separate trust fund on global health security has been taking form at the World Bank, with Japan as the founding donor. Approved by the board in late June, the new fund has a target size of $500 million and has so far received a commitment of $100 million from the Japanese government. The bank is currently in discussions with several donors, but has not yet received other donor commitments. The prospect of two separate funds with virtually the same mandate raises the question of whether the two might end up being merged…” (Usher, 7/18).

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NPR: E.U. Leaders Meet In Hopes Of Closing Divisions Over COVID-19 Relief Package
“European Union leaders were going into their first face-to-face meeting in months on Friday, hoping to hammer out details of a 1.85 trillion euro ($2.1 trillion) E.U. budget and COVID-19 recovery plan amid a global pandemic that has touched off the worst recession in the bloc’s history. The urgency of the crisis has caused the leaders of the 27-nation grouping to abandon a series of video conference summits in favor of looking one another in the eyes — albeit from across a large room. The E.U. is deeply divided between members eager for a proposed 750 billion euro ($855 billion) stimulus package to offset the economic pain of the pandemic, such as Spain and Italy, and northern European nations whose economies have been less affected…” (Neuman, 7/17).

Devex: Missing: €5B in humanitarian aid (Chadwick, 7/17).

New York Times: It’s Merkel’s Last Rodeo. Will a Pandemic Rescue Deal Seal Her Legacy? (Erlanger, 7/16).

Wall Street Journal: ECB Leaves Monetary Stimulus Unchanged as It Assesses Pandemic’s Economic Pain (Fairless/Hannon, 7/16).

Washington Post: Coronavirus has weakened the West’s nationalists (Tharoor, 7/17).

Washington Post: 27 world leaders will meet in the same room Friday after months of Zoom diplomacy (Birnbaum, 7/16).

Washington Post: Angela Merkel is riding high as she steers Europe’s coronavirus recovery effort (Morris, 7/16).

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Wall Street Journal: Russian Hack Alert Shows Scale of Health Care’s Cybersecurity Challenge
“Intelligence agencies in the U.S. and U.K. are now warning that other nations are targeting health-care organizations and pharmaceutical companies with cyberattacks. But security chiefs at hospitals, research facilities, and drugmakers say they have been under siege for months already. Thursday’s alert from the National Cyber Security Centre in the U.K., backed by U.S. and Canadian agencies, was unusually direct in its attribution, blaming a hacking group linked to Russian security services. The Kremlin has refuted the allegations. … The problem isn’t new for these companies, who have been dealing for months with volumes of attack attempts that far outstrip what they detected before the pandemic…” (Rundle, 7/16).

Additional coverage of the hacking alert is available from Bloomberg, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

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Bloomberg Law: Moderna Shows Positive Vaccine Result, With Hint Oxford’s Next (Langreth, 7/15).

Devex: DevExplains: Monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19 (Ravelo, 7/17).

Fortune: Fauci is optimistic we’ll see COVID vaccine breakthroughs by early Fall (Raimonde et al., 7/17).

The Guardian: How quickly will there be a vaccine? And what if people refuse to get it? (Renwick, 7/16).

New York Times: In Coronavirus Vaccine Race, China Strays From the Official Paths (Wee et al., 7/16).

New York Times: How a Struggling Company Won $1.6 Billion to Make a Coronavirus Vaccine (Thomas/Twohey, 7/16).

Reuters: Exclusive: J&J in talks with Japan, Gates Foundation to lock in deals on COVID-19 vaccine (O’Donnell/Mishra, 7/16).

Reuters: J&J says large study of coronavirus vaccine could begin in September (Mishra/O’Donnell, 7/16).

Reuters: Novartis to provide ‘no profit’ COVID-19 drugs to low income countries (Miller/Polityuk, 7/16).

STAT: New Covid-19 study, despite flaws, adds to case against hydroxychloroquine (Herper, 7/16).

STAT: Novartis to provide drugs for Covid-19 patients to poor countries at cost, but fails to disclose pricing (Silverman, 7/16).

Vox: Covid-19 vaccine trials are showing promising results. A lot can still go wrong (Irfan, 7/15).

