The WHO slows down on Hantavirus, but Moderna soars on the stock market. Between Nobel and virostar, the language of the pandemic re-emerges while politics is divided over funds.
Given the precedent of 2020, it makes sense to be wary ofWHO. But there is a thin line between wise caution and rogue nostalgia. Thus, although the health agency continues to downgrade the alarm to Hantavirus – the risk for the world population, he reiterated yesterday, is “absolutely low” – the media and the virostars have dusted off the repertoire of the Covid epic: asymptomatic, masks and vaccines. So much so that the title of Modernwhich had already jumped 10% on the stock market on Thursday, yesterday managed to gain more than 17%.
The interview with La Stampa then made you jump out of your chair Drew WeissmanNobel Prize winner, together with Katalin Karikofor the discovery of vaccines against Sars-Cov-2. The immunologist announced that those for the rat virus will be “accessible” within “nine or ten months”. Scientists are at work like Santa’s elves: “We are working on all the viruses potentially responsible for pandemics,” Weissman said.
mRna technology and the viral genome library
Who added: “Even with Covid we had them ready beforehand.” «Already before»? Probably, the expert was referring to the flexibility of the technology a mRna: a “library” of viral genomes is prepared and then adapted to the strain to be fought. Natureon the other hand, wrote that investigations into a remedy for Hantavirus began thirty years ago. It’s about money. We must “make funds available”, thundered Weissman.
The Matilda De Angelis of virology is angry with the American Minister of Health, Robert Kennedy Jrwho became anti-vax because «he has a past as a lawyer and made money by attacking pharmaceutical companies». Will there be those who make money by working for them? The panacea is not yet on the market, yet the syringe carousel has started turning again: even the Corriere della Serayesterday, he underlined that “it would be possible to develop a vaccine”, strictly “mRna”.
The return of asymptomatic people and the precautionary principle
And in the newspaper on Via Solferino the healthy patients reappeared: the asymptomatic. Which, however, should have “a low viral load and therefore little or no transmission capacity”. It was even more daring Daily Healthcare. Relying on an Argentine article published in New England Journal of Medicinewhich documented «an outbreak with super spreaders and aerosols as a possible route of infection», the newspaper has resurrected another fetish from the glorious years of Roberto Speranza: «The precautionary principle would require the use of masks». As long as they aren’t Chinese…
The odyssey of the infected cruise has awakened from hibernation as well Massimo Galli. The doctor in the parka, like his American colleague, contested the US administration, guilty of having suspended funding to the network that analyzed pathogens with pandemic potential: «One study in particular concerned the passage of Hantaviruses from reservoir rodents to our species. Great timeliness, congratulations.”
Health sovereignty and international diplomacy
TO Donald Trump their ears will have been ringing: “The situation is, hopefully, under control,” he said yesterday. The tycoon had wanted a divorce from the World Health Organization. And, on this path, he had followed him Javier Mileipresident of that Argentina where the Dutch spouses who then boarded the MV Hondius and died from the disease. Buenos Aires declared that “international cooperation continues without renouncing sovereignty”.
Speaking of WHO, among the couch potato doctors there are those who took advantage of it to relaunch the pandemic agreement, from which Italy withdrew last summer: Matteo Bassetti he asked the government to return to supporting him. Fortunately, the State-Regions Conference has just approved a national one, which provides for the graduation of any restrictive measures and which, for the administration of medicines, introduces the principle of “prescriptive appropriateness”.
Between real incidence and new suspected outbreaks
Why should vaccination be the best strategy? Hantavirus affects thousands of people a year, yes; but on billions of individuals. And, according to ours Higher Institute of Healthits incidence has “decreased in recent decades”. Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus resources on developing a therapy for the few who get sick? Meanwhile, the epidemic which is not an epidemic and which – has guaranteed Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – it will not be a pandemic evolves as expected.
The incubation period is long and therefore, little by little, new positives linked to the original outbreak will emerge. Two suspected cases were registered yesterday: a British citizen who is on the remote island of Tristan da Cunhain the South Atlantic; and a woman hospitalized at Alicantewho was on the plane that left Johannesburg, on which the wife of patient zero, who died the next day, had tried to board. It would give reason to hope that the hostess tested negative Klmcame into contact with the lady at the airport.
The management of repatriations and the position of the Ministry
Chile has placed two passengers arriving from the cruise in preventive isolation. And there Spain announced that anyone who disembarks from the ship, waiting in the Canary Islands, will be returned to their country of origin even if they show symptoms, as long as they are not serious. Madrid will guarantee “the safety of the evacuation and repatriation system”. The island’s authorities, however, have warned that, due to adverse weather conditions, the operations will have to take place by Monday.
THE’Higher Institute of Health he specified that, in our country, “there are no reports of human cases of infection” and recalled that “the virus is not easily transmitted”, with all due respect to the studies on aerosols. The ministry confirmed it: there is “no alarm situation”. The nostalgic will not give up.
