Latest news with #DanielPerez
Scientific American
15-07-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
Gene-Swaps Could Let Influenza Jump Species
Influenza viruses are shifty entities. They accumulate small genetic changes on a regular basis, necessitating yearly updates to the flu vaccines because the prior year's strain may not look much like the following year's. But they can also make sudden leaps by incurring big genetic changes that may allow them to jump from one animal species to another or to humans. A seemingly ingenious and sneaky way for viruses to make these leaps is by swapping genetic material with other flu strains. Called reassortment, this exchange happens when a person or animal is infected with two types of flu virus at the same time. While replicating inside the host cell, the viruses can grab bits of each other's genetic code and incorporate them into their own gene sequences. Reassortment is much less common than small mutations that change the flu year to year, but it's important: at least three of the last four human flu pandemics have involved reassortment. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. 'Reassortment has played a major, major role in the emergence of pandemic influenza,' says Daniel Perez, a professor of poultry medicine at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, who studies how flu moves between species. The past century saw four flu pandemics. The first was the notorious 1918 Great Influenza, which killed around 50 million people. The second was in 1957, when a new flu killed between one million and four million people worldwide. In 1968 another new flu emerged, killing another one million to four million people. Finally, in 2009, a novel swine flu appeared, killing between 151,000 and 575,000 people that year. Flu viruses are categorized by two types of proteins on their surfaces, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). These proteins each have multiple subtypes, which is why you'll see labels such as H1N1 or H5N1. The H refers to the HA protein type, and the N refers to the type of NA protein. The Great Influenza that swept the globe during World War I was an H1N1 flu that likely emerged in Kansas. Its descendants circulated in both humans and pigs until 1957, when it was suddenly replaced in humans by an H2N2 flu. This new virus first popped up in southern China. Its main genetic backbone belonged to the 1918 flu, Perez says, but it had acquired three new gene sequences from an avian flu, swapping its HA and NA proteins for new subtypes. For reasons not completely understood, this new H2N2 wiped out H1N1 in humans for decades—H1N1 wouldn't be seen again in people until 1977. The 1968 pandemic was another reassortment event. This time, the H2N2 that was circulating in humans swapped genes with an H3N2 avian influenza, probably somewhere in China. (The first identified outbreak was in Hong Kong.) Then came the 2009 pandemic, a true 'globalized pandemic,' Perez says. In the early 2000s there had been a few sporadic human infections in the U.S. with so-called triple-reassorted flu viruses that contained genes from human, avian and swine influenzas. These cases were rare and mostly in people who worked on pig farms; these viruses didn't transmit from human to human. That changed in 2009 when the triple-reassorted viruses picked up new genes from a Eurasian swine flu. 'It's a perfect example of globalization,' Perez says, 'because the virus contains not only gene segments from an avian flu, from a swine flu [and] from a human flu but also from very different geographical locations.' The reassortment of flu viruses that infect different species fortunately happens relatively infrequently, says Charlotte Kristensen, a postdoctoral researcher in veterinary clinical microbiology at the University of Copenhagen. 'It has to be two different viruses infecting the same host cell, and the reassortment has to be successful. And it's not always like the gene segments are compatible,' she says. Such reassortment happens all the time between avian flu strains that infect birds, says Yuan Liang, also a University of Copenhagen veterinary clinical microbiology postdoctoral researcher. 'Especially since 2020, there have been a lot of new variants emerging because of reassortments' in birds, Liang says. The various strains of H5N1 circulating now in wild birds, domestic poultry and dairy cows have yet to cause a pandemic in people. It's hard to say whether the virus will stay mostly in animals or whether we're now in a period like the one before the 2009 flu pandemic, when farmworkers occasionally came down with a reassorted virus that would later gain the gene sequences it needed to spread from person to person. No one expect H5N1 to take hold in dairy cattle, Liang says, so the question now is what new, unexpected step this virus might take. 'This whole situation really highlights how little we know and how complex it is,' Kristensen says.
