The Texas Department of State Health Services rabies bait program is in its 28th year, wrote Drs. Megan Berman and Richard Rupp in their Vaccine Smarts column. The program has successfully eliminated the domestic dog-coyote, and the fox rabies virus strains from the state. Rabies bait is a vaccine and is part of an overall strategy to protect us from the lethal disease.

Scientists really haven't had the tools — or funding — to detect new viruses inside people, said Dr. Gregory Gray, who's an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “We probably have novel viruses in North America infecting people who work a lot with animals, especially domestic animals,” he said. “We're just missing them because we don't often have the tools to pick them up.”

Herman A. Barnett III, a Black veteran, desegregated the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1949. Technically, Barnett was admitted to the school on a contract basis — to uphold racial segregation, the university leadership planned to build an entirely separate medical school for Black students where Barnett would be required to transfer. But that school was never built, and Barnett graduated from UTMB in 1953.

The WHO says monoclonal antibodies being developed or antivirals that have been used in clinical trials for Ebola virus disease could also potentially be tested for Marburg virus disease. “There are several experimental treatments that have been shown to protect animals against lethal Marburg virus infection,” said Thomas Geisbert, PhD, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Past avian flus have moved from birds to other animals, but the number of mammals that have been infected recently is unusual, said Dr. Gregory C. Gray, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “There’s concern that it could further change and jump to humans,” he said.

What has become a major push among local groups to get information and life-saving medication into the community to fight a crisis of fentanyl overdoses and poisoning continued Saturday with a presentation about recognizing the signs of overdose and using Narcan. Taking Our Best Shot, a University of Texas Medical Branch student-led initiative held the first of several community health seminars Feb. 11 in Texas City.