Amanda Kloots, host of CBS’ The Talk, announced on Thursday that she tested positive for COVID-19 following a recent trip to Mexico.
Kloots — whose husband, Nick Cordero, died of COVID-related complications in July 2020 — also confirmed that she would be missing The Talk while she quarantines.
“My @thetalkcbs family! Unfortunately I tested positive for COVID and will be missing some days at work until my quarantine is over,” Kloots, 39, shared on Instagram. “I am feeling completely normal now and feel very grateful for that. I am vaccinated and boosted which is very much putting me at ease.”
“I recently got back from a trip to Mexico where I tested negative before I left and before I flew home so this was [a] surprise this morning,” she continued. “This is the first time I’ve tested positive since the pandemic.”
Kloots went on to say that she plans on using her time in quarantine to potty-train her two-year-old son, Elvis Eduardo, whom she shared with Cordero.
“I will hopefully be back to work soon but taking this time at home with Elvis to start potty training!!!!” Kloots wrote. “Wish me luck as I run after a naked toddler for the next three days. Any advice please share below.”
Sean Penn is on the ground in Ukraine filming a documentary about Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.
The Office of the President of Ukraine released a statement on Facebook Thursday praising the Oscar-winning actor for his work.
“The director specially came to Kyiv to record all the events that are currently happening in Ukraine and to tell the world the truth about Russia’s invasion of our country,” reads the translated statement. “Sean Penn is among those who support Ukraine in Ukraine today. Our country is grateful to him for such a show of courage and honesty.”
The statement also notes that the actor, who visited the country back in 2021 in “preparation” for the documentary, also attended a press briefing the Office of the President on Thursday, and spoke with journalists and the military.
“Sean Penn demonstrates the courage that many others, including Western politicians, lack. The more such people in our country now, true friends of Ukraine, who support the struggle for freedom, the sooner it will be possible to stop Russia’s treacherous attack,” the statement continues.
Penn is no stranger to anti-war and humanitarian operations. The 2020 Discovery+ documentary Citizen Penn chronicled his efforts setting up the non-profit organization Community Organized Relief Effort, also known as CORE, in response to the Haiti earthquakes of 2010. CORE also assisted with the COVID-19 response in the United States.
Niecy Nash and Jessica Betts are making history as the first same-sex couple to grace the cover of Essence magazine.
Nash, 52, and Betts, 39, who wed in 2020, appear on the March/April cover of magazine topless as they lovingly gaze at each others’ faces. Now, the two are opening up about the historic cover and the powerful message behind it.
“What I am hoping happens with our cover is that it will normalize people just loving who they love and not having to explain it or defend it but just do it,” Nash told Entertainment Tonight on Thursday.
Betts shared the same sentiment, adding, “Spreading love and supporting each other, you know, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to support each other…so I think this message is very clear that we should love and support each other regardless of our race, gender, or sexualities.”
In the cover story, Nash says of her wife, “The least of my attraction is gender…What I was and am still attracted to is Jessica’s soul. She was the most beautiful soul I had ever met in my life. Now that I’ve experienced it, I can’t imagine going through life without it.”
The March/April 2022 “Black Women in Hollywood” issue of Essence hits newsstands March 1.
