COVID-19 pandemic and other factors associated with unfavorable tuberculosis treatment outcomes-Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2018-2021.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic negatively influenced the availability of tuberculosis (TB) services, such as detection, diagnosis and treatment, around the world, including Kazakhstan. We set out to estimate the COVID-19 pandemic influence on TB treatment outcomes by comparing outcomes among people starting treatment before the pandemic (2018-2019) and during the pandemic (2020-2021) and to determine risk factors associated with unfavorable outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study among all people newly diagnosed with drug-sensitive pulmonary or extrapulmonary TB at least 18 years old who initiated treatment from 2018 to 2021 in Almaty.

Knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to anthrax and animal care: A case-control study in Georgia.

Introduction: Anthrax is endemic in Georgia and recent outbreaks prompted a livestock-handler case-control study with a component to evaluate anthrax knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) among livestock handlers or owners.

Methods: Cases were handlers of livestock with confirmed animal anthrax from June 2013-May 2015. Handlers of four matched unaffected animals were selected as controls, two from the same village as the case animal ("village control") and two from 3-10 km away ("area control").

Assessing the potency and immunogenicity of inactivated poliovirus vaccine after exposure to freezing temperatures.

According to manufacturers, inactivated poliovirus vaccines (IPVs) are freeze sensitive and require storage between 2°C and 8°C, whereas oral poliovirus vaccine requires storage at -20 °C. Introducing IPV into ongoing immunization services might result in accidental exposure to freezing temperatures and potential loss of vaccine potency. To better understand the effect of freezing IPVs, samples of single-dose vaccine vials from Statens Serum Institut (VeroPol) and multi-dose vaccine vials from Sanofi Pasteur (IPOL) were exposed to freezing temperatures mimicking what a vaccine vial might encounter in the field.

Surveillance Systems to Track Progress Toward Polio Eradication - Worldwide, 2015-2016.

Global measures to eradicate polio began in 1988; as of 2014, four of six World Health Organization (WHO) regions have been certified polio-free. Within the two endemic regions (African and Eastern Mediterranean), Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have never interrupted transmission of wild poliovirus (WPV) (1). The primary means of detecting poliovirus transmission is surveillance for acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) among children aged <15 years, combined with collection and testing of stool specimens from persons with AFP for detection of WPV and vaccine-derived polioviruses (VDPVs) (viruses that differ genetically from vaccine viruses and can emerge in areas with low vaccination coverage and cause paralysis) in WHO-accredited laboratories within the Global Polio Laboratory Network (2,3).

Human infection with a zoonotic orthopoxvirus in the country of Georgia.

During 2013, cutaneous lesions developed in two men in the country of Georgia after they were exposed to ill cows. The men had never received vaccination against smallpox. Tests of lesion material with the use of a quantitative real-time polymerase-chain-reaction assay for non-variola virus orthopoxviruses were positive, and DNA sequence analysis implicated a novel orthopoxvirus species.