Respiratory illness surge in China not due to new virus, CDC director tells Congress - NBC News

WASHINGTON — The “upsurge” in respiratory illness in China is not from “a new or novel pathogen,” the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reassured members of Congress on Thursday.

The uptick can instead be attributed to existing viruses and bacteria, including Covid, flu, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and mycoplasma pneumoniae, Dr. Mandy Cohen said, backing up the explanation offered by Chinese authorities and accepted by the World Health Organization.

"But they are seeing an upsurge. We do have an office, the CDC does, in China,” she said. “And our officials have been in touch with our counterparts to ensure that we’re understanding the situation there.”

Cohen's comments came in a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing and marked her first testimony on Capitol Hill since taking over the post in the summer.

The surge is concentrated in northern China, she said, where NBC News has reported hospitals have appeared to be "overwhelmed with sick children." Since mid-October, the region has reported an increase in influenza-like illness compared to the same period in the previous three years, according to the WHO.

The United Nations health agency had taken the unusual step of publicly asking China to provide more information about the upsurge. The WHO said it received the requested data in a teleconference last week. Both the Chinese government and the WHO have faced criticism over a lack of transparency in the early days of the Covid pandemic.

Chinese authorities have attributed the uptick to the lifting of many of the strictest pandemic restrictions late last year, with this year marking the first full flu season since the end of the country's "zero-Covid" policies. Such a surge in respiratory illnesses is characteristic of other countries that have lifted strict Covid restrictions, including Australia and New Zealand.

Health officials in China say they are working to increase the availability of health care providers and boost the supply of medicine, while advising parents of children with mild cases to avoid going to hospitals because of long wait times and the risk of cross-infections.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters at the U.N. on Wednesday that the surge is a common issue and “has been put under effective control.”

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GOP lawmakers grill CDC director on China's respiratory virus spike - The Washington Post

In her first appearance before Congress as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mandy Cohen faced a barrage of questions Thursday from Republicans about a new spike in respiratory illness in China and whether the agency had erred in its early recommendations to contain the coronavirus.

The hearing represented one of Cohen’s first public opportunities to restore trust in the agency, which became a punching bag for Republicans who opposed school closures, vaccine mandates and masking requirements in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Cohen’s appearance came as clusters of pneumonia in Chinese children emerge as the latest public health issue enmeshed in geopolitical conflict.

GOP lawmakers cast the rising viral activity as suspicious and reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic. But Cohen joined other public health experts in describing the situation as the usual fluctuations of any respiratory virus season.

“We do not believe this is a new or novel pathogen,” Cohen testified before the House panel that oversees the CDC.

She said the increase was driven by familiar threats: covid-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and mycoplasma, a bacterium that can infect the lungs.

Experts say what’s happening in China could be the result of children susceptible to pathogens they were not exposed to while social distancing to avoid covid. It was a trend observed around the world, including in the United States last year amid an unusual RSV surge. China finally eased its strict covid restrictions starting December 2022, long after other countries did so.

“You have three years’ worth of those individuals as kindling for these respiratory viruses,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It makes biological sense, and it’s not surprising given many countries in the world experienced this last year.”

Authorities from China’s National Health Commission in November attributed the rise in respiratory illnesses to known pathogens and the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.

Republican members of Congress said assurances from the Chinese government should not be trusted, especially after Chinese officials had shared little information about the emerging coronavirus threat from Wuhan.

“It brings us back, sadly, to the early days of covid-19,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees the CDC. “The lack of reliable information coming out of China is a troubling parallel to 2020.”

But public health experts who have been critical of China’s opaque response to covid say they do not see such a parallel.

“Both things can be true: China can be deceptive, China can be very opaque and China can withhold lots of information, but it also could be this outbreak is ordinary,” Adalja said.

Cohen told the panel that CDC staff members who work in China have reported there is no novel pathogen at play. She said this was corroborated by “other sources from our European Union partners and others to make sure that we are getting a complete picture.” CDC spokespeople did not immediately elaborate on what sort of corroborating information Cohen was referring to.

The World Health Organization says it has asked China to share more epidemiological and clinical information about the clusters of pneumonia in children. Lawmakers who distrust the WHO after its dealings with China during covid called on the Biden administration to do more.

