UK Health Security Agency

Patient, so yeah, so the epidemiological link means they've had a link with each other or a common source.

So Dr Marie Chan, Director of Clinical and Emerging Infections, UK Health Security Agency, direct quotes from her investigating a wide range of possible factors which may be causing children to be admitted to hospital with liver inflammation.

So she's looking at a wide range of possible factors quite correctly.

One of the possible causes that we're investigating is this link to adenovirus infection.

Probably viral, but that's all we know yet.

It may be something other than adenovirus.

Dr Chand again from the UK Health Security Agency.

Normal hygiene measures such as good hand washing, including supervision in children, fair enough.

Thank you very much.

Dr. Yimie Chao, to my furthest right, is, uh, UKHSA's Regional Deputy Director for, uh, Health Protection in London.

Uh, Yimie has over two decades of experience in public health and health protection leadership.

Uh, Yimie's been on the front line of leading the regional response to some of our really most significant, uh, public health incidents, including Grenfell, Ebola, SARS, COVID-19, and has also published extensively on health protection and emergency response, making sure that we're learning from, uh, incidents and passing that into future practice.

But really bizarre what's happening.

Now, COVID-19 surveillance report from the UK, vaccine surveillance report, UK Health Security Agency, very well compiled data.

on the most part, a fairly readable site.

So do check it out for yourself.

Two young people died, nine ended up in intensive care, and 30,000 people received prophylactic antibiotics to block the spread of the outbreak that stemmed from a nightclub in the English county of Kent earlier this year.

The study by the UK Health Security Agency and the University of Oxford, and released provisionally as a preprint this week, has compared the genomes of the meningococcus bacteria behind the outbreak with existing strains of the same bacterium that circulate naturally.

The analysis has highlighted a number of genetic changes that appear to have enhanced the virulence of the bugs, turning something that can normally loiter harmlessly in the throats of about 10% of the population into a much more aggressive infection.

Now, the good news is that the study also shows that the interventions to block the spread at the time also may have wiped out the causative strain.

This was traced back to a nightclub in Canterbury in Kent.

But there were questions around why the outbreak was so severe, and scientists from the UK Health Security Agency and the University of Oxford have been looking into this.

Before we get to what they found, give me a bit more background.

That's right.

Here in the UK, the authorities are not so sure.

The position of the UK Health Security Agency is that the science is unproven at this point.

They published a paper Just this week, looking at the literature, effectively said that the idea that chronic PFAS exposure, which might well be the case here near industrial sites, leads to adverse health impacts hasn't been proven.

The evidence doesn't support it yet.

It's just such a good question.

And I think it's a big part of why Shade the UK's theory of change is around working towards zero deaths from overheating because the numbers are so big and it feels that, you know, certainly in the UK, you know we are not the hottest country in the world you know we're not we're not the kind of least resourced country in the world it kind of feels almost like unacceptable in a way that anyone would die from hot weather in this country um so we don't think zero deaths is a kind of unrealistic or unreasonable kind of outcome to be working towards um and you're absolutely right you know the numbers are are big and they're growing um and i think the the figure you mentioned for the may and june uh months this summer they're almost the same as the number for the whole of 2022 so yes you're right the july and august ones haven't been published um And I think there's been a bit of collaboration between academic institutes and the UK Health and Security Agency.

So it's a mixture of kind of modelled data of kind of how many are likely with kind of observed data of how many have happened.

And I think the official statistics that the UK Health and Security Agency will be publishing, there's a bit of a time lag between when they're published and the period within which the heat related deaths would have happened.

So, you know, let's see, you know, hopefully, you know, it won't be so stark.

In the sense that by July and August, although, you know, the relentlessness of the heat would have played a part, you would have hoped that people would have been a bit readier.

Now, this is interesting.

So if people had contact with the disease, it seems in the incubation period, if you catch this early, and this is what we're doing in the UK, according to the Health Security Agency.

So if someone's infected... with monkeypox and you give them the vaccine early then they'll develop a level of immunity even though it's only a few days or as we say just over a week typically before they become infectious or before they become symptomatic rather they will be infectious around about that time as well but that gives a little bit of time to develop some immunity so there is merit to post-exposure vaccination which is interesting there's not many conditions where we would do this But post-exposure prophylaxis is currently being offered in the UK at the moment.

Now, since 2017 in Nigeria, there's been 558 suspected cases.

So in terms of severity of disease, nothing too alarming there at the moment, which is good news.

Now, UK Health Security Agency said, A bit out of date, doesn't tell us much.

Data only goes up to the 3rd of May, which, OK, they're not doing bad.

It's only 17 days ago.