Wall Street Journal: Hydroxychloroquine Didn’t Help Patients With Early and Mild Covid-19, Study Finds (Hopkins, 7/16).

Washington Post: Hydroxychloroquine studies show drug is not effective for early treatment of mild covid-19 (McGinley, 7/16).

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AFRICA

AP: African nation blasts ‘inequality crisis’ in virus testing (Anna, 7/16).

Devex: Politics gets in the way of Nigeria’s COVID-19 response (Adepoju, 7/17).

VOA: WHO Calls for End to Africa Conflicts to Fight Coronavirus (Yusef, 7/16).

ASIA

AP: Struggling India crosses 1 million coronavirus cases (Saaliq et al., 7/17).

New York Times: India Coronavirus Cases Surge Past One Million (Singh/Gettleman, 7/16).

New York Times: No One Knows What Thailand Is Doing Right, but So Far, It’s Working (Beech, 7/16).

NPR: Australian State Orders ‘No Dancing, No Singing, No Mingling’ To Halt COVID-19 (Neuman, 7/17).

Washington Post: In a Siberian village, the lockdown is extreme. Trenches have sealed it off (Dixon, 7/17).

EUROPE

Financial Times: U.K. builds up Covid-19 medicines stockpile in case of second wave (Neville, 7/16).

The Guardian: Revealed: Italy’s call for urgent help was ignored as coronavirus swept through Europe (Boffey et al., 7/15).

Xinhua: WHO says COVID-19 situation in Eastern Mediterranean region remains alarming (7/16).

LATIN AMERICA

AP: Brazil tops 2 million coronavirus cases, with 76,000 dead (Savarese/Biller, 7/16).

PRI: Bogotá tries ‘staggered quarantine’ to slow coronavirus spread (Valencia, 7/16).

MIDDLE EAST

New Humanitarian: How coronavirus hit Aden: A Yemeni doctor’s diary (Derwish, July 2020).

Vox: Syria’s Idlib was already a humanitarian nightmare. Now the coronavirus has arrived (Kirby, 7/16).

NORTH AMERICA

AP: Puerto Rico rolls back openings amid spike in COVID-19 cases (Coto, 7/16).

The Hill: Vaccine scientist predicts U.S. is weeks away from every American knowing ‘seriously ill’ coronavirus patient (Bowden, 7/16).

STAT: NIH Director Francis Collins defends Fauci amid White House criticism (Facher, 7/16).

Wall Street Journal: Congress Set to Tackle Vaccine Funding in Next Round of Coronavirus Aid (Peterson et al., 7/16).

Wall Street Journal: Growing Wait Times for Covid-19 Test Results Hinder Virus Response (Abbott et al., 7/16).

Xinhua: U.S. approaches half million new COVID-19 cases each week: report (7/16).

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NPR: Trump Redirects Foreign Aid Agency To Work On Pandemic. Congress Has Questions
“The renewed surge in coronavirus cases has left some states once again scrambling to find supplies of masks, gowns, gloves, and other medical supplies. The shortages have drawn attention to President Trump’s plan to help rebuild the national stockpile of these supplies — a plan that involves a little-known foreign aid agency. The U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) is just getting started on its new pandemic assignment. But the fact that it is involved at all is being questioned by some Democratic members of Congress who have called for an independent review of the agency’s activities. They want to know why this new foreign aid agency, which has been up and running for less than a year, needs to be working on this daunting domestic issue…” (Ordoñez, 7/17).

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STAT: How HHS’s new hospital data reporting system will actually affect the U.S. Covid-19 response
“…The Department of Health and Human Services changed the rules, quietly, earlier this week: Hospitals would be required to report data on Covid-19 patients and deaths directly to their agency, rather than to both HHS and the CDC, as they had been doing. HHS said it would help the administration better allocate supplies and drugs. But CDC supporters saw it as further evidence of the agency being sidelined, and hospitals decried the implication that it was their reporting — rather than changing federal requirements — that was to blame for data issues and supply shortages. Nearly everyone had questions about how, exactly, it would all work. And days later, the nation’s top public health experts are still scrambling to figure out how seriously this new policy change will impact the Covid-19 response in the U.S…” (Florko/Boodman, 7/16).