New York Times
17-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Florida's House Speaker Stood Up to DeSantis, and Shifted the Power Dynamics
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida would normally be traversing the state this time of year, trumpeting his legislative accomplishments and the fellow Republican lawmakers who had fallen in line to achieve them. So it was during his first six years in office, especially as he prepared to run for president. This year has been different, mostly because of one man. Daniel Perez, the Republican speaker of the State House of Representatives, clashed with Mr. DeSantis over how to crack down on illegal immigration; allowed a House investigation into a charity tied to the governor's wife, Casey DeSantis, and insisted on passing a slimmer state budget than what the governor proposed, even if it meant dragging out the unusually bitter legislative session for an extra six weeks. Mr. Perez, a 37-year-old Cuban American lawyer from Miami, may not have set out to become the governor's adversary when he assumed his leadership role last year. His goal was to reassert his chamber's power, 'to be a coequal branch of government,' he said in an interview on Monday, the session's final day. Yet that was enough to shift the power dynamics in the Republican-controlled State Capitol, where lawmakers had spent years bending to the will of a popular governor who steadily expanded executive power. Mr. DeSantis, who is term-limited and has one more regular session left, faced more resistance than ever before. The relationship between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Perez got so rancorous that, at one point, Mr. DeSantis referred to House lawmakers as 'treacherous.' Mr. Perez countered that the 'emotional' governor was throwing 'temper tantrums.' In some ways, the conflict was the point, Mr. Perez said on Monday. 'We were able to have a difference of opinion,' he told reporters in Tallahassee. 'We were able to reach a conclusion that maybe either the Senate or the governor didn't agree with. That was our goal.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Legislature eyes changing Medicaid eligibility rules for people with intellectual disabilities
House Speaker Daniel Perez (R) with House budget chief Rep. Lawrence McClure (L). (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix) Florida could be poised to make it easier for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities (IDD) to maintain their Medicaid services. The latest round of budget negotiations between the House and Senate includes a proposal by the House to eliminate a requirement for people with IDD to annually be redetermined eligible for the health care safety net program for the poor, elderly, and disabled. If approved once, they would be presumptively eligible the rest of their lives unless they no longer qualify for Medicaid or their condition changes. The proposal, if accepted by the Florida Senate, would require approval from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to take effect. 'I'd call it a game changer for our population,' Florida Developmental Disabilities Council Executive Director Valerie Breen told the Florida Phoenix Wednesday. The council aims to increase the capacity of individuals with IDD to be included in their communities. The House health care budget conferees made the offer Tuesday. As of this publication, the budget negotiators had not met again. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Breen said people with these disabilities face difficulties when they have to be re-determined Medicaid-eligible. She said people with IDD erroneously fell off the Medicaid rolls when, following the end of the public health emergency associated with Covid 19, people had to requalify for Medicaid. Breen guessed that as many as 1,000 people with IDD who were eligible for Medicaid erroneously lost their coverage. For people with IDD the redetermination process requires the Department of Children and Families (DCF), which determines eligibility, to communicate with the state Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), which administers the Medicaid program, and the Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD), which is charged with oversight of programs that serve these populations. Sometimes, Breen said, redetermination also included interaction with the Social Security Administration. 'Those were the critical components, and the agencies did not communicate with each other,' she said. As a result people with IDD lost access to the home and community-based services that help them with the activities of daily living like eating and grooming. 'They were not able to access any of those services,' Breen said. The Legislature was forced to extend the 2025 Session after legislative leadership couldn't reach an agreement on how much state money to spend in state fiscal year 2025-26, which begins July 1, and how much tax relief to provide residents. House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton ultimately agreed to extend the session until June 16 and to spend about $50 billion in general revenue, or state tax dollars, across various government agencies. Most of the money will go to two areas: education and health care, with the former receiving more than $22 billion and the latter about $17.5 billion. Budget negotiators have been meeting to try to hammer out the details of how the money should be spent. The state budget must be printed and distributed to legislators by June 15 in order to vote on it by June 18. That's because of a constitutional provision that requires the budget to cool off for 72 hours before legislators can vote on it. New law brings managed care to people with intellectual disabilities The move to allow people with IDD to remain on Medicaid after initially being determined eligible is one of several proposals relating to people with IDD that are being championed by the House. Perez vowed to make those issues a priority during his two year tenure. To that end, Perez championed HB 1103, a proposal to make a small managed care pilot program, available statewide for people with IDD. HB 1103 also requires APD to publicly publish reports regarding the number of people with IDD the state serves and the number of people on a wait list for the Medicaid services. Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed the legislation. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New law brings managed care to people with intellectual disabilities
Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, and House Speaker Daniel Perez, right. (Photos by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix) Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed into law priority legislation for House Speaker Daniel Perez that addresses how people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) receive health care. There were fears in the IDD advocacy community that DeSantis was going to veto the bill but he signed HB 1103 into law without any ceremony or a press conference. He acted three days after receiving it and while the House and Senate met in an extended session to craft the next state budget. Jim DeBeaugrine, a former Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) director and now a lobbyist, praised language that requires the agency to make public information about the number of people served in the Medicaid waiver program known as iBudget, plus the number of individuals on the waiting list, broken down by the counties in which they live. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Federal Medicaid law provides coverage for health care services to cure or ameliorate diseases but generally doesn't cover services that won't. Specific to IDD, Medicaid covers the costs of institutional care but not of home- and community-based services that, if provided, can help people with IDD live outside of institutions. Former Gov. Jeb Bush applied for a Medicaid waiver to provide these services to people with IDD. Eligible diagnoses include disorders or syndromes attributable to intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, autism, spina bifida, Down syndrome, Phelan-McDermid syndrome, or Prader-Willi syndrome so long as the disorder manifested itself before the age 18. But the program is underfunded and has had lengthy waiting lists on which sometimes people have lingered for more than a decade. The Legislature has required APD to provide it with information about the program but while the information was once easily publicly available, the DeSantis administration stopped posting it online. The bill requires the information to be made public again. 'You know, APD has gotten hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars over the last several years. And I think it'll help to hold the agency accountable. And it's good for the public, particularly the advocacy community, to understand what happens with those dollars, how many people we're funding, whether the dollars are being spent for services,' DeBeaugrine told the Florida Phoenix Tuesday. 'You know, the rub on all of this is that the agency used to publish that data without the law telling them to. But since they stopped, I believe this is a positive step towards re-establishing accountability and transparency.' The law also involves a Medicaid managed-care pilot program launched at the behest of then-House Speaker-Designate, now speaker, Perez in 2023. The pilot was designed to care for up to 600 individuals and was approved for Medicaid regions D and I, which serve Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, Hardee, Highlands, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties. The state received federal approval for the pilot in February 2024. The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) issued a competitive procurement for the pilot with two vendors, Florida Community Care and Simply Healthcare Plans Inc., vying for the contract. AHCA eventually awarded the contract to Florida Community Care. Three hundred and fifty eight people were enrolled in the pilot program as of May 5. During testimony before the House Health and Human Services Committee in February, Carol Gormley, vice president for government affairs for Independent Living Systems, attributed the slow start-up to administrative barriers on APD's part. Independent Living Systems is the parent company of Florida Community Care. The new law lifts the 600-person cap on the pilot program on Oct. 1, expanding enrollment statewide for qualifying disabled people on the Medicaid iBudget wait list. There are 21,000 plus people on the waitlist, according to a legislative analysis. In a statement to the Florida Phoenix Tuesday, Gormley lauded DeSantis and the Legislature for their 'commitment to expanding and improving services for persons with disabilities. 'We look forward to the opportunity to extend the comprehensive benefits offered through the pilot program to families who choose to participate,' she said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
When is Florida's tax-free holiday for hurricane supplies? Will legislators ever agree?