Actress Sally Kellerman, best known for her Oscar-nominated portrayal of U.S. Army Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s 1970 black comedy M*A*S*H, died Thursday at a Los Angeles assisted care facility after a battle with dementia, her son, Jack Krane, tells The Hollywood Reporter. She was 84. Kellerman also had memorable roles in the second Star Trek pilot episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” in which she portrayed Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, a Starfleet officer aboard the USS Enterprise. She played free-spirited college literature professor Diane Turner, the love interest of Rodney Dangerfield’s obnoxious businessman, Thornton Melon, in 1986’s Back to School. Kellerman also guest-starred on numerous 1960s TV shows, including The Outer Limits, 12 O’Clock High, Ben Casey, That Girl and Mannix, and was a familiar and prolific voice-over talent, narrating commercials for Mercedes-Benz, Revlon and Hidden Valley Ranch…
Quentin Tarantino is in early talks to direct one or two episodes of Justified: City Primeval, sources tell Deadline. The followup to the FX crime drama Justified stars Timothy Olyphant, reprising his role as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. Tarantino and Olyphant worked together on the director’s most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The show returns to Givens’ story eight years after he left Kentucky and now is based in Miami, balancing life as a marshal and part-time father of a 14-year-old girl. Justified ran from 2010-2015, was nominated for eight Emmys, winning two, in the Guest Actor category for actress Margo Martindale and actor Jeremy Davies…
SEAL Team star Max Thieriot has been tapped for the lead role in the CBS drama pilot Cal Fire, according to Variety. Thieriot reportedly co-wrote the story for the series, which is inspired by his life growing up in Northern California. He will also serve as an executive producer in the hope that Thieriot will be able to star in both series should Cal Fire gets picked up. Cal Fire follows young convict Bode Donovan who, along with other inmates, works alongside firefighters in return for redemption and shortened prison sentences…
Deadline reports that Grey’s Anatomy regular Richard Flood, who has played Dr. Cormac Hayes for the past three seasons, is leaving the long-running medical drama. In Thursday’s midseason premiere, Hayes handed Bailey his resignation and told her that he was returning to Ireland with his kids. Flood’s final episode will reportedly air next week…
(NEW YORK) — The streets of several major cities across the globe transformed into seas of blue and yellow Ukrainian flags on Thursday. Protesters are demanding action from their local leaders regarding the Russian invasion into Ukraine, which has already claimed dozens of lives.
In New York City, hundreds of protesters marched to and gathered at Times Square, the Russian Mission and United Nations buildings in support of Ukraine amid the Russian attacks.
The city is home to the largest Ukrainian community in the U.S., with more than 150,000 Ukrainians residing across the region.
In Washington, D.C., protesters marched to the White House, as well as to the Russian embassy, to demand action from President Joe Biden. According to Washington ABC affiliate WJLA, a demonstrator painted the word “murder” on the sidewalk in front of the embassy building.
Protests also took place in Chicago.
In London, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office and the Russian Embassy carrying Ukrainian flags. Russians, Ukrainians and other protesters joined together in calls against the military invasion.
Berlin’s most famous landmark, The Brandenburg Gate, was lit in the yellow and blue colors of Ukraine in support of the country under siege. Thousands also marched through the city’s streets in support of Ukrainians.
In Paris, the City Hall was also lit up in support of Ukraine. Marches also took place throughout the city.
In Moscow, anti-war protesters spoke out against their own country, as Russian military forces continued to lay siege to their neighboring country. More than a thousand protesters were arrested in a sign of the totalitarian nature of Russia’s government. Protests also broke out in Saint Petersburg.
Protests also took place in Spain, Lebanon, Austria, The Netherlands, Poland and more.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg hold a joint press conference following a meeting in Kiev on October 31, 2019. – SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Ukraine is not a member of NATO, though the international security alliance has been a key player in its ongoing conflict with Russia, which escalated to a full-scale invasion by Russian forces Thursday.
Since the United States helped form NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in 1949 to counter Soviet aggression in Europe, the alliance has grown to 30 member countries, including three former Soviet republics — the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
In 2008, NATO appeared to open the door to membership to two more former Soviet republics when its heads of government declared that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.”
Neither have formally received a pathway to eventual membership, with corruption concerns and a lack of consensus among members seen in part as holding back Ukraine’s invitation. Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Ukraine never join the alliance as he seeks to limit NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe.
Putin’s military operation has prompted NATO allies, worried about further escalation, to issue sanctions meant to impact the Russian economy, bolster troops along the alliance’s Eastern flank and repeatedly warn that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.
In the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, President Joe Biden announced that NATO will convene a summit Friday to “affirm our solidarity and to map out the next steps we will take to further strengthen all aspects of our NATO alliance.”
Biden said repeatedly said the U.S. won’t be sending troops to engage with Russia in Ukraine, though he has recently authorized the deployment of ground and air forces in Europe to support NATO’s eastern flank allies — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania — in response to Russian aggression. Following Thursday’s attack on Ukraine, Biden said he has authorized additional forces to deploy to Germany as part of NATO’s response. According to a senior Defense Department official, 7,000 service members will be deployed to Germany in the coming days.
“Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East,” Biden said during an address Thursday. “As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”
Article 5 commitments
During a video address days before he announced a military operation in Ukraine, Putin linked the current crisis directly to Russia’s NATO demands, which include a guarantee that NATO stop expanding to the East and pull back its infrastructure from Eastern European countries that joined after the Cold War. He accused the U.S. and NATO of ignoring Russia’s demands and blamed the West for the current crisis in Ukraine.
The potential impact of the Ukraine conflict on U.S. interests is considered “significant,” by the Council on Foreign Relations, which said in part that the conflict “risks further deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations and greater escalation if Russia expands its presence in Ukraine or into NATO countries.”
“I think we shouldn’t get fixated only on Ukraine,” Doug Lute, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and ABC News contributor, told ABC News Live following Putin’s speech. “[Putin’s] ambitions beyond that are to essentially rewind the clock 30 years and reverse the progress made in Western Europe, certainly Central and Eastern Europe, and if possible, break the ties between the United States and its European allies.”
Were the conflict to go beyond Ukraine and impact NATO members, that could lead the organization to invoke its mutual self-defense clause — what’s known as Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” If one ally is attacked, the others will respond with necessary action, including armed force, “to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
The first and only time NATO invoked Article 5 was in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, in support of the U.S. On Thursday, Biden said the U.S. and its NATO allies “will meet our Article 5 commitments” if necessary in response to Russian aggression, though they are seeking to deescalate the conflict through increased sanctions.
“If [Putin] did move into NATO countries, we will be involved,” Biden told reporters. “The only thing that I am convinced of is — if we don’t stop now, he’ll be emboldened. If we don’t move against him now with these significant sanctions, he will be emboldened.”
U.S. officials see Article 5 as another deterrent for any further Russian aggression.
“Is it a possibility that Putin goes beyond Ukraine? Sure, it’s a possibility, but there’s something very powerful standing in the way of that — that’s something we call Article 5 of NATO,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview with ABC’s David Muir on Thursday. “The president’s been very clear that we will defend every inch of NATO territory. I think that’s the most powerful deterrent against President Putin going beyond Ukraine.”
Cyberattack question
One “gray area” around NATO’s Article 5 response is Russian cyberattacks and their impacts beyond Ukraine, according to U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who oversees the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The real deal is if they suddenly decide to shut down all the power in Ukraine, chances are that may shut down the power in eastern Poland, where American and NATO troops are located,” Warner told reporters Thursday. “If they shut down the hospital systems in Poland, and people die because you can’t operate, we are suddenly outside of the hypothetical realm of what could constitute what’s called an Article 5 violation, where if you attack one NATO nation, you attack all 30 NATO nations. And these hypotheticals become a reality.”
If Russia responds to NATO allies’ sanctions with cyberattacks, “we are again going into uncharted territory,” he said.
Last year, NATO said the alliance would consider whether to invoke Article 5 in response to a cyberattack “on a case-by-case basis.”
When asked by ABC White House correspondent MaryAlice Parks on Thursday if the White House thought a cyberattack against a NATO member would trigger an Article 5 response, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that’d be a “point of discussion.”
“That, again, is up to the NATO alliance to determine, but obviously a cyberattack does constitute an attack, so that would certainly be a point of discussion among the NATO members,” she said.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will attend an emergency NATO summit Friday morning from the White House Situation Room to coordinate next steps with Western allies as Russian President Vladimir Putin wages a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Biden said in an address Thursday that NATO would meet to “affirm our solidarity and to map out the next steps we will take to further strengthen all aspects of our NATO alliance.”
He also announced escalated sanctions to correspond with the escalated Russian aggression, but not the full economic punishment Ukraine and others have called for and none yet on Putin himself, although he did say that option was “not a bluff. It’s on the table.”
“He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine,” Biden warned of the Russian leader. “He wants to, in fact, re-establish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about. And I think that his ambitions are completely contrary to the place where the rest of the world has arrived.”
Pressed on why the U.S. hasn’t gone further with sanctions, Biden said that some decisions must be made in unison with European allies — signaling more sanctions may follow Friday’s meeting of NATO’s 30 member countries.
