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The Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH) said today that the number of locally acquired dengue fever cases has risen by 27 in less than a week, for a total of 139 cases on the big island of Hawaii.
Of the confirmed cases of dengue fever, 122 are in Hawaii residents and 17 involve visitors. Most of the total cases (78%, or 108) have occurred in adults, while 31 cases (22%) involve children. Illness onset occurred from Sep 11 to Nov 28.
In related news, a review of US quarantine policies found they did harm and were unconstitutional.
Also, the WHO provided more details about recent cases in Mexico, Paraguay, and Venezuela.
Cases of tularemia in four US states have reached at least 104 for 2015, according to federal and state officials.
For the third week in a row, US influenza activity increased slightly, with H3N2 still the dominant strain, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.
The percentage of clinic visits for influenza-like illness (ILI) rose from 1.6% to 1.9%, according to the CDC update, which covers the week through Nov 28. That level is still below the national baseline of 2.1%, but several regions reported elevated outpatient ILI levels.
The recall affects all of the company's nut butter spread products, which were distributed to nationwide retailers and through the mail.
Regions vary by disease impact and type of threat, with Africa and Southeast Asia bearing large burdens.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today noted that it has received reports of 43 cases of an especially resistant form of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in recent years, often among patients who traveled internationally, according to a report in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
Past exposure to influenza virus or antigens—whether by infection or vaccine—might reduce a person's ability to mount a broadly protective antibody response to the virus, a finding that could complicate efforts to develop a "game-changing" universal flu vaccine, according to a study yesterday in Science Translational Medicine.
Viremia levels appear to be a strong predictor of death, according to a study of nearly 700 patients in Guinea.
Having a longer incubation period—the time from virus exposure to disease—was tied to a lower risk of death in MERS-CoV patients in South Korea, according to a study yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
French and Hong Kong researchers analyzed data on 170 cases of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) infection, of which exposure data were available for 109.
An alarming number of countries are reporting cases, as clinicians find more links to microcephaly and other neurologic complications.
In a related development, feds recently issued a second call for avian flu vaccine proposals.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported a new MERS-CoV case today in the capital city of Riyadh.
The case involves a 21-year-old Saudi woman who is in critical condition with a MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) infection. She is not a healthcare worker and was not exposed to other MERS patients, the agency said. No other risk factors were noted.
Overall flu activity has remained low, with hot spots in only a few areas, such as some Middle Eastern countries including Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar, which are reporting that the 2009 H1N1 virus is the dominant strain, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in its regular update.
The infant—born to a mother who died from Ebola—received intensive treatment in an MSF facility, where she was given experimental antivirals.
The spread to more countries comes as Brazil reported 340 more possibly related microcephaly cases.
Saudi Arabia reported a new MERS-CoV infection yesterday in the city of Buraidah, while an international team of researchers found no serologic evidence that the virus is endemic in Kazakh camel herds.
Agriculture officials in Vietnam reported another highly pathogenic H5N1 outbreak in poultry, while Canadian authorities reported that low pathogenic H5N2 turned up in a hunter-shot duck in British Columbia.
Although no new cases are reported, tests show Ebola antibodies in 2 relatives.
