Virulence

• The data showed one of Maxwell's Claromer compounds is active against Ebola virus within the critical time frame required to address Ebola virus disease progression.
• Once a human is infected, Ebola virus disease can be lethal within 4-5 days.
• Maxwell is currently developing its Claromer drug platform, which has the potential to replace almost all antibiotics, antifungals and antivirals.
• Since the first outbreak in Africa in 1976, several outbreaks and epidemics of Ebola virus have occurred in Western and Central Africa.

• The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and far-reaching impact on infectious disease diagnostics worldwide.
• North America, encompassing both the United States and Canada, currently holds the largest share in the global emerging infectious disease diagnostics market.
• Some of the common bacterial infections include respiratory infections such as tuberculosis and streptococcal infections and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis.
• Hospitals and clinics play a critical role in the field of infectious disease diagnostics, serving as important centers for patient evaluation and testing.

• The vision of the boy in front of the ruins of his family is one of rude survivalism.
• It’s a trait that will see Pip through the misadventures ahead – but the sorrow of surviving on these terms is unmistakable.
• However, Tanika Gupta’s adaptation of Great Expectations, currently showing at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre, opens with “Pipli” buzzing around, doing cartwheels, at ease in his world.
• Dickens brought the upper classes to their knees in his novels, exposing the entanglements of gentility and criminality.

Pip and Magwitch

• In the Dickens novel, Pip refuses to treat his terrifying encounter with Magwitch as anything other than a “chance occurrence”.
• Magwitch – who reinvents himself in the penal colony of Australia, where he is transported to – becomes the anonymous benefactor whose colonial labour finances Pip’s education.
• Dickens’s Pip does not treat his entry into Satis House – the estate of Miss Havisham – as the random event it is.

MacCaulay’s Minute

• In Gupta’s play, the backdrop to Pipli’s soul-searching is the first partition of Bengal into East and West Bengal (1905).
• This echoes politician Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute Upon Indian Education (1835), which shaped British educational policy.
• The Macaulay Minute ushered a colonial modernity no longer reliant on the indigenous literature and culture and bred mimic men fully compliant with British rule.

The language issue

• The treatment of language in decolonising Dickens’s Great Expectations is a missed opportunity.
• Furthermore, little attention is paid to differences between Bengali Hindus and Muslims when it came to their respective reckonings of Curzon’s division.
• This is clever, but reinforces once again the power of English to stand in as both global language and local vernacular.

• EG.5 is a family of Omicron variants (descended from XBB.1.9.2) that first appeared back in February 2023.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) classified it as a “variant under monitoring” on July 19 after a surge in COVID infections from early July.
• Eris has seen EG.5 jump from 7.6% of all SARS-CoV-2 genetically sequenced globally in late June, to 17.4% in the week of July 17-23.
• Eris has edged out other Omicron variants circulating in the United States, and now makes up the largest proportion of COVID cases there.

Is Eris different to other variants?

• How this virus enters cells and tissues in our body is also similar to XBB.1.5 (sometimes referred to as Kraken) and other Omicron variants.
• While the severity of the illness it causes will need to be documented carefully, there are no indications it’s different from XBB.1.5.
• While this enables it to compete with other circulating variants, it’s unclear if or when Eris will out-compete other variants in Australia.

What variants is the WHO watching?

• The current variant of interest list also includes two other Omicron cousins – XBB 1.5 and XBB 1.16 (the latter sometimes referred to as Arcturus).
• Read more:
  When is a COVID mutation a new variant, and when is it a subvariant?
• How closely related the new variant is to the variants already circulating in the population is another key factor.

Will vaccines protect against it?

• EG.5.1 has two important additional mutations that XBB.1.9.2 does not have: F456L and Q52H, whereas EG.5 only has F456L.
• The extra small change in EG.5.1, the Q52H mutation in the spike protein, is enough to give EG.5.1 an edge over EG.5 in transmissibility.
• The good news is the bivalent vaccine antibody responses to EG.5.1 are similar to those for variants that dominated earlier in the year in Australia.
• We found that while the antibody response wanes the longer it has been since the last vaccine dose or infection, this is not at levels significantly different to XBB.1.5.
• Importantly, bivalent vaccine doses, such as Moderna’s BA.1 bivalent booster, generate a five-fold increase in antibodies that protect against variants in circulation, including EG.5.1.

Will Eris prompt a rise in COVID cases?

• By August 7 2023, there had been 158 known cases reported via whole genome sequencing across Australia, representing 2.1% of reported variants.
• Encouragingly, Australia’s overall infection rates continue to decline, as do hospitalisations and COVID-related deaths, antiviral scripts, and reports of cases in aged care.
• Read more:
  Do I need a booster vaccine if I recently had COVID?
• India first saw this variant back in May, but it has also seen only sporadic cases, and no major rise in overall infections.

COVID is becoming less of a threat but still needs watching

• It’s also heartening that emerging variants aren’t genetically that different, so our immunity, vaccines, testing and treatment are still effective in protecting us from serious illness.
• The more time our immune systems have to mature, the more they can respond to a range variants far better than before.
• Our antibodies may wane over time, but the pool that are left represent quality rather than quantity in their ability to target many variants.