“We are hoping that you can put some pressure in an attempt to try to get China to not mislead the world as they did with covid-19,” Rep. H. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), chairman of the subcommittee on oversight and investigations that conducted the hearing, told Cohen.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said there is no evidence so far to suggest the Chinese government’s explanation for the latest respiratory virus uptick lacks credibility. But he says concerns about health information sharing after covid remain valid, noting agreements that came out of the recent meeting between President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping did not include public health.

“The problem remains there, so we cannot just categorically take wholesale what the government says,” Huang said. “There’s no serious dialogue between the two governments on how they should be cooperating with each other.”

As the United States experiences its own rise in respiratory viruses, Cohen said the agency projects a similar level of hospitalizations as last season. She said RSV is nearing its peak, but flu season is just starting in most of the country and covid continues to be the primary driver of hospitalizations for respiratory illness with 15,000 admissions a week.

The hearing was largely cordial, though Cohen also fielded sharp questions from Republicans attempting to get her to say the CDC erred in its prior guidelines for masking and covid precautions in schools. She did not budge, noting public health officials operated with less information and without vaccines in the early stages of the pandemic.

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Climate crisis a ‘substantial risk’ to fight against malaria, says WHO - The Guardian

The climate crisis poses a major threat to the fight against malaria, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with evidence suggesting extreme weather events and rising temperatures have already led to spikes in cases.

Mosquitoes, the carriers of the disease, thrive in warm, damp and humid conditions, which are increasing with global heating.

“The changing climate poses a substantial risk to progress against malaria, particularly in vulnerable regions,” said the WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Sustainable and resilient malaria responses are needed now more than ever, coupled with urgent actions to slow the pace of global warming and reduce its effects.”

Although data on the long-term impact of the climate crisis is scarce, the WHO’s world malaria report, published on Thursday, said rising temperatures have contributed to malaria transmission in African highland areas that were previously free of the disease. This is the first time the annual report has had an entire chapter dedicated to the climate crisis and its links to malaria.

It said Pakistan saw a five-fold increase in cases after severe flooding last year – from 500,000 reported cases in 2021 to 2.6 million in 2022. Standing water became an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said: “I would put climate change right up there as the thing that is changing the game on malaria in ways that we can see happening, but we don’t know fully the magnitude and how it’s going to unfold.”

Sands added that other factors related to the climate crisis – including displacement, the destruction of health services and increased levels of food insecurity and malnutrition – threatened progress to end the disease.

“If anything, the discussion of the potential impact in the world malaria report is conservative,” he said. “We could well be seeing more dramatic consequences, partly because of the second and third-order things.”

Dr Photini Sinnis, the deputy director of the malaria institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg school of public health, said the climate crisis “is going to have an impact”, but that it would be hard to predict.

The number of global malaria cases in 2022 remains significantly higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic, despite a slight decline in numbers, said the report. In 2022, there were 249m cases compared with 233m in 2019. The number of deaths also rose from 576,000 in 2019 to 608,000 last year.

That amounts to nearly 12,000 lives each week, and pregnant women and children under the age of five are most susceptible to the disease. Most of the cases and deaths are in Africa.

The report highlighted other threats to eradicating malaria, including the growing resistance to insecticides and an invasive mosquito, Anopheles stephensi, that has spread beyond its native Asian and Arabian habitats to Africa.

The species has been linked to malaria outbreaks and thrives in urban settings, endures high temperatures and is resistant to many insecticides. Its spread, along with rapid urbanisation, could heighten malaria risks in African cities, said the WHO.

Resistance to medicines, including artemisinin, which was critical to reducing the global burden of malaria between 2000 and 2015, is also a growing concern, according to the report.

But there are signs of hope. Sinnis and Sands said there are a number of measures and initiatives in place to tackle resistance, such as the distribution of improved insecticide-treated bed nets, and the development of new insecticides and antimalarial drugs.

Earlier this year, a highly effective malaria vaccine – R21/Matrix-M – was recommended for widespread use by the WHO. Doses of another vaccine, RTS,S, endorsed by the agency in 2021, arrived in Cameroon last week, one of 12 African countries expected to receive doses over the next two years.

