Pavitra Roychoudhury

Ousted CDC vaccine adviser says RFK Jr.'s message is clear: ‘Scientific expertise is no longer of use’ Terminated CDC vaccine adviser Helen Chu spoke with STAT about her fears for the future of vaccine policy

Helen Chu is one of the ousted #ACIP members. She spoke to me today about her grave concerns for future vaccination policy and vaccine access in the United States. www.statnews.com/2025/06/10/c...

Amazing! Congrats!

Ambitious project to develop low-cost genome sequencing for pathogens known and unknown - University of Birmingham Project will build on research that helped diagnostic labs to adopt sequencing capacity for COVID-19 and permit characterisation of future infectious threats

Absolutely thrilled to announce the launch of ARTIC2 - a £5.5M 5 year project funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social to build on the ARTIC approach of low-cost, globally accessible genome sequencing for surveillance of outbreaks, epidemics and endemic diseases: www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/am...

Cover of Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/articles/issue/31/13/table-of-contents

The May 2025 supplemental issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases journal is now live: “Advances in Pathogen Genomics for Infectious Disease Surveillance, Control, and Prevention.”
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/articles...

1/ How has H5N1 affected this year’s flu season in Seattle? Despite ongoing outbreaks in birds & cattle nationally, we detected zero H5N1 cases in 675 influenza A-positive specimens tested at UW Medicine.

Validation of H5 influenza virus subtyping RT-qPCR assay and low prevalence of H5 detection in 2024-2025 influenza virus season A sustained outbreak of H5N1 influenza virus among wild fowl and domestic livestock has caused more than 70 zoonotic infections in humans in the United States, including one death. The Centers for Dis...

6/ Read more in our manuscript from the
Greninger Lab
at UW Virology
: medrxiv.org/cgi/content/.... Many people contributed to this work, including
@margaretgracemills.bsky.social, Ailyn Perez-Osorio, and
@pavitrarc.bsky.social.

I’m so tired of hearing Rubio & other rightwingers now claiming that if you’re on a green card you’re a ‘guest’ in this country. BS. You’re a lawful permanent resident. The clue is in the name. If someone is a permanent resident in your home, are they the same as the guests who come and go? Come on.

Grateful to my amazing colleagues and coauthors for contributing to this work. And our collaborators across the pond who generously shared early versions of the ARTIC primers. /end

tl;dr The assay shows robust performance across a range of viral loads allowing sensitive recovery for RSV genomes from clinical specimens. Its sensitivity makes it suitable for use in clinical trials of antivirals and vaccines allowing early detection of treatment emergent/resistance mutation. 4/

We determined assay sensitivity, specificity, repeatability and reproducibility; and comparison with Sanger, shotgun, and capture-based sequencing methods to check for accurate recovery of the F gene. We also used contrived samples to determine the LOD of minor variants in allelic mixtures. 3/

We modified 2 ARTIC primers based on initial tests with samples from USA (WA state), but changes are likely improve performance in global isolates based on current variation at those sites. We were able to recover high quality genomes from clinical samples with a wide range of Cts (95% LOD Ct 30) 2/

Happy to share our latest preprint describing clinical assay validation for RSV whole genome sequencing using a modified version of the ARTIC RSV panel doi.org/10.1101/2025... <thread> 1/

Excited to be involved in this study led by Helen Chu as part of the CDC's CHARM network tracking the spread of respiratory viruses across the US.

My brain as soon as it saw this pop up on my feed: "In the shuffling madness of the locomotive breath" 🚂

My dad introduced us to Jethro Tull, listening to these on audio cassettes in the car. Love every single song.

A group of school children sit in front of an orange truck which is a plow/sander. They are holding up a hand-drawn sign which I can't read but I think it says THANK YOU

New names for Vermont snow plows 2024, selected by Vermont schoolchildren. Some selections...

Skibidi Scooper
No More Mr. Ice Guy
The Snowy Pl-Owl
Clearopathra
Snoah Kahan
Salt-O-Saurus

vtrans.vermont.gov/name-a-plow

I think you probably meant this Evan Newell--I don't think he's on bsky.

www.fredhutch.org/en/faculty-l...