Washington Post: Disappearance of covid-19 data from CDC website spurs outcry
“On the eve of a new coronavirus reporting system this week, data disappeared from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as hospitals began filing information to a private contractor or their states instead. A day later, an outcry — including from other federal health officials — prompted the Trump administration to reinstate that dashboard and another daily CDC report on the pandemic. And on Thursday, the nation’s governors joined the chorus of objections over the abruptness of the change to the reporting protocols for hospitals, asking the administration to delay the shift for 30 days. In a statement, the National Governors Association said hospitals need the time to learn a new system, as they continue to deal with this pandemic. The governors also urged the administration to keep the information publicly available…” (Sun/Goldstein, 7/16).

CNBC: Coronavirus data has already disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC (Feuer, 7/16).

POLITICO: Who took down the CDC’s coronavirus data? The agency itself (Diamond et al., 7/16).

Science: Data secrecy is crippling attempts to slow COVID-19’s spread in U.S., epidemiologists warn (Piller, 7/16).

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AP: Pompeo says U.S. should limit which human rights it defends
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued Thursday for a more limited U.S. view of global human rights advocacy based on the principals laid out by America’s Founding Fathers, a suggestion critics assumed meant stepping away from more modern concepts such as support for women and the LGBQT communities around the world. Pompeo, speaking in Philadelphia, singled out property rights and religious freedom as ‘foremost’ principals in a speech that elsewhere complained about the ‘proliferation’ of protections in international agreements related to human rights…” (Fox, 7/16).

The Hill: Pompeo attacks media, monument protests in speech on human rights
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday attacked the media as promoting Chinese propaganda and criticized the U.S.’s national reckoning on racism in remarks unveiling the State Department’s first report on the Commission on Unalienable Rights. The commission, meant to establish a foundational text for how the U.S. defines human rights, has been criticized as creating a blueprint to ignore modern understandings of women’s reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ individuals…” (Kelly, 7/16).

New York Times: Pompeo Says Human Rights Policy Must Prioritize Property Rights and Religion
“… ‘It’s important for every American, and for every American diplomat, to recognize how our founders understood unalienable rights,’ Mr. Pompeo said. ‘Foremost among these rights are property rights and religious liberty.’ Human rights scholars have criticized Mr. Pompeo’s panel since its inception, noting it was filled with conservatives who were intent on promoting views against abortion and marriage equality. Critics also warned that it sidestepped the State Department’s internal bureau responsible for promoting human rights abroad…” (Verma, 7/16).

POLITICO: Pompeo rolls out a selective vision of human rights
“…The initial responses to the speech and draft report landed around expected lines, with conservative organizations praising it and liberal-leaning groups — as well some prominent international human rights groups — questioning its value. … Pompeo said the commission’s work was critical because the U.S. and the world need a rethink of human rights policy. One reason for that, he said, is that activists have created new categories of rights, and that the world could lose perspective on what are truly core, fundamental rights. … Pompeo didn’t spend much time in his speech detailing what rights matter more than others, aside from placing property rights and religious freedom at the top of the heap…” (Toosi, 7/16).

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POLITICO: USAID’s controversial White House liaison heads to media shop
“William Maloney, the powerful and controversial White House liaison at the U.S. Agency for International Development, is leaving his job, according to two Trump administration officials familiar with the matter, and is going to the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Maloney, 23, will start Friday as an adviser in the front office of the new leader of USAGM, Michael Pack, where he will assist Pack in his efforts to dramatically reshape the agency. Pack, a Steve Bannon ally, fired the heads of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and other outlets as he started as CEO of the taxpayer-funded media group, moves that drew criticism from members of both parties in Congress…” (Lippman/Toosi, 7/16).

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Devex: U.K.’s reputation could be ‘damaged beyond repair’ by DFID merger
“The United Kingdom’s reputation could be ‘damaged beyond repair’ by the merger of the Department for International Development into the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the chair of the parliamentary watchdog for aid has warned. Sarah Champion, a member of Parliament who heads the cross-party International Development Committee, made the comments as the IDC published a scathing review of the government’s ‘impulsive’ merger decision…” (Worley, 7/16).