The WHO said the RTS,S vaccine had resulted in a substantial reduction in severe malaria and a 13% drop in early childhood deaths in the areas it was administered compared with areas it was not introduced.

“We have, including the vaccines, quite a powerful set of tools,” said Sands. “The issue is we’re not even deploying them to their full extent. The world is not investing as much as we should to deal with malaria as it is, let alone a malaria fuelled by climate change.”

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Taiwan urges elderly, young to avoid China visits due to respiratory illnesses - Reuters

TAIPEI/SHANGHAI, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Taiwan's health ministry on Thursday urged the elderly, very young and those with poor immunity to avoid travel to China due to the recent increase in respiratory illnesses there, a move some experts said was ineffective to manage public health risks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) last week requested China provide detailed information on the spike, which a WHO official said was not as high as before the COVID-19 pandemic and that no unusual or novel pathogens had been detected.

Taiwan has been wary of disease outbreaks in its giant neighbour since the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that started in China and killed nearly 800 people globally in 2002-2003.

China, whose government claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own, initially tried to cover up that outbreak.

In a statement released after a weekly Cabinet meeting, Taiwan's health ministry said that due to the rise in respiratory illnesses in China, the elderly, young children and other people with poor immunity are requested not to travel to mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau unless necessary.

If travel is necessary, then people should get flu and COVID vaccinations before going to China, it added.

Shu-Ti Chiou, an epidemiologist at the Health & Sustainable Development Foundation in Taipei, said the advisory would lead the public to mistakenly believe they would not contract respiratory illnesses as long as they did not go to China.

Rajib Dasgupta, an epidemiologist and professor of community health at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, also said "travel restrictions for respiratory infections are not an effective measure for interrupting transmission".

Some public health researchers said the travel advisory was reasonable, saying Taiwan was also likely to experience a surge in respiratory illnesses in winter and following the lifting of pandemic restrictions. "They would be cautious not to hasten it by overseas travels," said Sung-il Cho, an epidemiologist at Seoul National University.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Wednesday that the rise in respiratory illnesses in China was a common issue faced by all countries and that Chinese authorities have it under effective control.

China's Taiwan affairs office and authorities in Hong Kong and Macau did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei and Andrew Silver in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Anne Marie Roantree and Farah Master in Hong Kong; Editing by Miral Fahmy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Warning signs for mysterious dog illness that has reached Massachusetts - WWLP.com

CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – A mysterious illness affecting dogs has reached the Northeast, spreading over the last few months from its initial discovery on the West Coast.

Two malnourished dogs found in Franklin County

Local vets told 22News that they haven’t received any reports of this illness locally and added that because it is such an unknown, they were hesitant to talk about it, for fear of speculation.

The first cases were identified in Oregon in late August, and it has now been found in 14 states, including Massachusetts. The spread has given us a few warning signs to watch out for, even while veterinary experts try to crack what exactly is causing the illness.

Symptoms resemble those of Kennel Cough, which is common during vacation seasons as people are more likely to board their dogs. It begins with a cough and sometimes a runny nose, followed by loss of appetite.

Often, that’s all, a few days or weeks of discomfort. Occasionally, however, the cough develops into pneumonia, sometimes ramping into a severe case in just 24 to 48 hours. For dogs with pre-existing conditions, that can be dangerous.

For now, that’s all we know. So experts recommend that you try to avoid boarding your dog, especially as care centers get crowded for holiday vacations, and to avoid close contact with unfamiliar dogs like at dog parks. If you notice your dog is coughing, isolate them from other dogs immediately and call your vet.

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Unexplained child pneumonia cases spike in parts of Europe as alarming surge continues in China - New York Post

Pneumonia cases in children are unexpectedly surging in the Netherlands at an alarming rate — at the same time as China continues to grapple with a tidal wave of respiratory illnesses threatening to overwhelm its hospitals.

Last week, 80 out of every 100,000 children in the Netherlands between ages 5 and 15 were treated for pneumonia, reported the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL).

Pneumonia cases among tots ages 4 and under were also on the rise, jumping from 124 to 145 per 100,000.

