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Even though the COVID-19 public health emergency has ended, recent hospital data suggest cases of COVID-19 are rising modestly. At the same time, tuberculosis (TB) infections and TB disease outbreaks, including right here in Minnesota, are rising. And cold and flu season is just around the corner.
The symptoms of these conditions, and others, often overlap, involving coughs and fevers. All of them are highly contagious, and for vulnerable populations — including the very young, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems — all of them can be deadly. We must act to apply the lessons we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic to the infectious diseases that are circulating among us. National governments, international bodies and industry should work together to leverage the processes we built during COVID, and strengthen the areas that weakened our response.
Quite simply, preventing the next infectious disease pandemic is the only way to honor the 7 million lives lost to COVID.
In May, the World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID-19 public health emergency it had announced 15 months earlier. Yet more than 30 years after an emergency declaration for TB — the world's next-most lethal infectious disease, which is both preventable and curable — progress has been woefully inadequate and there is no end in sight. In the U.S., an estimated 13 million people live with inactive or latent TB, and 1 in 10 will convert to active, contagious TB.
In just the last few months we've seen TB outbreaks in Alabama, Virginia, Arizona, New York and Canada. In Washington, a woman with active TB disease who refused to isolate or be treated was imprisoned. Here in Minnesota, the state Department of Health confirmed last week that it's tracking an outbreak of TB, including four active cases in Washington County within the Anywaa community. It is estimated that one person with active TB disease has the potential to infect 10 other people around them. Like COVID, TB could very quickly create a large scale public health emergency — one that can only be contained with robust TB infection testing and contact tracing.
It is notable that the agenda of September's United Nations General Assembly includes three high-level meetings on health spotlighting three interconnected priorities: TB, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and universal health coverage.