“The sanctions that we are proposing on all their banks have the equal consequence, maybe more consequence than SWIFT, number one. Number two, it is always an option but right now that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,” Biden said, referring to an international messaging system that allows large financial institutions to send money to each other.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is set to offer public opening remarks on Friday and hold a news conference at the conclusion of the meeting, both of which will be live-streamed on ABC News Live.
Biden reiterated on Thursday that U.S. troops would not be involved in the fight against Russia in Ukraine, but he did announce that he will deploy more forces to Germany, including some of the 8,500 troops in the U.S. that have been on a “heightened alert,” and said he is open to sending additional troops elsewhere in Europe.
“Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine but to defend our NATO allies and reassure those allies in the East,” Biden said. “As I made crystal clear, the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power.”
Throughout the crisis, Biden has maintained U.S. involvement is about fulfilling a responsibility to defend NATO allies — and democracy around the world.
“America stands up to bullies,” Biden said Thursday. “We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”
ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Friday expanded its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s White House records, requesting new information from the National Archives about the classified materials Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida after leaving office — as well as those records Trump is alleged to have ripped up in the White House.
In a new letter to National Archivist David Ferriero, committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., requested a “detailed” inventory of the 15 boxes of White House records the National Archives retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, as well as “all presidential records” that the agency discovered Trump had “torn up, destroyed, mutilated, or attempted to tear up, destroy, or mutilate” while in office.
“I am deeply concerned that former President Trump may have violated the law through his intentional efforts to remove and destroy records that belong to the American people,” Rep. Maloney wrote in a letter obtained by ABC News. “This Committee plans to get to the bottom of what happened and assess whether further action is needed to prevent the destruction of additional presidential records and recover those records that are still missing.”
The National Archives previously informed Maloney that some of the Trump White House documents the former president took to Florida were marked classified, and that the agency had notified the Justice Department of the matter.
The Justice Department has not said whether it has opened a formal investigation into the referral from the Archives. At a news conference on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the department would “look at the facts and the law” in evaluating the documents.
In her letter Friday, Maloney also requested any documents or records related to White House employees or contractors “finding paper in a toilet in the White House” and the president’s residence — a reference to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman’s reporting that White House staff believed Trump periodically flushed papers down the toilet to dispose of them.
Trump has denied that he destroyed any documents, and has further denied any misconduct regarding the documents that were retrieved from Florida by the National Archives and Records Administration.
“The media’s characterization of my relationship with NARA is Fake News. It was exactly the opposite!” Trump said in a statement to ABC News. “It was a great honor to work with NARA to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy.”
More broadly, the Oversight committee on Friday signaled plans to investigate the Trump White House’s handling of the Presidential Records Act and its enforcement in the West Wing, after the National Archives informed Congress that some social media records were not preserved, and that some staff used non-official electronic messaging accounts for official business.
The committee’s probe is on a parallel track to the investigation being carried out by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
(NEW YORK) — Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has closely followed what the United Kingdom had done to combat the virus from its early response to its vaccination rollout.
Outbreaks in Great Britain have been harbingers of what’s to come in the U.S., and its policies have often helped shape America’s COVID response.
Over the past several weeks, the U.K. has been lifting COVID restrictions and, on Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he was dropping the remaining rules in England including the requirement to self-isolate after testing positive, contact tracing and free administration of rapid tests.
In a speech to the House of Commons, Johnson said the country had to pivot away from preventing COVID-19 and “learn to live with this virus and continue protecting ourselves and others without restricting our freedoms.”
Seeing America’s closest ally drop its restrictions have led some to wonder if the U.S. should follow suit.
Currently, the U.K. is recording a daily average of 39,000 cases, down from a peak of 183,000 on Jan. 2 and an average of 126 deaths from a peak of 257 on Feb. 5, according to government data. Meanwhile, the U.S. is recording an average of 75,000 cases, down from a peak of 807,000 in mid-January and approximately 1,600 deaths a day compared to the peak of 2,600 on Feb. 2, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public health experts are split with some saying it’s time for the U.S. to do similarly and treat COVID-19 as an endemic disease while others say lifting rules may not work for the U.S. right now because of a lower vaccination rate and a less robust surveillance system.
COVID spread in England will be ‘minimal’ due to high rate of vaccination
The largest change to the rules in England is that people who test positive for COVID-19 will no longer be legally required to self-isolate, or avoid contact with other people for a period of time to reduce the risk of transmission.