This is the biggest pneumonia outbreak the Utrecht-based research institute has recorded in recent years.

For comparison, at the height of the flu season in 2022, there were 60 recorded cases of every 100,000 children in the 5-to-15 age group.

The Netherlands is seeing an alarming surge in childhood pneumonia cases amid an uptick in mystery respiratory illnesses sweeping across China. ZUMAPRESS.com

Neither NIVEL nor the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands could offer an explanation for the sudden uptick in pneumonia cases among children.

It is unknown whether the worrying health trend seen in Europe is connected to the disturbing rise in mystery respiratory illnesses that were sweeping across parts of China.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and Chinese health officials argued that no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the pneumonia cases.

The surge in illnesses has been blamed on children contracting known viruses like the flu, rhinoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus, and the adenovirus, which they had avoided during the two years of COVID restrictions.

The strict lockdown rules were lifted in China at the end of 2022, making this the first post-COVID flu season in the county.

Medical experts in China have suggested that a lack of exposure to common viruses during the protracted lockdown has weakened the population’s immunity.

In the Netherlands, however, COVID-era measures have been gone for a long time, raising questions as to what could have triggered this new surge in childhood pneumonia cases.

Distressing videos showing hospitals in Beijing and other parts of northern China crowded with sick children and their parents that have emerged in recent days set off alarm bells around the world.

The WHO had taken the rare step of publicly asking Chinese health officials to provide data on clusters of pneumonia cases, which were found to be driven by known viruses.

“We asked about comparisons prior to the pandemic. And the waves that they’re seeing now, the peak is not as high as what they saw in 2018-2019,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of the WHO’s department of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention. “This is not an indication of a novel pathogen. This is expected. This is what most countries dealt with a year or two ago.”

Questions have been raised about whether China’s government was covering up the initial stages of another pandemic, after being accused of bungling its response to the emergence of COVID at the end of 2019.

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Mysterious dog illness arrives in Maine, vet says - WABI

BREWER, Maine (WABI) - A veterinarian in Brewer says she’s confident the mysterious illness affecting dogs across the country has arrived in Maine.

According to Eastern Maine Emergency Veterinary Clinic, they treated at least six dogs experiencing severe respiratory symptoms Monday night alone. They know other local clinics are seeing it, as well.

The co-medical director in Brewer says while there’s still a lot of unknowns about the illness, they believe it’s spread snout-to-snout.

To protect your dog, keep them away from other pups as best you can.

Most importantly, if you notice something off, call your vet.

“If they’re coughing and acting normally, it’s probably okay to monitor. But, if you’re seeing a cough, lethargy, decreased appetite, and your dog’s just not acting normal, the quicker you get veterinary care, the better it is. It’s the patients that wait four or five days of acting sick that are getting really critical and oxygen dependent. So, if we catch them in the first day or two, they’re doing okay at home on oral antibiotics,” said Dr. Ai Takeuchi, co-medical director, EMEVC.

Takeuchi says in most of the cases she’s seen, the exposure has happened at doggy day care or a kennel.

If your dog is exposed, keep them at home. Even if they’re initially acting fine, it can take around seven days for symptoms to occur.

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How concerning is the spike in respiratory illnesses in China? A doctor explains - CNN

CNN  — 

Hospitals in northern China and Beijing have reported a surge in the number of children with respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia. Last week, the World Health Organization asked China to provide more information on the cases.

Based on what is known thus far, how concerning are these cases? Why might there be a surge in respiratory illnesses? Should people traveling to China rethink their plans? What additional precautions should governments, health systems and individuals take?

To help us understand the situation, I spoke with CNN wellness medical expert Dr. Leana Wen. Dr. Wen is an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She previously served as Baltimore’s health commissioner.

CNN: How concerning is the spike in respiratory illnesses being reported in China?

Dr. Leana Wen: Thus far, based on what we know from WHO, I don’t think the spike in respiratory illnesses should cause global concern. What would be most worrisome to the international medical community is if a new pathogen is emerging, as it did in the form of Covid-19 in the winter of 2019. This does not appear to be the case now.

