Latest news with #JeremyFarrar
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Chance meeting between two epidemiologists on the number 18 bus in London helped save an estimated one million lives during Covid and paved the way for the end of the pandemic
What Britain has to offer to the world was never clearer than in the leading role we took in the Covid crisis – and all because of a chance meeting on a number 18 bus from Marylebone to Euston in London. Martin Landray found himself next to another epidemiologist Sir Jeremy Farrar and they began to talk about a new respiratory disease, SARS-CoV-2, which had originated in China and now reached the UK. At that stage life was still normal, as demonstrated by the packed bus they were on. But the new coronavirus was crippling the health system in the north of Italy. The two scientists agreed it would spread through the UK in a fortnight and they had to start searching for treatments – fast. Clinical trials were necessary. Ordinarily, such trials would take around a year to get off the ground. But the two medics knew that in a global emergency things had to be different. Within nine days, they had recruited their first patient, after which the study was rolled out to 175 hospitals and an extraordinary 10 per cent of all patients hospitalised with Covid. By this point the pandemic was tearing through populations across the world, so pressure to deliver was huge. The worst affected patients were being put on ventilators, with a survival chance of 50 per cent. There were no treatments and no vaccines – no one even knew if a working vaccine was feasible. The trial investigators kept cool heads and picked their drugs carefully. Positive results were emerging from an unexpected source, an anti-inflammatory drug called dexamethasone. It had two big advantages: it was cheap and was already stocked in the cupboards of all pharmacies. Amazingly, it worked – the first time any drug had been shown to save lives in the crisis. Better still, it worked best on the sickest. The discovery of dexamethasone was a chink of light at a moment when the pandemic had taken nearly 40,000 lives in the UK. But despite the urgency, the two professors held back from saying anything publicly. For another week they probed and double-checked the data. Then the drug was announced to the public; it was in use the same day and saving lives by the weekend. It is estimated to have saved a million lives across the globe. The next stage was to develop a vaccine, spearheaded by Oxford-based Professor Sarah Gilbert. Soon large-scale vaccine trials were underway and a deal was made with Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. As the miserable pandemic year drew to a close, the vaccine was approved for use. UK regulators, usually criticised as being too slow and bureaucratic, showed themselves to be the nimblest in the world as Britain became the first country to approve a vaccine tested in clinical trials. Vaccines and treatments discovered in the UK likely saved more lives globally than those from any other country. The Press focused remorselessly on failings in other aspects of the country's response, but British scientific capabilities were central to the global effort. No other country made a bigger contribution to the Covid fight. Yet just a few years on, progress in preparing for the next pandemic has stalled. There are still many infectious disease classes for which we don't have vaccines, including the Marburg virus, Rift Valley fever and Lassa fever. Finding vaccines can be phenomenally difficult – after 40 years of trying, we have still failed to discover one for HIV. The threat of a new pandemic has not gone away. Particularly worrying are respiratory pathogens with high adaptability and transmissibility that spread without visible symptoms. Increasing urbanisation and globalisation mean when one emerges, it will spread fast. At the same time other threats are starting to loom larger. Bacterial infections are becoming very effective at resisting antibiotics we throw at them. We are starting to lose the race to develop the new second and third-line antibiotics needed for when this happens, with more than a million people dying every year because they cannot access an antibiotic that works. A recent study in the Lancet found that this could double to two million a year by 2050. In that same year, another eight million deaths could occur from associated causes while infected with a drug-resistant bacteria. By the middle of the century anti-microbial resistance could become as big a killer as cancer. Is there a role for cash-strapped Britain in preventing the devastating impact of another pandemic, blessed as we are with a superb science base? The answer is yes. Britain often boasts of having nurtured more Nobel Prize winners than anywhere except the US. Less well known is that nearly a third of prizes have been awarded to scientists born outside Britain but affiliated with a UK institution or resident in the UK, demonstrating just how successful we have been in attracting the brightest minds. That happens largely because the UK has many top-ranked universities playing a major role in many of the scientific discoveries shaping a medical revolution in the sequencing of cancer genomes. Many have had rare diseases diagnosed as a result and personalised therapies for cancer patients have become possible. Britain has played a major role for centuries when it comes to life-saving discoveries, from Edward Jenner and the smallpox vaccine to Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery. Such a tradition of innovation has been good business. Off the back of it, the UK has become Europe's largest hub for life sciences with more than 300,000 of the world's most sought-after scientists working here. What needs to happen now to avoid another global health catastrophe is to make urgent progress on vaccines, treatments and diagnostics and a new class of antibiotics. The UK's science base has made it a global leader in genomics, vaccine development and bio-technology. The more the world invests, the more Britain benefits. Doing the right thing for the world can be profitable too.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Waffle House Implements 50 Cent Surcharge on Each Egg Due to Supply Issues Caused by Bird Flu
Waffle House has temporarily raised its prices as the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) know as bird flu ravages the nation's farms. On Monday, Feb. 3, the restaurant chain implemented a temporary $0.50 surcharge for every egg ordered amid supply issues caused by the current bird flu outbreak. "The continuing egg shortage caused by HPAI (Bird Flu) has caused a dramatic increase in egg prices. Consumers and restaurants are being forced to make difficult decisions," a memo shared with Nextstar reads. The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now! While Waffle House did not give an end date for the per egg surcharge, it said that it is intended to be 'a temporary targeted surcharge tied to the unprecedented rise in egg prices." "While we hope these price fluctuations will be short-lived we cannot predict how long this shortage will last,' the memo said, per Nextstar. Related: Bird Flu Detected in Milk Sold in California, State Health Officials Say Eggs are Waffle House's most popular item. According to its website, it serves 272 million eggs per year, followed by hashbrowns (153 million) and waffles (124 million). PEOPLE reached out to Waffle House for comment. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in January 2024, the average price of grade A large eggs per dozen was $2.52. While the price has fluctuated since then, it was $4.15 by December 2024. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, egg prices are predicted to increase 20.3% in 2025. While the current bird flu outbreak began in 2020 and reached the United States in 2022, it spiked in recent months. Per the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as of Feb. 4, 2025, 16 states have H5N1 (avian flu) outbreaks in dairy cows with 957 dairy herds affected. The agency also reports 51 jurisdictions with poultry outbreaks, and a staggering 153 million poultry affected. Bird flu has also been reported in 51 jurisdictions and detected in 11,000 wild birds. Related: Florida Dolphin Found 'In Distress' Later Diagnosed with Bird Flu, Study Finds Last April, the World Health Organization expressed 'enormous concern' about the potential spread of the bird flu to humans. 'This is a huge concern and I think we have to … make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission, that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics,' said Dr. Jeremy Farrar, WHO's chief scientist, according to a United Nations report. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. While there is no evidence that bird flu can be transmitted from human to human, as of February 2024, there have been 67 cases of bird flu in humans in the United States and one death. Amid the escalating outbreak, the Trump administration ordered a pause on all communications made by federal health agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, per CNN. The pause has prevented important studies on bird flu and its transmission from being published. Read the original article on People
