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It is time for the global public health community to recognize a growing reality: Monkeypox is now a pandemic. And unless we declare an emergency and act quickly to combat it, we risk repeating the same mistakes we made with our covid-19 battle. (Eric Feigl-Ding, Kavita Patel and Yaneer Bar-Yam, 7/7)

The pandemic is a relentless race against Mother Nature. Waves of infection took millions of lives, and only highly effective vaccines prevented even more deaths. Now, the coronavirus is speeding up once again, mutating, evading immunity and still on the march. The arrival of subvariant BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen. (7/7)

For the first time since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced its three-level risk system in March 2022, on June 30 its community level map of Covid-19 cases had the dubious distinction of more counties classified as medium risk or high risk (55%) than those at low risk. (Sheldon H. Jacobson, 7/7)

India’s humidity rises before the heat recedes in the buildup to the monsoon in mid-June. It’s at this critical intersection that the danger to human health is greatest. Conditions in Bhubaneswar reached 37 degrees and close to 80% humidity in the week Bloomberg visited last month. If both maximums occur at the same time, that’s equivalent to a wet-bulb temperature of nearly 34C. (David Fickling and Ruth Pollard, 7/7)

The Food and Drug Administration wants to prevent smoking-related deaths by making cigarettes less appealing. Toward that end, the FDA plans to ban menthol cigarettes and limit nicotine content to “reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes.” (Jacob Sullum, 7/7)