After WHO requested additional information from Chinese health authorities, it received data that indicates the increases in outpatient visits and hospital visits can be attributed to a rise in known, existing pathogens. Specifically, there has been an increase in pneumonia due to the bacteria Mycoplasma pneumoniae since May, and a rise in influenza, adenovirus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) since October. The spikes are “not unexpected given the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in other countries,” according to WHO.

Importantly, no new pathogen has been detected. There has also been no unusual clinical presentation with children appearing much sicker than normal.

CNN: Why would China be seeing such a surge now?

Sick children, accompanied by their parents, receive infusion treatment at the People's Hospital in Fuyang, China, on November 28, 2023.

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Wen: It’s certainly crucial for WHO and other members of the international medical community to independently verify these data points, especially given Chinese authorities’ delay in alerting the global community about Covid-19. However, the situation in China actually mirrors what happened in the United States and many other countries last year.

Last winter, in 2022, children’s hospitals in the US were inundated with kids who were sick with Covid-19, flu, RSV and other common viruses. Much of this illness was attributed to the end of Covid-19 mitigation measures.

During the peak of the pandemic, respiratory illnesses declined sharply. In particular, kids who otherwise would have gotten exposed to several infections a year didn’t get sick. When mitigation measures were lifted, contagious illnesses tore through schools and daycares, leading to a surge in infections among children and thus also an increase in those who required hospitalization.

China lifted its mitigation measures later than the US and most other countries. It makes sense that, in the first full winter since ending “zero Covid,” they would experience a rise in respiratory illnesses like that which much of the world experienced.

CNN: Chinese health authorities are attributing the rise in pediatric pneumonia cases to Mycoplasma pneumoniae — what is that?

Wen: Pneumonia is a lung infection that can be caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi. Mycoplasma pneumoniae is a common type of bacterial pneumonia. Some estimate that around 1% of the population in the US is infected with Mycoplasma every year. Only 5% to 10% of those infected with Mycoplasma will develop pneumonia.

A pharmacy in New York City offers vaccines for COVID-19, flu, shingles and pneumonia on December 6, 2021.

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You can get Covid-19 and flu vaccines at the same time, but should you? What the science says

Pneumonia due to Mycoplasma is called an “atypical” pneumonia. The disease onset is often gradual, with patients experiencing nonspecific symptoms like low-grade fever, tiredness and headache. Some people report a nagging cough or chest soreness from coughing. Sore throat, runny nose and ear pain are possible, too, and in rare cases, individuals could develop a rash, joint pain and gastrointestinal symptoms.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections are most common in young adults and school-age children. People living and working in crowded settings (like schools) are at increased risk.

Most patients with this kind of pneumonia do not need to be hospitalized and will improve with outpatient antibiotic treatment. Those most vulnerable to severe illness are the very young, elderly, immunocompromised individuals, and people with severe underlying medical conditions.

CNN: Could the pneumonia cases be caused by other organisms too?

Wen: Yes. The bacteria Streptococcus is another common cause of pneumonia. RSV and Covid-19 are among the types of viruses that can cause pneumonia, too. Many health care facilities will attempt to diagnose the source of the pneumonia and determine whether it’s bacterial or viral. However, the diagnostic capabilities in some areas may be more limited. Also, a single person may have multiple infections at once, and it’s not always easy to attribute the manifestation of pneumonia to one organism.

CNN: Should people avoid travel to China at this point?

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Expert: What to do when the Thanksgiving buffet is too risky

Wen: WHO has said explicitly that it advises against “the application of any travel or trade restrictions based on the current information available on this event.” It also does not recommend any specific preventive measures for travelers to China, though it does advise people in China to take steps to reduce the spread of respiratory illness. That includes staying home when ill, ensuring good ventilation, practicing regular handwashing and “wearing masks as appropriate.”

I think these are all reasonable and would also add that people vulnerable to severe illness from respiratory diseases should take additional precautions, including wearing an N95 or equivalent mask while in indoor, crowded places.

CNN: What additional precautions should governments and health systems take, especially those in the rest of China and neighboring countries?

Wen: I agree with WHO that limiting travel or trade would not be reasonable at this time, though of course WHO should continue to press China for up-to-date and accurate data disclosures.

In the meantime, governments and hospitals can bolster their own infrastructure. They should be on the lookout for a rise in influenza-like illnesses and pneumonia cases and test promptly.