Once approved by Parliament, the requirement ended Feb. 24, although the government will continue to recommend that COVID-positive patients self-isolate but are not required to do so.
Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, called the move a step in the right direction towards the “concept of living with COVID” and a shift from a mandate to personal responsibility.
“It’s a state where we expect people to essentially take responsibility and be accountable to doing the right thing,” she told ABC News. “This means someone who tests positive is aware of what they need to do to protect others during the period of time when they are infectious.”
She added that the U.K. government needs to communicate that “this doesn’t mean do whatever you want to do if you know you have COVID-19. It means that now we have shifted the responsibility and are giving you the tools to guide you in how we should behave.”
But other public health experts don’t think that this system can be implemented in the U.S. because it has a lower vaccination rate than England.
In England, 84.9% of those aged 12 and older are fully vaccinated and 65.7% have received a booster shot as of Thursday, according to the UK government.
By comparison, 73.3% of Americans aged 12 and up are fully vaccinated and 44.9% are boosted, according to data from the CDC.
The experts say this means, even if infected people don’t self-isolate, the virus wouldn’t have a major impact on the healthcare system in England as it would in the U.S.
“What they are doing is going to lead to more infections, but the consequences of increased transmission in the U.K. will be minimized by their very good rates of vaccination,” Dr. Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told ABC News. “That population-level immunity is going to be maintained, so even though the virus is circulating, it doesn’t cause disproportionate damage to healthcare.”
He continued, “There are lots of places in the U.S. that are not able to do that without risking much more severe consequences” in reference to several areas in the U.S. with low vaccination rates.
Genomic surveillance is better in the U.K.
Experts said one of the reasons the U.K. may be able to drop its COVID-19 restrictions is its strong genomic surveillance system, better than that of the U.S.
Genomic surveillance allows scientists to track new mutations and variants of COVID-19 and how quickly they are spreading.
About 60,000 samples are sequenced in the U.K. each week, according to the non-profit Wellcome Sanger Institute, which is contracted by the UK Health Security Agency to sequence COVID samples.
Meanwhile, more than 48,000 samples are sequenced each week in the U.S currently, according to the CDC, despite having nearly five times the population of the U.K.
What’s more, between Feb. 14 and Feb. 20, the U.S. submitted about 1,000 samples that underwent genomic sequencing to the global database GISAID while the U.K. submitted more than 15,000 samples.
This means the U.K. would be able to detect new variants much more quickly.
“The U.K. demonstrated a really phenomenal level of surveillance for this virus,” Dr. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told ABC News. “They were the ones that helped us recognize the alpha variant and they had a higher level of genomic surveillance for this virus than the U.S. did at many junctures.”
“I think that they have demonstrated the utility of situational awareness of monitoring and testing to try to manage this pandemic. That’s a lesson I hope we took to heart. I’m not sure if relaxing rules while case rates are high is a lesson to learn or not, but we’ll see.”
Almost all adults in England are estimated to have COVID antibodies
As of the week beginning Jan. 31, more than 98% of the adult population in England are estimated to have detectable COVID-19 antibodies either from previous infection or from vaccination, according to the UK government, which some have pointed to as a reason for why restrictions should be dropped.
But the U.S. is not very far behind, with a nationwide seroprevalence survey of blood donors conducted by the CDC estimating 94% of those aged 16 and older have antibodies to the virus from vaccination or infection.
Of those, 28% in the U.S. are believed to be from infection. It’s unclear what the U.K. level from infection is.
Ray pointed out that it’s not clear from antibody tests whether people are immune to infection, severe complication and so on and that a high percentage of people with antibodies does not equate to high levels of immunity from high vaccination levels.
“I think if we had a very high vaccination rate, a very high level of immunity in the U.S., that relaxing some restrictions would make a lot of sense, and we would just need to articulate guidance for people for voluntary protections for themselves and the people around them,” he said.
Other infectious diseases experts say even though the U.S. vaccine rate is not as high as in the U.K, there is enough immunity in the nation.
Dr. Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist with the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, told ABC News the omicron wave infected as many as 60% of all Americans, giving them some form of immunity.