The Guardian: DfiD merger will ‘severely impact’ U.K.’s status, concludes cross-party inquiry
“…Publishing its final report from its inquiry into the effectiveness of U.K. aid, the IDC raised concerns about the lack of consultation ahead of the merger and asked for a full explanation to be given to parliament, including why the decision had been taken amid a pandemic and when the U.K. aid budget was facing multi-billion-pound cuts. The committee also called on the government to outline its plans for DfiD’s staff and experts and to clarify how its ‘refreshed international policy’ would help towards meeting the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, to which the U.K. is committed…” (McVeigh, 7/16).

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New York Times: WHO Asks for Help Fighting Growing Ebola Outbreak
“The World Health Organization raised the alarm Thursday about a growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and warned of an imminent shortage of funds to fight the deadly disease. The organization said that 56 cases have been reported in Equator Province, which is greater than the total number of cases recorded in the province’s last outbreak in 2018. Efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic have complicated the response to the Ebola outbreak, according to Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa…” (Waldstein, 7/16).

Additional coverage of the WHO’s response to the new DRC Ebola outbreak is available from New York Times, The Telegraph, U.N. News, UPI, and VOA News.

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Devex: Video: What will it take to decolonize global health? (Byatnal/Mihara, 7/17).

Devex: USAID, IDB award crowdsourced innovation grants to aid Venezuelans (Welsh, 7/17).

Mother Jones: The Former Head of the CDC Has an Audacious Idea for Handling the Pandemic (Butler, 7/16).

PRI: Abortion is a protected right in Spain. But the govt blocked a website that provides abortion info and pills (Blackmon/Benavides, 7/16).

U.N. News: Rise in women prisoners and COVID measures, ‘making sentences worse’ (7/16).

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Foreign Policy: The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Transform How Vaccines Are Made
Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health (7/16).

The Lancet: No more normal
Editorial Board (7/18).

The Lancet: Offline: COVID-19 and the dangers of Sinophobia
Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet (7/18).

The Lancet: The Lancet-Chatham House Commission on improving population health post COVID-19
Harry Rutter, professor at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, and colleagues (7/18).

Project Syndicate: Protecting Refugee Children During the Pandemic
Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Price laureate, founder of Laureates and Leaders for Children, honorary president of the Global March Against Child Labor, and founder of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement), and Prince Ali bin Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, member of the Laureates and Leaders for Children Steering Committee (7/16).

Washington Post: Masks are a barrier against the coronavirus. They also pose a major hurdle for deaf people
Sara Nović, novelist and adjunct instructor of creative writing and deaf studies (7/16).

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The Conversation: To reduce world hunger, governments need to think beyond making food cheap
Michael Fakhri, associate professor of international Law at the University of Oregon and the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, and Ntina Tzouvala, senior lecturer in international law at Australian National University and a senior adviser for the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food (7/17).

CNN: Leaving WHO is equivalent of shooting your allies during battle
Keiji Fukuda, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong (7/16).

Devex: How U.K. aid can retain its poverty reduction focus under the new FCDO
Sarah Champion, MP and chair of the House of Commons International Development Committee (7/17).

IPS: The SDGs, COVID-19 and the Global South: Insights from the Sustainable Development Report 2020
Guillaume Lafortune, SDG index manager at the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and colleagues (7/16).

NEJM: WHO’s Next — The United States and the World Health Organization
Barry R. Bloom, Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson research professor of public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and colleagues (7/15).

Newsweek: During Difficult Times, New Hope for Malnourished Children
David Miliband, CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) (7/16).

Project Syndicate: Has Big Pharma Finally Stepped Up?
Jim O’Neill, chair of Chatham House (7/17).

Washington Post: Mike Pompeo wants to nationalize human rights
Rori Kramer, director of U.S. advocacy for American Jewish World Service (7/16).

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Think Global Health: Collateral Damage of the U.S. Withdrawal from the WHO: Frontline Responders
Sonya Stokes, assistant professor at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in the Division of Emergency Medicine and Global Health, fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in the Division of Biosecurity, and term member at the Council on Foreign Relations (7/10).

