What We’re Reading: Gates Foundation Funds Polio Eradication; Vaccines for Cancer Possible by 2030; Flu Season Begins

Gates Foundation Donates Money to Polio Eradication Effort

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would be donating $1.2 billion to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026, according to AP News. The initiative aims to end polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the 2 remaining countries where the virus is endemic; it also intends to integrate polio campaigns into health services, scale up the use of oral polio vaccine type 2, and halt outbreaks of new variants. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated about $5 billion toward the initiative overall.

Cancer Vaccines Could Come Within the Decade

The cofounders of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, said in an interview that vaccines for cancer could be closer than ever and perhaps reach patients by 2030, according to Bloomberg. The couple, who worked to develop the COVID-19 vaccine, said that the use of mRNA in vaccines came into its own during the pandemic and could help spur on research into vaccinations for cancer, as the COVID-19 vaccine was developed based on work that had been previously done for a cancer vaccine. Sahin and Tureci did not promise a cure for cancer, but they did point to breakthroughs that they are continuing to work on.

Flu Season Affecting Regions in the United States

An early increase in flu activity has been demonstrated throughout the United States, with the Southeast and South-Central regions reporting the highest levels of flu activity in the country, according to CIDRAP. Flulike illness in the country, measured by outpatient visits within the past week, has been slowly increasing in all age groups and rose to 2.6%, which is above the national baseline of 2.5%. The flulike illness marker could also be measuring respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus. Influenza A made up 97.6% of all respiratory samples that were positive for flu. The CDC said that the flu vaccine is the best way to protect against the flu.