News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Experiments on the novel coronavirus that has infected patients from three Middle Eastern countries show that the receptor it uses to infect human cells is different from the one used by its relative the SARS virus and that it can infect cells from a range of animals, according to a study released today.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of reported H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks in poultry and wild birds has decreased since mid 2011 and was down sharply in the second quarter of this year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a quarterly update on the ongoing situation.

(CIDRAP News) – An annual report released yesterday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) profiles a wide range of CDC influenza-related projects around the world, from flu surveillance in Indonesia to vaccine effectiveness studies in El Salvador and epidemiology training in Ghana.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending that influenza vaccines for the Southern Hemisphere's 2013 flu season should contain the same three strains as the vaccines now being administered to millions in the Northern Hemisphere.

British health officials said today that a Rotterdam lab that first characterized the novel coronavirus linked recently to two severe illnesses hopes to publish the whole genome in the next 24 to 48 hours, and the UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA) launched guidance to help clinicians investigate and manage possible cases.

(CIDRAP News) – A European report has filled in some details about the two severe illnesses linked to a novel coronavirus, but most of the major questions, such as where it came from and how it spreads, remained unanswered today.