News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The outbreak of avian influenza in South Korea has spread to at least 14 farms and triggered the culling of 1.2 million chickens and ducks since it was identified in mid-December, according to reports from Asian newspapers.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials took pains to assure the public today that the risk of contamination in the US beef supply is very low following yesterday's announcement that the nation's first apparent case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, had turned up in Washington state.

(CIDRAP News) – An outbreak of avian influenza in South Korea has resulted in the deaths of 24,000 chickens at a farm southeast of Seoul.

The disease killed 19,000 chickens at the farm and prompted authorities to destroy the remaining 5,000 chickens as a containment measure, according to a report by the OIE (Office International des Epizooties), the world organization for animal health.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in Hong Kong are investigating a case in which a 5-year-old boy was infected with an avian influenza virus called influenza A(H9N2).

The boy was admitted to a hospital Nov 27 with fever, cough, and runny nose, the Hong Kong Department of Health said in a news release yesterday. He was discharged 2 days later and has recovered.

(CIDRAP News) – House cats and ferrets can be infected with the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus and can pass it to other cats and ferrets, raising the possibility that they could also spread the virus to people, according to researchers from the Netherlands and Hong Kong.

(CIDRAP News) – In a new report on the epidemiology of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the World Health Organization (WHO) affirms that the disease is spread by respiratory droplets, not by airborne particles.

The 35-page report, issued Oct 17, also says the risk of transmission to others peaks when a person has been sick for about 10 days and that children are rarely affected by SARS.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent US intelligence report envisions three possible scenarios for a return of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) this winter, ranging from small outbreaks in a few countries to a repeat of the widespread outbreaks that occurred last winter and spring.

(CIDRAP News) – The vector in the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak at the Amoy Gardens housing complex in Hong Kong last spring may have been roof rats, hypothesizes Stephen K. C. Ng of Columbia University School of Public Health in an article published in the Aug 16 issue of The Lancet. How the infection spread from the index case to more than 300 residents of the complex very rapidly has remained a mystery.

Aug 15 (CIDRAP News) – Two more deaths from SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) occurred this week in Toronto, one of them in a heathcare worker. That brings the total number of deaths in Canada to 44. Eight people remain hospitalized with the illness in Toronto.

Editor's Note: A correction was made to paragraph 5 on July 14.