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Ciara Weets

@ciaramweets.bsky.social

junior scientist @ georgetown | M.Sc. in Global Infectious Disease | interested in disease ecology, vaccination, modeling health implications of policy | (she/her)

Posts Replies Media

Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

87.7% (93/106) of countries with legally-enforceable routine vaccination policies include specific enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with immunization requirements, though there was significant diversity in enforcement mechanisms.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Diseases w/ historically high morbidity & mortality, for which vaccines have long been available (e.g., diphtheria, measles, polio), were most universally included in policy. Recently emergent (e.g., COVID-19) and regionally endemic diseases (e.g., Japanese Encephalitis) were less commonly included.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

We find that: 54.6% (106) of countries studied currently have legally-enforceable policies at the national level requiring childhood vaccination against at least one disease, yet there was significant variation in the number of diseases for which vaccines are required.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

🧪New! Access & Benefits Sharing (ABS) has implications for international scientific collaboration, medical countermeasure development, and the equitable exchange of samples & sequence data. We examined domestic policies relevant to ABS in all UN Member States: bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/...

Heat map figure demonstrating the percentage of countries with applicable domestic policy in each of the 8 policy categories. Lighter colors indicate a lower percentage of countries in the corresponding region have policies applicable to the category, while darker indicates a larger percentage of countries with policy. Exact percentages are listed in the center of each box.

3 stacked bar graphs and corresponding maps to the right of each bar graph. The top graph/map represents the global and regional heterogeneity of policy pertaining to genetic resource access, the middle graph/map shows the categories of sanctions used to enforce ABS policies by country and WHO region, while the bottom graph/map combination demonstrates countries and regions with policy relevant to digital sequence information. The corresponding legend is located immediately below each portion of the figure.

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Surprisingly, neither Covid-19 nor mpox featured heavily in the DON, and most reports occurred before the declaration of a PHEIC. Info was then disseminated through periodic situation reports - except when novel variants emerged. Notably, no DON report was released regarding the Omicron variant 🦠

Two epidemic curves with dots denoting when Disease Outbreak News reports regarding each disease were published. The solid black line shows the date at which the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) was declared, while the dashed line shows the date at which it was declared over. Green dots in the top frame are Covid-19 DON reports, orange dots denote mpox clade II reports, and the dot shows the lone mpox clade I DON report

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Ciara Weets @ciaramweets.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Studying reports from the WHO Disease Outbreak News (DON) between 2020-2023, we find that outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers and the avian influenza panzootic dominate the DON. We also find an increase in reports of climate-sensitive diseases, especially those that are vector- or water-borne 🦟💧

A country-level choropleth (world map) demonstrates that the greatest number of Disease Outbreak News reports came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), but reports were spread across 89 countries. Bar graphs along the bottom show the top 5 diseases reported by the DON, top 5 countries from which reports were received, and top 5 disease-location outbreak clusters. Ebola virus, the DRC and Ebola in the DRC were the most frequent disease, location, and outbreak reported in the DON.

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