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Mpox vaccines arrive in Congo, but not fast enough as the disease spreads and deaths mount fast
Johannesburg — Health officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo said Thursday they would start administering mpox vaccinations on Oct. 2, about a week sooner than initially planned, in a bid to counter the sharp rise of cases in the central African nation. The World Health Organization, meanwhile, granted pre-authorization Friday to the mpox vaccine already widely in use around the world, which should make it easier for African nations to obtain doses — if the developed world provides the necessary funding.
“This first prequalification of a vaccine against mpox is an important step in our fight against the disease, both in the context of the current outbreaks in Africa, and in future,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Congo authorities approved two mpox vaccines for use in adults in the country in late June as they raced to contain a growing outbreak. Without the WHO pre-authorization, however, Gavi, the global vaccine alliance that funds the purchase of vaccines for low-income countries, could only accept donations from other nations. The Friday announcement paves the way for Gavi to directly purchase vaccines from pharmaceutical companies to ship to affected countries.
Race to roll out first mpox vaccinations in hard-hit Congo
An initial 10-day vaccination drive, using vaccines donated by the U.S. and Europe, is to launch simultaneously in several of Congo’s most affected regions, targeting only adults who work in health care, sex work and other front-line community jobs, according to Cris Kacita Osako, coordinator of the country’s Monkeypox Response Committee.
U.S. Ambassador Lucy Tamlyn announced in a Tuesday social media post the arrival of 50,000 mpox vaccine doses in Congo donated by the U.S. government, adding to the 200,000 doses received late last week from the European Union.
Dr. Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, welcomed the vaccine deliveries, adding a call for the U.S. to provide “continued support as we need to vaccinate 10 million people in Africa in the next 6 months.”
Kaseya said the Africa CDC was seeking an additional $599 million from the U.S. to support “the continental response to the outbreak.” Such funding would help Congo and other poor nations obtain significantly more vaccines through the Gavi alliance.
The mpox vaccine, manufactured by Denmark-based Bavarian Nordic, has been approved for adult use and distributed globally. The company recently filed an application with the European Medicines Agency to extend the approval to children from the age of 12. Regulators could authorize the vaccination for that age group by the end of the month.
Mpox cases spreading fast in Congo and beyond
Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, has continued to evolve and spread quickly in Congo, with new strains or clades of the virus causing multiple outbreaks with distinct epicenters in the country, putting different groups at risk. The newly arrived vaccines are known to be effective against the older clade 2 variant, but it’s not yet clear how well they will work against the newer, more lethal clade 1 strain.
Congo health officials have confirmed more than 22,000 mpox cases in the country and more than 716 deaths from the disease this year. But experts believe very low testing rates and under-reporting of cases mean the real mpox caseload in Congo and surrounding nations is likely much higher.
The virus has spread to 22 of Congo’s 26 provinces and 13 of its neighboring African nations. It has been declared a public health emergency by both the WHO and the Africa CDC, which have crafted a six-month, $600 million response plan.
Mpox infections have reached as far abroad as Sweden, Thailand and India, with most cases linked to recent travel to affected regions.
Morocco reported its first case this week — a 32 year old man who tested positive in Marrakech. In a statement, the Health Ministry said he was receiving treatment and was in a stable condition, and that none one he’d come into contact with was showing symptoms.
South Africa recorded its 25th case last week, a 38-year-old Cape Town man who had not traveled nor had contact with any suspected or confirmed other cases. In a statement, the South African Health Department said it had deployed a provincial outbreak response team to identify possible contacts, adding the protocol was for positive cases to be isolated at home.
The National Institute for Communicable Disease in South Africa says there are currently no mpox vaccines available in the country. That’s a significant concern for health officials in the country, which has a highly immunocompromised population, with close to 9 million people infected with HIV.
“We need to stop this outbreak now to ensure we don’t get a new mutation,” the Africa CDC’s Kaseya told journalists during a virtual news conference on Thursday.
More than 70% of mpox cases in Congo are currently in children, and the Africa CDC says four of every five deaths recorded are minors. Health officials say children are more vulnerable to mpox, a virus with similarities to smallpox. Experts believe older generations could still have some immunity to mpox from previous smallpox vaccinations.
Other diseases complicate mpox response in Congo
Eastern DRC is racked by conflict, largely between the army and militias, including the Rwandan-backed M23 group. The clashes have caused mass displacement of the population and made vaccination campaigns, for all diseases, far more complicated.
