科学美国人60秒 通过下水道追踪疫情，儿童疫苗再次被搁置（在线收听）

Tracking Outbreaks through Sewers, and Kids' Vaccines on Hold Again

通过下水道追踪疫情，儿童疫苗再次被搁置

Tanya Lewis: Hi, and welcome to COVID, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series.

Josh Fischman: This is your fast-track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means.

Lewis: I’m Tanya Lewis.

Fischman: I’m Josh Fischman.

坦娅·刘易斯：大家好，欢迎收看美国科学播客系列节目《快速传播新冠病毒》。

乔希·菲奇曼：这是你们关于新冠疫情的快速更新。我们将向您介绍有关病毒和疾病的最紧迫问题背后的科学。我们揭开研究的神秘面纱，帮助你理解它的真正含义。

刘易斯：我是坦娅·刘易斯。

我是乔希·费斯曼。

Lewis: And we’re Scientific American’s senior health editors.

Fischman: Welcome back, Tanya.

刘易斯：我们是《科学美国人》的高级健康编辑。

欢迎回来，坦尼娅。

Lewis: It’s good to be back! Today we’re going to talk about tracking COVID through the sewers ...

Fischman: And explain why vaccines for the littlest kids have been put on hold yet again.

There’s been more talk recently about using wastewater to detect COVID. Forgive me, but what’s the poop on that?

刘易斯：很高兴回来！今天我们将讨论通过下水道追踪新冠病毒。。。

费奇曼：并解释为什么最小儿童的疫苗再次被搁置。

最近有更多关于利用废水检测新冠病毒的讨论。原谅我，那上面是什么屎？

Lewis: I’m glad you asked, Josh! Scientists have known for some time that people can shed the SARS-CoV-2 virus in our excrement. Traces of virus in our sewage systems can often be detected before a surge in clinical COVID cases. So they can provide early warning of an outbreak. And they can spot infections from people regardless of whether or not they’re showing symptoms or if they have access to testing.

刘易斯：我很高兴你问我，乔希！科学家们已经知道一段时间，人们可以在我们的粪便中传播SARS-CoV-2病毒。在临床新冠病毒病例激增之前，我们的污水系统中往往可以检测到病毒的痕迹。因此，他们可以提供疫情的早期预警。他们可以发现来自人群的感染，无论他们是否出现症状或是否有机会接受检测。

What’s new is that the CDC has started adding data from wastewater sampling sites to its dashboard, the COVID Data Tracker. The agency first launched the National Wastewater Surveillance System in September 2020. Now they have more than 400 monitoring sites around the country, and they’re planning to add 250 more in the next few weeks. That’s according to Amy Kirby, the program’s team lead, who was speaking in a press briefing.

新的是，CDC已经开始将废水采样点的数据添加到其仪表盘新冠数据跟踪器中。该机构于2020年9月首次启动了国家废水监测系统。现在，他们在全国各地拥有400多个监测点，并计划在未来几周内再增加250个。这是该项目团队负责人艾米·柯比在新闻发布会上说的。

You can look up specific U.S. counties and see whether there’s been an increase or decrease in SARS-CoV-2 levels in their wastewater. If a county hasn’t provided data recently, it’s shown in gray. Right now there aren’t that many sites that are frequently submitting data, but you can still get an idea of how cases are trending based on the colors of dots on the map.

你可以查看美国特定的县，看看它们的废水中SARS-CoV-2的水平是上升了还是下降了。如果一个县最近没有提供数据，则显示为灰色。现在没有那么多网站经常提交数据，但你仍然可以根据地图上点的颜色了解案件的趋势。

Wastewater tracking could also be useful for spotting new variants. In fact, a recent study of the sewage system in New York City found several so-called cryptic variants that were not seen in any clinical samples from patients. The researchers suggested that these could have come from an isolated setting like a nursing home or even from animals like rats—of which there is no shortage in NYC’s sewers. They found traces of rat, dog and cat RNA in the wastewater.

废水跟踪也有助于发现新的变种。事实上，最近一项关于纽约市污水系统的研究发现了一些所谓的隐匿变种，这些变种在患者的任何临床样本中都没有发现。研究人员认为，这些可能来自一个隔离的环境，比如疗养院，甚至可能来自纽约市下水道不短缺的动物，比如老鼠。他们在废水中发现了老鼠、狗和猫的RNA痕迹。

This adds to worries that animals could serve as a reservoir for the virus. In fact, many white-tailed deer in the U.S. have already been found to have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.

Wastewater monitoring isn’t just limited to COVID—it could also be used to detect outbreaks of other pathogens, like flu or antibiotic resistant microbes, or even patterns of opioid use, scientists say. Our poop is a veritable gold mine!

这增加了人们对动物可能成为病毒宿主的担忧。事实上，美国许多白尾鹿已经被发现有SARS-CoV-2抗体。

科学家说，废水监测不仅限于新冠病毒，还可以用于检测其他病原体的暴发，如流感或抗生素耐药微生物，甚至是阿片类药物的使用模式。我们的大便是一座名副其实的金矿！

Fischman: One group of people in the U.S. has not been eligible for COVID vaccines: kids under five. Is that about to change?Lewis: Not this month, Tanya, and not next month either.