Think Global Health: Midsummer for the Season — But Not the Coronavirus
William A. Haseltine, chair and president of ACCESS Health International (7/10).

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The BMJ: Physical distancing interventions and incidence of coronavirus disease 2019: natural experiment in 149 countries
Nazrul Islam, research fellow with the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford and the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, and colleagues (7/15).

Global Citizen: COVID-19 Rates Among Indigenous Australians Are Low Thanks to an “Extraordinary” Aboriginal-Led Response
Madeleine Keck, digital campaigner with Global Citizen Australia (7/17).

ONE Blog: Diving into the data: Monitoring COVID-19 emergency funds in Africa
Ebba Henningsson, research assistant for data science at ONE Berlin, and Jorge Rivera, policy manager for development finance at ONE Paris (7/16).

Human Rights Watch: Colombia: Armed Groups’ Brutal Covid-19 Measures (7/15).

Human Rights Watch: Protection Requires Co-operation to Combat Covid-19
Hugh Williamson, director of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia Division (7/16).

PAHO: COVID-19 Recommended Interventions in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) during the Pandemic, June 2020 (7/16).

UNFPA: For pregnant COVID-19 patients in Egypt, a safe place to deliver (7/16).

UNICEF: West and Central Africa: More than 15 million expected cases of acute malnutrition in 2020 (7/17).

WHO: WHO Director-General pays tribute to Spain’s sacrifices and leadership to confront COVID-19 (7/16).

WHO Regional Office for Africa: WHO urges greater COVID-19 health services in Africa’s humanitarian settings (7/16).

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National Law Review: Reinventing Supply Chains to Reach Patients in Remote Areas
Kathryn Rattigan, member of Robinson & Cole LLP’s Business Litigation Group and Data Privacy + Cybersecurity Team (7/16).

World Economic Forum: It’s time for a great reset of Africa’s e-health systems. Here’s how
Cornelius Kalenzi, postdoctoral researcher with the KAIST-Korea Policy Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and Mekuria Haile Teklemariam, adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia (7/17).

Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program’s “New Security Beat”: Accessing Justice: Femicide and the Rule of Law in Latin America
Annelise Gilbert, program assistant at the Brazil Institute, and colleagues (7/17).

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CDC: Maintaining Essential Services for Malaria in Low-Resource Countries
The CDC recently updated resources that provide “key considerations for continuing essential malaria prevention and control activities safely and effectively” in low-resource settings amid the COVID-19 pandemic (7/15).

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CDC’s “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report”: Update on Immunodeficiency-Associated Vaccine-Derived Polioviruses — Worldwide, July 2018-December 2019
Grace Macklin, polio eradication, research, and policy consultant for the WHO, and colleagues discuss immunodeficiency-associated vaccine-derived polioviruses (iVDPVs) among persons with primary immunodeficiencies (PID) and note, “Surveillance for iVDPV infections among patients with PID needs to be strengthened, and development of poliovirus antivirals needs to be accelerated to treat iVDPV infections to achieve and maintain eradication of all polioviruses” (7/17).

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CDC’s “Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal”: Early Release — Effect of COVID-19 on Tuberculosis Notification, South Korea
Nakwon Kwak, assistant professor and chest physician at Seoul National University Hospital, and colleagues examine the effect of COVID-19 on TB diagnoses in South Korea (July 2020).

CDC’s “Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal”: Early Release — Contact Tracing during Coronavirus Disease Outbreak, South Korea, 2020
Young Joon Park, preventive medicine physician leading the Epidemiology and Case Management Team for the COVID-19 National Emergency Response Center at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and colleagues analyze South Korea’s COVID-19 contact-tracing program “to guide evidence-based policy to mitigate the pandemic” (7/16).

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KFF: COVID-19 Coronavirus Tracker — Updated as of July 17, 2020
Data on country government actions in response to COVID-19 are included in the tracker (7/17).

Additional KFF COVID-19 resources on the global situation, as well as those focused on the response and impact within the U.S., are available here. KFF’s blog series “Coronavirus Policy Watch” is available here.

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