News & Perspective

The World Health Organization (WHO) today updated its global count of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases to 55, including 31 fatalities, by including a previously reported Saudi case as the country reported a new one.

(CIDRAP News) – Italy announced its first Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) case today, in a man who recently spent time in Jordan, site of the first known MERS illnesses, according to media reports.

(CIDRAP News) – Agriculture officials in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia have confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in birds, a first for each country.

The outbreak in Bangladesh struck chickens at a state-run poultry farm in Savar, near the capital, Dhaka, the Associated Press (AP) reported today. Government sources said farm workers had recently culled all 30,000 chickens at the farm after many of them died mysteriously, the AP said.

(CIDRAP News) – The revelation that samples of the influenza virus that caused the flu pandemic of 1957-58 were inadvertently sent to thousands of laboratories has raised fears of a new pandemic and triggered an urgent effort to destroy the samples.