Becker's Hospital Review

60 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Why the death of local newspapers is a disaster for outbreak surveillance: 4 things to know By Brian Zimmerman E pidemiologists tasked with tracking infectious disease outbreaks rely heavily on information from local news sources, meaning they could be le with significant information gaps as local newspapers in large swaths of the U.S. continue to fold, according to a report from STAT. Here are four things to know. 1. Disease detectives examine data from many different sources to identify outbreaks, including local and state health agencies, and social media. Newspapers are not only helpful for identifying outbreaks but also for predicting their trajectory, according to Maia Majumder, a PhD candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and a computational epidemiology research fellow at HealthMap. HealthMap tracks global infectious disease activity online using nontraditional data sources. 2. Ms. Majumder cited Arkansas' 2016-17 mumps out- break — which neared 3,000 cases — as an example of how local newspapers can help health officials track the progres- sion of an outbreak. When attempting to determine why the outbreak was so large, Ms. Majumder and colleagues struggled to obtain important data. While the Arkansas De- partment of Public Health provided regular updates about the outbreak's numbers, it did not archive them. However, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette covered the out- break in detail and access to the coverage was easy to obtain, providing valuable context on the outbreak's progression. 3. While newspapers aren't the only source of local news, communities that cannot support these entities are oen also unable to support radio and television stations. Also, radio and television reports aren't as likely to be archived. While social media is helpful for tracking the spread of dis- ease, it cannot provide a stand-in for newspapers due to the widespread dissemination of falsehoods — either by acci- dent or design — across social media platforms. 4. Ms. Majumder noted another troubling trend regarding the decline of local newspapers — the majority of commu- nities without access to a daily newspaper are in pockets of the country where there is a growing sentiment of being le behind. "What that means is they lose access to news, which is very, very vital for knowing what's going on in your town," Ms. Majumder told STAT. "But also from the public health sur- veillance point of view, we're losing access to knowing what they need." n Study: Waning vaccine efficacy may be reason for mumps resurgence By Mackenzie Bean T he U.S. has seen a major resurgence in mumps cases over the last 10 years, which may be due to declining vaccine efficacy, ac- cording to a study published in Science Translational Medicine. For the study, researchers analyzed data from six different studies on mumps vaccine efficacy. They estimated protection against mumps drops 27 years after vaccination, on average. Researchers used a math- ematical model of mumps transmission to confirm the role of waning vaccine immunity in the re-emergence of mumps cases. "Outbreaks from 2006 to the present among young adults, and outbreaks in the late 1980s and early 1990s among adolescents, aligned with peaks in mumps susceptibility of these age groups predicted to be due to loss of vaccine-derived protection," re- searchers wrote in the study. They recommended routine use of a third mumps vaccine dose at age 18 as one potential strategy to prevent mumps re-emergence. n WHO warns against 'Disease X' — a deadly pathogen that doesn't yet exist By Alia Paavola T he World Health Organization added "Disease X" to its grow- ing list of potential global disease threats that lack an effec- tive drug or vaccine, according to CNN. Here are four things to know. 1. The list, which was published in a strategy and preparedness plan known as the 2018 R&D Blueprint, outlines viruses the WHO believes could spark a worldwide epidemic. The blueprint helps prioritize research and development, surveillance and diagnostics. 2. Disease X doesn't exist. It is simply a placeholder for an "unex- pected" disease and "represents the knowledge that a serious in- ternational epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently un- known to cause human disease," according to the WHO. 3. The WHO believes there is a high probability the next big epi- demic will come from a completely unexpected source, a pathogen that has yet to reveal itself. "As experience has taught us more often than not the thing that is [going to] hit us is something that we did not anticipate," Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and In- fectious Diseases, told CNN. "Just the way we didn't anticipate Zika, we didn't think there would be an Ebola that would hit cities." 4. Along with Disease X, the WHO named seven other global dis- ease threats that lack a drug or vaccine, including: Ebola, Zika, Marburg virus disease, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and Nipah virus. n

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