Enlarge (credit: Getty | Thomas Trutschel)

With the country experiencing a relatively large summer wave of COVID-19, the Food and Drug Administration is considering signing off on this year's strain-matched COVID-19 vaccines as soon as this week, according to a report by CNN that cited unnamed officials familiar with the matter.

Last year, the FDA gave the green light for the 2023–2024 COVID shots on September 11, close to the peak of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in that year's summer wave. This year, the summer wave began earlier and, by some metrics, is peaking at much higher levels than in previous years.

Currently, wastewater detection of SARS-CoV-2 shows "very high" virus levels in 32 states and the District of Columbia. An additional 11 states are listed as having "high" levels. Looking at trends, the southern and western regions of the country are currently reporting SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater that rival the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 winter waves, which both peaked at the very end of December.

Enlarge / A 2003 photo of the arms and legs of a 4-year-old girl infected with mpox in Liberia. (credit: Getty | BSIP)

A deadly outbreak of mpox (previously called monkeypox) is spilling out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, raising alarm among global health experts.

The DRC has reported more than 22,000 suspected cases since the start of 2023, including 1,200 suspected deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A high proportion of the cases are in children younger than 15 years old.

On Wednesday, the CDC released a health advisory noting that although mpox is endemic to the DRC, the current outbreak is larger and more widespread than any outbreak the country has previously seen. The virus has also spilled over to several neighboring countries in recent months, including the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. The World Health Organization reported that cases have also been detected in Kenya.

Enlarge (credit: Tony C. French/Getty)

A small study in Texas suggests that human bird flu cases are being missed on dairy farms where the H5N1 virus has taken off in cows, sparking an unprecedented nationwide outbreak.

The finding adds some data to what many experts have suspected amid the outbreak. But the authors of the study, led by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, went further, stating bluntly why the US is failing to fully surveil, let alone contain, a virus with pandemic potential.

"Due to fears that research might damage dairy businesses, studies like this one have been few," the authors write in the topline summary of their study, which was posted online as a pre-print and had not been peer-reviewed.