Four years after COVID-19 emerged, the U.S. in many ways is far less ready for the next major viral threat, despite the pandemic era's significant scientific advances.
Why it matters: Key weaknesses in the country's COVID response have only become more glaring, including the politicization of public health, an understaffed health care workforce and a growing hostility to science.
The unprecedented success of the COVID-19 vaccines has elevated the mRNA platform and raised expectations the technology could soon be wielded against other infectious diseases.
The big picture: COVID is still the only disease for which any mRNA vaccines are approved, but dozens more are being developed and tested against the flu, RSV, HIV and even cancer.
More of America's sewage systems are tracking viral risks beyond the coronavirus, but unpredictable funding threatens the future of what's become an important surveillance tool for cash-strapped public health departments.
The big picture: Wastewater testing — supercharged by the creation of a national surveillance system in 2020 — has been one of the more reliable metrics for tracking COVID-19 spread since other data, like daily case counts and testing, became much more scarce last year.
Why it matters: Abortion bans, backlash to diversity efforts and the rise of artificial intelligence are adding new challenges to the work of reversing systemic inequities that have often resulted in worse care and outcomes for people of color.
Researchers are getting closer to understanding the underlying causes of long COVID and potential ways to definitivelytest for it.
Why it matters: That would be a massive step toward unlocking a complex condition that's debilitated millions of Americans, mystified scientists and frustrated patient advocates who feel their struggles have been ignored.
Why it matters: New data out Friday from The National Resident Matching Program shows medical school graduates are continuing to choose higher-paying specialties like orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology, thoracic surgery and radiology.
Food and Drug Administration advisers Friday will weigh the risk of premature patient deaths from adverse events when they consider expanding the use of two CAR-T therapies for multiple myeloma.
Why it matters: CAR-T treatments have shown promise in the way they can reprogram a patient's immune cells to attack cancer cells but are pricey and have been flagged before for safety concerns.
New federal restrictions on a cancer-causing chemical that's essential for sterilizing medical devices may have balanced out long-running concerns about protecting public health without choking the medical supply chain.
But the tradeoffs won't entirely go away until scientists cancreate a reliable alternative to ethylene oxide, the odorless gas that's been the subject of numerous civil claims and lawsuits.
Disease X may still be a hypothetical threat. But the risk from a new pathogen many times deadlier than COVID-19 is driving more spending decisions on rapid tests, antimicrobial drugs and other countermeasures.
Why it matters: The fiscal 2025 budget the Biden administration rolled out this week and the intelligence community's annual threat assessment point out biodefense vulnerabilities that were laid bare by the COVID-19 experience.