They should also ensure that they have the capacity to treat patients who need hospital care. It’s very possible that other areas, especially those with previously strict virus mitigation measures, will see a rise in respiratory illnesses this winter. Health systems need to prepare for a potential influx of patients, as they did during the peak of Covid-19.

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Newly discovered stem cell offers clues to a cancer mystery - The Washington Post

Scientists have discovered a new type of stem cell in the spine that appears crucial to resolving a long-standing mystery: why far more cancer cells spread to the spine than to other bones in the body.

When breast, lung and prostate cancers metastasize to multiple bones in the body, three to five times more cancer winds up in the spine than in the lower and upper limbs. Scientists have known of this disparity for decades, but the reason for it has remained unclear.

One theory held that differences in blood flow might be the cause. But the new findings suggest an alternative that could have implications for cancer care, spine fusion surgery and osteoporosis, a bone-weakening disease that afflicts about 10 million Americans.

Stem cells are like the body’s raw materials. They can divide and form more stem cells, or develop to reach a more specific destiny as skin, red blood cells, neurons or any of the estimated 200 different cell types in the human body.

In the journal Nature, researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York report the discovery of what they have called vertebral skeletal stem cells in the spine. These cells make a protein that acts as a “come here” signal to tumor cells, a finding that raises new treatment possibilities.

“We predict this discovery will lead to the targeting of these cells to disrupt the function and ultimately reduce the spread of cancer to the spine,” said Matthew B. Greenblatt, one of the study’s authors and a pathologist at Weill Cornell Medicine.

In work spanning five years, scientists found the cells first in mice, then in humans. The cells, which are responsible for bone formation in the vertebrae, appear as the bone hardens.

To demonstrate the crucial role of vertebral skeletal stem cells, researchers developed a mouse from which they could snip out some of its DNA. Using an enzyme, they removed a specific bone-forming gene from the newly discovered vertebral stem cells. Mice that had the gene removed displayed clear spinal defects, proving the importance of the new stem cells in forming the spine.

Scientists then transplanted the stem cells into the leg muscle of a mouse. The transplanted cells made new miniature bones from scratch, and produced all of the types of skeletal cells that are found in the spine. Researchers concluded that the vertebral skeletal stem cells help to form the spine before birth, then help maintain it after birth.

To find the same stem cells in humans, researchers studied very small pieces of vertebrae removed during laminectomies, surgeries that relieve pressure on the nerves and spinal cord.

“It’s very rare that you find a new stem cell, and that’s one of the things that makes us excited about this,” Greenblatt said. “We think there are more to discover.”

By comparing the stem cells that form spinal bone with those that form limb bones, they discovered one protein that is made at much higher levels in the vertebrae. Mice that lacked this protein experienced far less cancer spreading to their spines.

Feini Qu, a core faculty member at the University of Washington’s Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, called the study “a breakthrough that helps us understand the developmental origin of the vertebrae.” Qu, who was not involved in the project, added that the research “might help us understand ways to be more creative” in slowing or stopping spinal metastasis.

Sean Morrison, founding director of the Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said that he considers the cells described by the researchers to be skeletal stem cells, a type whose existence has been known about for years.

But Morrison, who is also an investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute, added that the paper still shows skeletal stem cells found in different parts of the body have somewhat different properties.

“The skeletal stem cells in the vertebrae have a surprising capacity to attract cancer cells that you don’t see in other skeletal stem cells,” he said.

C. Rory Goodwin, a neurosurgeon and spine surgeon at Duke Health, commended the paper’s authors and said the discovery of the stem cells may help researchers improve the poor outlook for cancer patients whose disease has spread to the spine.

“When patients have spine metastasis, that’s usually toward the end of the line,” Goodwin said. Average survival, he said, is between 10 and 14 months once cancer reaches the spine, “with some patients surviving much less than that.”

In addition, the discovery provides an explanation for why osteoporosis varies significantly in the spine vs. other parts of the skeleton. This knowledge could help doctors tailor treatment of the disease when it appears in the spine.