菲奇曼：美国有一组人没有资格接种新冠病毒疫苗：五岁以下的儿童。这会改变吗？刘易斯：这个月不行，坦娅，下个月也不行。

The Food and Drug Administration and the vaccine maker Pfizer, which has been testing shots in the littlest children,  wanted kids’ vaccines to happen. So do lots of parents, who have been desperate to get their little children vaccinated. There are about 18 million kids under the age of five, and they go to day care and nursery school and pre-K and playgroups. Vaccines have been approved for everyone aged five and up. But these littlest ones have been out there, unprotected.

美国食品药品监督管理局（Food and Drug Administration）和疫苗制造商辉瑞（Pfizer）一直在对最小的儿童进行注射试验，他们希望儿童疫苗能够实现。许多父母也是如此，他们迫切希望让自己的孩子接种疫苗。大约有1800万名五岁以下的儿童，他们上日托、幼儿园、学前教育和游戏小组。五岁及以上的人都可以接种疫苗。但这些小家伙一直在外面，没有受到保护。

The tests of these vaccines, however, were not rousing success stories. They showed the vaccines were quite safe in little kids. Yet they didn’t show the shots produced immunity in children aged two through five.

然而，这些疫苗的试验并没有引发成功的故事。他们证明疫苗对小孩子是相当安全的。然而，他们并没有显示这些疫苗在两岁到五岁的儿童中产生了免疫力。

These shots—two of them, each smaller than the adult dose—did work in kids under age two, including infants. They produced levels of antibodies just like the levels that stopped infections in teenagers.

这些疫苗中的两种，每种都比成人剂量小，对两岁以下的儿童（包括婴儿）有效。他们产生的抗体水平与阻止青少年感染的水平一样。

For the two and ups, Pfizer decided to add a third shot to the regimen and test that. And they applied for approval for the two-shot routine. The reasoning is that the vaccine was safe in kids, it worked in the infants and that starting the doses now will get the older kids to their third shot faster.

对于两人和ups，辉瑞决定在方案中加入第三剂并进行测试。他们还申请了两次射击的批准。理由是，疫苗对儿童是安全的，对婴儿有效，现在开始注射将使年龄较大的儿童更快地进行第三次注射。

But it’s unusual to approve something when not all the data are in. That bothered some scientists on the agency’s vaccine advisory committee, such as vaccinologist Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. He didn’t want to approve a shot without seeing more evidence that it actually worked.

但在并非所有数据都在的情况下批准某些东西是不寻常的。这让该机构疫苗咨询委员会的一些科学家感到困扰，比如费城儿童医院的疫苗学家保罗·奥菲特。他不想在看不到更多证据证明注射确实有效的情况下批准注射。

Apparently a number of other experts shared that sentiment. Last week the FDA, which had encouraged Pfizer’s application, suddenly reversed course. They canceled a meeting of the advisory committee that was going to review the application, saying it would be better to wait for complete three-dose data.

显然，其他一些专家也有这种看法。上周，鼓励辉瑞申请的FDA突然改变了方向。他们取消了咨询委员会的一次会议，该委员会将对申请进行审查，称最好等待完整的三剂数据。

Pfizer agreed, and it expects that info to be available in early April.

The Omicron variant played a role in this back-and-forth. More kids started to be hospitalized in early January than ever before—about 800 per week—and that made the agency look for ways to work fast.

辉瑞同意了这一点，并预计该信息将于4月初发布。

Omicron变体在这一过程中起到了作用。1月初开始住院的儿童比以往任何时候都多，每周约800人，这使得该机构寻找快速工作的方法。

But the variant also infected kids in thetwo-dose Pfizer trial, making the third dose even more important to judge effectiveness. So officials made the decision to wait. Plus, the pace of Omicron infection has started to wane.

但在辉瑞公司的两剂试验中，这种变种也感染了儿童，这使得第三剂对判断疗效更加重要。因此，官员们决定等待。此外，奥米克龙感染的速度已经开始下降。

Above all, I think, nobody wanted to seem like they were taking shortcuts when it came to kids, and moving ahead now seemed more and more like cutting corners. Some vaccine experts worried that it would raise parents’ suspicions.

最重要的是，我认为，当涉及到孩子时，没有人想让自己看起来像是在走捷径，而现在向前看似乎越来越像是在抄近路。一些疫苗专家担心这会引起家长的怀疑。

So now it’s wait until April. That’s distressing to parents who thought they’d be able to extend protection to their little ones. But it’s also following the science and not getting ahead of it.

Now you’re up to speed. Thanks for joining us. Our show is edited by the inimitable Jeff DelViscio.

所以现在要等到四月。这让那些认为自己能够为孩子提供保护的父母感到痛苦。但它也在追随科学，而不是超越科学。

现在你掌握了最新进展。谢谢你加入我们。我们的节目是由不可模仿的Jeff DelViscio编辑的。

Fischman: Come back in two weeks for the next episode of COVID, Quickly! And check out SciAm.com for updated and in-depth COVID news.

两周后再来看新冠肺炎的下一集，快点！看看SciAm。com获取最新和深入的新冠病毒新闻。