Ian Lipkin Receives High Honor from Mongolia
On September 16, W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, was honored with the Order of the Polar Star—the highest civilian award Mongolia presents to foreign citizens.
The award recognizes Lipkin’s decades of significant contributions to public health and the identification, prevention, and treatment of infectious disease outbreaks—particularly for research efforts to reveal the cause of a 2021 surge of COVID-19 cases in Mongolia. ND Dashdorj Onom, chairman of the board of the Onom Foundation and Onom Institute, presented the honor at a ceremony held at the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center. Dean Linda P. Fried joined Lipkin and Onom in giving remarks to an audience of colleagues and friends.
The 2021 research effort—led by Lipkin and jointly conducted with the Onom Institute and scientists in Mongolia and the Mongolia Ministry of Health—ruled out the introduction of a new, more virulent variant of SARS-CoV-2. They found that Chinese Sinovac and Russian Sputnik vaccines received by most Mongolians were suboptimal compared to the Oxford adenovirus vectored vaccine produced in India and the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. The researchers concluded that increased rates of transmission were due to misplaced trust in the vaccines from China and Russia that led to a relaxation of physical distancing and masking. COVID case numbers immediately decreased when these physical controls were reinstated, and new vaccines were introduced. These measures are estimated to have saved 8,000 lives in Mongolia. Findings appear in JAMA Network Open.
In 2020, Lipkin was honored by China with a medal recognizing his profound impact on their country—notably his work on the SARS outbreak in 2003. In 2016, he received China’s top science honor for foreign scientists. Earlier this year, a symposium and dinner honored Likin’s four decades of contributions to public health.
“This award [The Order of the Polar Star] is a testament to the power of scientific collaborations between Mongolia and the United States. It recognizes a team effort led by Thomas Briese and Nischay Mishra of CII faculty and technicians in the CII to rapidly respond to an urgent threat to public health,” says Lipkin, the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology.