In separate work, Greenblatt and his co-author on the Nature paper, Sravisht Iyer, a spine surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, are investigating the role the new stem cell plays in responding to spine fusion surgery. They want to determine whether an implant of the new stem cell at the time of surgery can improve fusion.

The two scientists also suspect there may be a second type of vertebral skeletal stem cell. When they blocked the ability of the new stem cell to form bone, they still found small amounts of bone in some regions of the spine, raising the question of whether a second stem cell type might be responsible.

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COVID variant BA.2.86 triples in new CDC estimates, now 8.8% of cases - CBS News

Nearly 1 in 10 new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are from the BA.2.86 variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Monday, nearly triple what the agency estimated the highly mutated variant's prevalence was two weeks ago. 

Among the handful of regions with enough specimens reported from testing laboratories, BA.2.86's prevalence is largest in the Northeast: 13.1% of cases in the New York and New Jersey region are blamed on the strain.

Monday's figures mark the first time BA.2.86's prevalence has surged enough to be listed as a standalone variant on the CDC's estimates. Scientists first warned of the highly mutated strain's discovery over the summer. 

"In previous Nowcast updates, BA.2.86 was too uncommon to be shown separately and was grouped with other BA.2 strains," the CDC said Monday.

Before this point, officials have said the vast majority of new COVID-19 cases have been blamed on the XBB variant and a crowd of XBB's closely related descendants. Those include the HV.1 and EG.5 variants that are currently predominant nationwide.

The CDC's estimates carry wide margins of error around BA.2.86's prevalence. As little as 4.8% or as much as 15.2% of circulating SARS-CoV-2 could be from BA.2.86, the agency says. 

However, this latest estimate – 8.8% through Nov. 25 – is virtually triple what it was on Nov. 11, when 3.0% of new cases were estimated to be BA.2.86. The CDC typically publishes its variant estimates every other Friday, but had delayed last week's release until after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

"It is important to note that early projections tend to be less reliable, since they depend on examining growth trends of a smaller number of sequences, especially as laboratory-based testing volume for SARS-CoV-2 has decreased substantially over time," the agency said.

The World Health Organization also recently stepped up its classification of BA.2.86 and its descendants to a "variant of interest" after a rise in cases from the strain.

Early data on BA.2.86 suggests it does not appear to lead to worse or different symptoms than previous strains, the WHO said in its Nov. 21 risk evaluation, but noted a "substantial rise" in recent BA.2.86 reports.

The CDC said it did not disagree with the WHO's assessment that BA.2.86 likely posed a "low" public health risk, adding that for now the strain "BA.2.86 does not appear to be driving increases in infections or hospitalizations in the United States."

It comes as the CDC has begun to track a renewed increase in indicators tracking COVID-19's spread across the U.S. headed into the winter.

After weeks of largely slowing or flat trends, the CDC said this month that figures like emergency department visits had begun to increase nationwide from COVID-19. Virtually all regions of the country are now seeing at least slight increases.

Some of the highest increases are in the Midwestern region covering Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, where trends are nearing levels not seen since early January.

Is the JN.1 variant to blame?

Since August, BA.2.86's broad array of mutations did not appear to be enough for the strain to gain a foothold over XBB and its descendants. Months of the highly mutated variant's spread only resulted in a small share of cases throughout the world. 

But scientists in recent weeks have been studying a steep increase in a BA.2.86 descendant called JN.1, which quickly rose to become the fastest-growing subvariant worldwide. 

Many cases have been reported in Europe, which has seen increasing cases from BA.2.86 and its descendants. 

Authorities in France said on Nov. 13 that JN.1 was largely driving that country's increase in BA.2.86 infections, climbing to 10% of sequences in the country. Early investigations of JN.1 had not turned up any worrying signals so far compared to other BA.2.86 infections, they said, though more in-depth analyses were underway.

Data from recent weeks tallied from the GISAID virus database suggests as much as a third of COVID-19 variants reported from labs in the U.S. have been of JN.1.

"Currently, JN.1 is the most common version of BA.2.86 in the U.S. CDC projects BA.2.86 and its offshoots like JN.1 will continue to increase as a proportion of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences," CDC spokesperson Jasmine Reed told CBS News in an email.

