Isaac Florence

Ebola vaccination begins in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Vaccination of frontline health workers and contacts of people infected with Ebola virus disease has begun in Bulape health zone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kasai Province where an outbr...

We do not talk enough about how much vaccines have transformed Ebola outbreaks. The country stock pile of 2000 vaccines was immediately deployed to respond to the outbreak in the DRC and 45,000 additional doses have been approved for shipment to the DRC.
www.afro.who.int/countries/de...

I’ll ping you some Confluence pages 📃

Clade I mpox vaccination: strategies for deployment and evaluation Clade I mpox continues to spread in Central Africa with no sign of abating,1 however very few doses of vaccine have been deployed. Mpox vaccination strategies using either of the licenced vaccines, MV...

New paper: we argue that a promising approach for studying mpox vaccine effectiveness in Central Africa to incorporate mpox vaccination + testing data into existing cohort studies, especially those for HIV/STIs.
www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...

Less formally, those who know me will know how excited I am to begin working internationally and on Global Health, applying the work I’ve been doing at PHE/UKHSA for the past almost six years!

More updates to follow

For more on @ukhsa.bsky.social’s IHR-SP, see this blog governmentscienceandengineering.blog.gov.uk/2022/03/17/u.... And for more about how this work fits into broader government Overseas Development Aid spend, see devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/programme/GB...

In this role I’ll be working for my mentor, hero, and friend, @paulcleary.net on supporting the Pakistani Federal National Institute of Health and provincial departments of health on improving disease surveillance, particularly on the digital and data components that will underpin this.

A little bit of personal career news (1/3) 🙋🏻‍♂️

With great excitement, I’ve recently started a new part-time role as a Technical Advisor for UKHSA’s Global Health Protection Directorate, focusing on the International Health Regulations Strengthening Programme (IHR-SP) in Pakistan.

Just announced - @smhopkins.bsky.social will be the new chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency @ukhsa.bsky.social. Starting in September.

NHS begins rollout of world-first gonorrhoea vaccine programme NHS and local authorities begin rollout of world-first gonorrhoea vaccination programme across the country.

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Coordinated Aerial Logistics for Emergency Response and National Resilience at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Coordinated Aerial Logistics for Emergency Response and National Resilience at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

The Health Protection Research Units have been hiring a lot recently for roles across public health, but this one is a little different:

Drones for public health emergency logistics!

Part of the @ukhsa.bsky.social and Uni Birmingham joint HPRU

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

For more on advice on staying safe from infectious diseases whilst travelling see NaTHNaC's travelhealthpro.org.uk/index.php

The report goes on to look at Hepatitis A, Measles, and other infections, including pointing to specialist epidemiology and surveillance reports on solely travel-associated infections like Malaria and other vector-borne diseases (Dengue, Zika, and others).

Enteric fever (AKA Typhoid and Paratyphoid infections) cases follow a disimilar epidemiology to gastro-intestinal infections, where most cases are 21-30 and 65% are male.

82% of cases returned from India (46%), Pakistan (27%), and Bangladesh (9%).

In thir report, for gastro-intestinal infections, the most commonly reported country from which cases have returned from overseas travel are Turkey (16%), Spain (10%), India (8%), & Egypt (6%).

The report incorporates guidance for travellers going abroad on how to avoid gastro-intestinal infections

Figure 3. Travel-associated GI infections by age and sex: 2024

For gastro-intestinal infections (mostly Cryptosporidium and Giardia), the most cases were indentified in children under 10 years old, and 59% of cases were Women. From an interpretation perspective, this is very likely to be a reporting bias where case ascertainment of infections is higher.

Figure 1. Total travel-associated infections recorded in England by month from 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2024 - an epidemic curve of case data

Over the last three years, overseas travel-associated infections have risen from winter through to a late Summer and Autumn peak. These are mostly gastro-intestinal infections and enteric fevers.