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season has officially begun. Meteorologists with NOAA, AccuWeather and Colorado State University all agree: the 2025 hurricane is predicted to be above average. That's not a good sign when, based on a 30-year period from 1991 to 2020, an average Atlantic hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three major hurricanes. ➤ Weather alerts via text: Sign up to get updates about current storms and weather events by location Every emergency official also agrees now is the time to prepare; now being before a storm is approaching Florida. But Florida residents often use the state's disaster preparedness tax holiday to help with costs when it comes to building that important disaster supply kit. So far, that tax-free holiday has not been approved by the Florida Legislature. Legislators planned to return to Tallahassee the week of June 2 to work out the details of the state's 2025-2026 budget. A budget stalemate in Tallahassee resulted in a tax-free holiday for disaster supplies not happening before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season on June 1. Hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30, with the busiest time of the season running from mid-August through mid-October. In 2024, two two-week periods were held to save residents money when purchasing emergency supplies. The first was June 1 through June 14, during the first two weeks of hurricane season. The second was Aug. 24 through Sept. 6, which occurs during the busiest portion of hurricane season. In past years, residents were able to purchase such supplies as batteries, tarps, portable generators, reusable ice, coolers, and gas tanks without the added burden of paying sales tax. Even pet food and supplies were included in the tax-free holiday. A few other states have tax-free holidays to help residents prepare for disasters. Some call it severe weather preparedness, while others focus on hurricane preparation: Alabama: Feb. 21-23 Texas: April 26-28 Virginia: Aug. 1-3 A dispute between GOP state House and Senate leaders hijacked the disaster supplies sales tax holiday Florida residents have been used to. Just two days before the June 1 start of hurricane season, legislative leaders announced a preliminary spending deal had been struck. Lawmakers are scheduled to return to Tallahassee the week of June 2 and to work out the details of the state's 2025-26 budget. What that will mean for Florida residents remains to be seen. Memos released to news media mentioned plans for "permanent sales tax exemptions targeted toward Florida families" but didn't mention specific tax holidays. DeSantis, who included the hurricane sales tax holiday in his budget recommendations, said he wants lawmakers to include it in any final budget. House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, has pushed for an overall reduction in the state's sales tax for all items, moving it from 6% to 5.25%, instead of having specific sales tax holidays. The Senate included a sales tax holiday that would have run May 15-31 in its tax package. In his budget, DeSantis proposed several sales tax holidays, including two 14-day periods for disaster preparedness. He projected the savings would equal $72 million on hurricane supplies. The 2025 sales tax holidays proposed by DeSantis must be approved by the Florida Legislature, but House and Senate leaders have deadlocked over the budget this year. ➤ New to hurricanes? Everything to know about NOAA tips from Hurricane Preparedness Week Prepare now, before a hurricane is coming. Break it down into steps: Assemble a disaster supplies kit Check your home. Look at roof, shutters, garage door, trees, loose items, etc. Determine your evacuation zone and whether you live in a flood-prone area Look over your insurance coverage Go to FEMA's Flood Risk website, and enter your ZIP code. ➤ Know your risks from wind and water Go to the Florida Department of Emergency Management's Know Your Zone website and enter your address. ➤ Know your risks from wind and water The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. Ninety-seven percent of tropical cyclone activity occurs during this time period, NOAA said. ➤ National Hurricane Center tracking new tropical wave. Wet week ahead for Florida We will provide tropical weather coverage daily until Nov. 30 to keep you informed and prepared. Download your local site's app to ensure you're always connected to the news. And look for our special subscription offers here. Contributor: Gray Rohrer, USA Today Network-Florida This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida hurricane supply kit: When is tax-free holiday?