Even before the mpox outbreaks, Congo was facing one of the biggest human displacement crises in the world. According to the U.N. children’s charity, some 7 million people in the east of the country have fled their homes and more than 25 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance to survive, including almost 15 million children.
“Things are really moving fast — we are seeing cases going up in the whole province,” Marietta Nagtzaam, Congo country coordinator for the Doctors Without Borders charity, who is based in the hard-hit South Kivu region, told CBS News. “There is a lot of underreporting in an overburdened health system.”
South Kivu is divided into 34 health zones. In the Uvira zone, Nagtzaam said her organization, which goes by the French acronym MSF, had treated more than 850 patients over the last three months alone. A handful of those who made it to the medics still died with the disease.
“This clade of mpox [clade 1] is so new, we just don’t know enough, and the population is easily confused between measles and mpox, with similar looking lesions,” Nagtzaam said of the challenges facing her team.
MSF also works in the Fizi health zone, at two hospitals with isolation centers where medics are having to treat measles and mpox cases simultaneously, requiring separate isolation areas.
Arlette Bashizi/REUTERS
Diagnosing a sick child with very limited supplies, in an area with endemic measles, cholera, poor sanitation and little access to proper nutrition or clean water, has proven an immense challenge for the overburdened health workers.
“Fluid needs to be collected from the lesions by a health worker with protective gear, transported in a cool box on often non-existent or flooded roads to the capital of Bukavu to the testing lab. This alone is very difficult, then we need stock of the expensive PCR cartridges to test for mpox,” she explained, highlighting the logistical challenges.
“We would love to do contact tracing,” Nagtzaam added, “but the money isn’t there to test close contacts.”
A vast shortage of mpox vaccines in Africa
The Africa CDC said last month that it had started talks with Bavarian Nordic about manufacturing its mpox vaccine in Africa. The CDC’s Kaseya said transferring the technology required to do that to Africa would cut the cost of the vaccine by 80-90% on the continent.
The 250,000 vaccine doses now in Congo are far short of the 3.5 million the country’s Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba has said are needed urgently to stem the spread of the virus.
The WHO’s designation last month of mpox as a “public health emergency of international concern” was partly intended to spur nations around the world to assist in the response in Congo and other poor nations, as well as to prepare their own contingency measures.
Germany, Belgium and France have said they will donate 100,000 vaccines each, according to Kaseya. On Wednesday, the Reuters news agency quoted a Canadian government spokesperson as saying the country would send 200,000 doses.
The pledges of help come after criticism leveled at the developed world as African countries grappled with the last mpox outbreak in 2022, when they had no vaccines.
African health officials have told CBS News that some countries still have not been transparent about the number of vaccine doses they have in stock.
CBS News
After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
A former Memphis police officer charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols sent his ex-girlfriend a photo of the badly injured man on the night he was punched, kicked and hit with a police baton following a traffic stop, according to trial testimony Wednesday.
Brittany Leake, a Memphis officer and Demetrius Haley’s former girlfriend, testified during the criminal trial that she was on the phone with Haley when officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. She said she heard a “commotion,” including verbal orders for someone to give officers his hands.
The call ended, but Haley later texted the photo in a group chat comprising Haley, Leake and her godsister, she testified. Prosecutors displayed the photo for the jury. It showed Nichols with his eyes closed, on the ground with what appeared to be blood near his mouth and his hands behind his back.
Leake said that when she saw the photo, her reaction was: “Oh my God, he definitely needs to go to the Med.”
The Med is shorthand for Memphis’ trauma hospital.
The fatal beating, caught on police bodycams and street surveillance cameras, has sparked protests and calls for police reform. Officers said they pulled over Nichols for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith are on trial after pleading not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his civil rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Their trial began Sept. 9 and is expected to run three to four weeks.
George Walker IV / AP
The Memphis Police Department fired the three men, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., after Nichols’ death. The beating was caught on police video, which was released publicly. The officers were later indicted on the federal charges. Martin and Mills have taken plea deals.
During her testimony Wednesday, Leake said she deleted the photo after she saw it and that sending such a photo is against police policy.
“I wasn’t offended, but it was difficult to look at,” she said.
Leake said Haley had sent her photos before of drugs, and of a person who had been injured in a car accident.
Earlier Wednesday, Martin was on the witness stand for a third day. Defense attorneys tried to show inconsistencies between Martin’s statements to investigators and his court testimony. Martin acknowledged lying about what happened to Memphis Police Department internal investigators, to try to cover up and “justify what I did.”