Travel-associated infections in England: 2022, 2023 and 2024 (Regional analysis)

Newly published @ukhsa.bsky.social report prepared by Field Epidemiology Service colleagues and my team on Travel-Associated infections, as we approach peak infection season in late Summer and Autumn

www.gov.uk/government/p... #EpiSky

Professor Robin May will join UKHSA as Interim Chief Scientific Officer in September

We’re pleased to welcome Professor Robin May as UKHSA’s Interim Chief Scientific Officer from September.
Robin joins us from @foodgov.bsky.social, bringing expertise in public health threats, and continues as Professor of Infectious Disease at @unibirmingham.bsky.social.

The National Biosecurity Centre will "strengthen and formalise existing collaborations between UKHSA, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) and the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl) to bolster the UK’s resilience to deliberate, accidental or naturally occurring biological incidents"

New UKHSA scientific facilities to be developed at Harlow, Essex

Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and Ashley Dalton MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention

Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care; Ashley Dalton MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention; and Dyfed Alsop, UKHSA's Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive Officer

The government has announced plans for our new headquarters in Harlow, Essex. The National Biosecurity Centre will be operational from the mid-2030s.

This will create one of the world's largest health protection science centres, replacing facilities at Porton & Colindale
www.gov.uk/government/n...

🦟"Vertical transmission in field-caught #mosquitoes identifies a mechanism for the establishment of #Usutu #virus in a temperate country" by Mirjam Schilling et al. at APHA, ZSL, @ukhsa.bsky.social in Scientific Reports @natureportfolio.nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Measles: Child dies at Alder Hey Children's hospital as cases surge Seventeen children have been treated at the Liverpool hospital for the virus since June.

This death is really tragic and sadly avoidable. We have a safe and effective vaccine. High vaccination coverage protects not just the vaccinated but also the vulnerable in our communities. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Greater security delivered for the British people with record billion-pound investment in new national biosecurity centre Huge investment in new National Biosecurity Centre to protect the British public and the economy from future pandemics.

“The MI5 of disease prevention” - £1bn invested in new animal biosecurity centre as part of the National Security Strategy.

Set up as part of the National Biosecurity Centre Network coordinated by the Cabinet Office, for making relationships with UKHSA, APHA, and Dstl

www.gov.uk/government/n...

6 - This is also worth viewing in the context of the recent changes to the legislation that underpins this process. The updates to the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations added more notifiable diseases and we're expecting to resume reporting of notification statistics for these soon. Fin.

5 - Whilst the above is driven by the epidemiology at the time, this demonstrates the value of the service for surveillance and improving the routine reporting pathway for notifiable diseases. With better data, we are better able to track and respond to changes in incidence of these diseases.

Disease category Notifications (%) Scarlet fever 3,484 (33) Food poisoning 2,498 (25) Whooping cough 1,685 (16) Mumps 870 (8) Measles 517 (5) All other notifiable diseases 1,352 (13)

4 - The second figure looks at the diseases being notified. Scarlet fever represents a third of all infections over the time period, with Food Poisoning and whooping cough (Pertussis) rounding out over two thirds of Notifications.

A line chart showing the percentage of Notifications of Infectious Diseases via the Report a Notifiable Disease Service on GOV.UK of all notifications over time. The line has some variability but shows an upward trend from under 30% in mid September in 2024 to around 60% in mid March 2025

3 - The first figure looks at the percentage of all Notifications that are made through our new digital service. There is some variability but overall there has been a massive increase in Doctors across England saving valuable time by using the servie using the old paper- and email-based route

Report a notifiable disease Registered medical practitioners: report cases of suspected notifiable infectious diseases or manage an existing notification.

2 - Brief background: The Report a Notifiable Disease Service is for Doctors in England to meet their Statutory Obligation to notify @ukhsa.bsky.social of suspected cases of certain important diseases. This allows us to both respond to and monitor infections and outbreaks

www.gov.uk/guidance/rep...

HPR volume 19 issue 5: news (21 and 29 May 2025)

ICYMI: Health Protection Report on the Report a Notifiable Disease Service

The service that I led development of with colleagues @ukhsa.bsky.social has been in National Public beta since September last year, and here is the first public data report on it

🧵 1/6
www.gov.uk/government/p...

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.