Last month, the CDC said it expected COVID-19 tests and treatment would remain effective against JN.1, which is closely related to BA.2.86 aside from a single change to its spike protein that early research suggests is enabling it to spread faster.

This season's vaccines are also expected to work against JN.1 similar to what was estimated for its BA.2.86 parent, the agency said.

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Alexander Tin

Alexander Tin is a digital reporter for CBS News based in the Washington, D.C. bureau. He covers the Biden administration's public health agencies, including the federal response to infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19.

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China's respiratory illness surge not as high as pre-pandemic - WHO official - Reuters

SHANGHAI, Nov 27 (Reuters) - The spike in respiratory illnesses that China is currently suffering is not as high as before the COVID-19 pandemic, a World Health Organisation official said, reiterating that no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent cases.

Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of the WHO's department of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said the increase appeared to be driven by a rise in the number of children contracting pathogens that they had avoided during two years of COVID restrictions.

"We asked about comparisons prior to the pandemic. And the waves that they’re seeing now, the peak is not as high as what they saw in 2018-2019," Van Kerkhove told health news outlet STAT in an interview on Friday.

"This is not an indication of a novel pathogen. This is expected. This is what most countries dealt with a year or two ago," she added.

China's National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng said on Sunday the surge in acute respiratory illnesses was linked to the simultaneous circulation of several kinds of pathogens, most prominently influenza.

The spike became a global issue last week when the World Health Organization asked China for more information, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.

China and the WHO have faced questions about the transparency of reporting early in the pandemic, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The WHO said on Friday no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent illnesses.

Health officials urged local authorities on Sunday to increase the number of fever clinics, as hospitals are warning of long waits in northern areas like Beijing and Liaoning province where cases among children appear to be especially high.

Spread by young adults in the workplace and children at school, new cases of respiratory illnesses could peak in the next couple of weeks, Li Tongzeng, the chief physician at the infectious diseases department at Beijing You'an Hospital told the Global Times newspaper.

In the report published on Monday, Li also warned of the potential for a second wave peaking during the New Year holidays, as the elderly could become more at risk of infection during family gatherings.

Reporting by Andrew Silver; Editing by Miyoung Kim, Miral Fahmy & Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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China says surge in respiratory illnesses caused by flu and other known pathogens - POLITICO

A man carriers a child walk out from a crowded holding room of a children's hospital in Beijing on Oct. 30, 2023. | Andy Wong/AP

By Associated Press

11/26/2023 05:47 PM EST

BEIJING — A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said Sunday.

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, the adenovirus as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.

The ministry called on local authorities to open more fever clinics and promote vaccinations among children and the elderly as the country grapples with a wave of respiratory illnesses in its first full winter since the removal of Covid-19 restrictions.

“Efforts should be made to increase the opening of relevant clinics and treatment areas, extend service hours and increase the supply of medicines,” said ministry spokesman Mi Feng.

He advised people to wear masks and called on local authorities to focus on preventing the spread of illnesses in crowded places such as schools and nursing homes.

The WHO earlier this week formally requested that China provide information about a potentially worrying spike in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia in children, as mentioned by several media reports and a global infectious disease monitoring service.

The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both SARS and Covid-19 were first reported as unusual types of pneumonia.

Chinese authorities earlier this month blamed the increase in respiratory diseases on the lifting of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. Other countries also saw a jump in respiratory diseases such as RSV when pandemic restrictions ended.

The WHO said Chinese health officials on Thursday provided the data it requested during a teleconference. Those showed an increase in hospital admissions of children due to diseases including bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and common cold viruses since October.

Chinese officials maintained the spike in patients had not overloaded the country’s hospitals, according to the WHO.

It is rare for the U.N. health agency to publicly ask for more detailed information from countries, as such requests are typically made internally. WHO said it requested further data from China via an international legal mechanism.

According to internal accounts in China, the outbreaks have swamped some hospitals in northern China, including in Beijing, and health authorities have asked the public to take children with less severe symptoms to clinics and other facilities.

WHO said that there was too little information at the moment to properly assess the risk of these reported cases of respiratory illness in children.

Both Chinese authorities and WHO have been accused of a lack of transparency in their initial reports on the Covid-19 pandemic, which started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

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