But Martin said he told the truth to FBI investigators after he pleaded guilty in August, including statements about feeling pressure on his duty belt where his gun was located during the traffic stop, but not being able to see if Nichols was trying to get his gun. Martin has testified that he said “let go of my gun” during the traffic stop.
Martin Zummach, the attorney for Justin Smith, asked Martin if he knew of any reasons why Nichols did not simply say, “I give up.”
“He’s out of it,” Martin said. “Disoriented.”
Martin testified that the situation escalated quickly when Haley pulled his gun and violently yanked Nichols from his car, using expletives and failing to tell Nichols why he had been pulled over and removed from the vehicle.
“He never got a chance to comply,” Martin said.
Nichols, who was Black, was pepper sprayed and hit with a stun gun during the traffic stop, but ran away, police video shows. The five officers, who also are Black, then beat him about a block from his home, as he called out for his mother.
Video shows the officers milling about and talking as Nichols struggled with his injuries. Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating.
An autopsy report shows Nichols – the father of a boy who is now 7 – died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.
Jesse Guy testified that he was working as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department the night of the beating. He arrived at the location after two emergency medical technicians, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge.
Guy said he was not told about the medical problems Nichols had experienced before he arrived, and that Nichols was injured, seated on the ground and unresponsive.
Nichols had no pulse and was not breathing, and it “felt like he was lifeless,” Guy said.
In the ambulance, Guy performed CPR and provided mechanical ventilation, and Nichols had a pulse by the time he arrived at the hospital, the paramedic said.
Guy said Long and Sandridge did not say if they had checked Nichols’ pulse and heart rate, and they did not report if they had given him oxygen. When asked by one of Bean’s lawyers whether that information would have been helpful in treating Nichols, Guy said yes.
Long and Sandridge were fired for violating fire department policies after Nichols died. They have not been criminally charged.
The five officers also have been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.
Federal prosecutors have previously recommended a 40-year sentence for Martin. A date has not been set in state court yet.
Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography. The city of Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, named a skatepark in his honor. “Tyre fell in love with skateboarding at a young age and it wasn’t long before it became a part of his lifestyle,” states the resolution approved by the city council. He had a tattoo of his mother’s name.
“Tyre Nichols’ family have been praying for justice and accountability from the very beginning of this tragedy,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the civil rights attorneys representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement when the trial began.
Boeing’s CEO said Wednesday that the company will begin furloughing “a large number” of employees to conserve cash during the strike by union machinists that began last week.
Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the people who would be required to take time off without pay starting in coming days include executives, managers and other employees based in the U.S.
“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Ortberg said in a company-wide message to staff.
Boeing didn’t say how many people will face rolling furloughs, but the number is expected to run into the tens of thousands. The aerospace giant had 171,000 employees at the start of the year.
About 33,000 Boeing factory workers in the Pacific Northwest began a strike Friday after rejecting a proposal to raise pay by 25% over four years. They want raises of at least 40%, the return of a traditional pension plan and other improvements in the contract offer they voted down.
Scott Brauer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The strike is halting production of several airplane models including Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max. The company gets more than half of the purchase price when new planes are delivered to buyers, so the strike will quickly hurt Boeing’s cash flow.
Ortberg said selected employees will be furloughed for one week every four weeks while retaining their benefits. The CEO and other senior executives will take pay cuts during the duration of the strike, he said, without stating how deep the cuts will be.
All work related to safety, quality, customer support and certification of new planes will continue during the furloughs, he said, including production of 787 Dreamliner jets, which are built by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the company is talking to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers about a new contract agreement that could be ratified.
“However, with production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” he said.
Boeing’s chief financial officer warned employees earlier this week that temporary layoffs were possible.
The company, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, but has most of its commercial-airplanes business located in the Pacific Northwest, is also cutting spending on suppliers, freezing hiring and eliminating most travel.
Despite two full days of talks assisted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union said Wednesday that no resolution had been reached and no additional negotiations were scheduled, according to CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.
Striking workers are picketing at several locations in the Seattle area, Oregon and California. The union, which recommended the offer that members later rejected by a 96% vote, is surveying the workers to learn what they want in a new contract. The union’s last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted about two months.
If the walkout doesn’t end soon, Boeing’s credit rating could be downgraded to non-investment or junk status, which would make borrowing more expensive. Shortly after the walkout began Friday, Moody’s put Boeing on review for a possible downgrade, and Fitch said a strike longer than two weeks would make a downgrade more likely.
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