“We do not have as high a vaccination rate as the U.K., but we have the combination of vaccination and infection,” Mokdad, who helps lead a model that projects COVID-19 cases around the country, said. “In our estimate at IHME, 75% of Americans have immunity against omicron so we are basically very close to the U.K. in that regard.”
Studies have indicated infection with omicron, which is the current dominant variant, among vaccinated individuals can boost previously acquired vaccine immunity against other variants.
“Even if they had higher vaccination, we had higher infections, so you add the two together and we’re in the same boat as they are. So, whatever they did, we should do here in the U.S. In my opinion we should also stop these mandates in the U.S.,” Mokdad said.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and mink breeder Peter Hindbo visit the closed and empty farm near Kolding, Denmark. – MADS NISSEN/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A year ago, Denmark culled thousands of minks in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 in mink farms and curb any potential threat of transmission back to humans.
And just a few months ago, thousands of small animals, including hamsters in Hong Kong were culled after scientists and public health officials became concerned over cases of humans becoming infected with COVID-19 from their pets.
Pets, in particular, are problematic because there are no disease surveillance programs for them or zoo animals, said Dr. Tracey McNamara, professor of pathology at Western University of Health Sciences College of Veterinary Medicine.
While minks and hamsters have been the only animals believed to have transmitted the virus back to humans in some cases, scientists are increasingly concerned that the next coronavirus variant might emerge not from people, but animals, as COVID-19 likely did.
Scientists are monitoring animals both to try to identify any new pandemic-causing viruses, and to try to identify the next COVID-19 variant. If a new variant emerges that is significantly different from any of the variants we’ve seen previously, and if nobody has immunity — that’s effectively a brand-new pandemic.
“There are hundreds, thousands of coronavirus in many animal species,” said Dr. Jeff Taubenberger, deputy chief of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “We don’t really know where they all are, we don’t know the full extent of the reservoir. We don’t know what the risks are.”
Bolstering animal surveillance
Now, scientists are hoping to shore up defenses against COVID-19 by monitoring the way the virus circulates in animals.
“Tufts University recently received $100 million for pandemic prevention work globally,” said McNamara. “There is a lot of money going into finding potential pandemic threats in animals before they spread to people internationally, but not enough domestically.”
According to McNamara, the new Tufts funding will fund teams of scientists to bolster surveillance in the Africa and Asia — testing wild animals for any virus that might cause a future pandemic, to better understand how those viruses are circulating in nature.
In North America, scientists have found more and more cases of the COVID-19 virus being transmitted among wild white tail deer. Each case of transmission increases the chances of a new variant developing.
“If the virus is able to infect other species, it will evolve differently,” said Taubenberger. “It could give us a variant that is very different from what we’ve been exposed to, and wouldn’t be covered by our current vaccines.”
Universal vaccine and new pandemic plans
This concern for new variants arising, especially from animal populations, has scientists calling for the development of a universal coronavirus vaccine, which would address a number of coronaviruses, including COVID-19, but likely not all.
“A universal coronavirus vaccine is one that would work against multiple strains or variants,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and a medical contributor for ABC News.
Scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have been working on developing such a universal vaccine, which is currently undergoing the first phase of human trials.
This universal vaccine would include multiple coronavirus fragments that could trigger immune responses to different strains of COVID-19, with the hopes of boosting immunity against more variants.
It would also be stable at room temperature, potentially making it more globally accessible.
“With the omicron variant, we saw a huge number of breakthrough cases, though the vaccine was holding up against severe illness from COVID-19. In the future, we would like to be providing core support instead of chasing new variants,” Brownstein said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has launched a new Pandemic Preparedness Plan to better defend against new viruses that might cause the next pandemic.
As part of this plan, the NIAID will focus research efforts on two areas, “prototype pathogens” and “priority pathogens.”
“Prototype pathogens are viruses that could potentially cause human illness,” said Brownstein. “And priority pathogens are viruses that we know already cause human illness and death.”
By expanding knowledge of these viruses, the Pandemic Preparedness Plan hopes to shorten the time it takes to develop medicines or vaccines effective against future variants that may emerge.
Jonathan Chan, M.D., is an emergency medicine resident at St. John’s Riverside Hospital and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
