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Flu activity in Northern Hemisphere countries is headed toward interseasonal levels despite a late-season rise in influenza B activity in many areas, including Asia, the Middle East, and North America, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today in its latest global flu update. Though each flu season is different, flu experts say it's not unusual to see a late-season rise in influenza B activity.
Three new Ebola virus disease (EVD) cases, along with five deaths in previously announced infections, have been reported in Guinea, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa reported today. The new cases raise the country's overall number of cases to 208 and number of deaths to 136; 112 illnesses have been lab confirmed. So far 25 EVD infections, 16 of them fatal, have been reported in Guinea's healthcare workers.
The Saudi MERS count surged by 37 cases and 6 deaths in 3 days, including 21 new cases in Jeddah's outbreak.
The number of patients sickened by H7N9 influenza in China grew by three over the past 3 days, according to reports from three different provinces.
One case is in a 35-year-old woman from Jiangsu province who is hospitalized in critical condition, according to an Apr 19 health department statement translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
Overall foodborne disease rates held steady in 2013, but Salmonella cases were lower than in the previous 3 years.
The outbreak in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, had six more cases, and Greece reported a case with a link to Jeddah.
Flu activity in the United States continued to decline last week, but some indicators were up slightly, reflecting a late-season uptick in the Northeast, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The now-197-case Ebola outbreak is caused by a novel strain, researchers say.
Seven cases were added to the Jeddah outbreak in Saudi Arabia, and 3 in the UAE.
H5N1 avian flu has struck two chicken factory farms in North Korea's capital of Pyongyang, killing more than 46,000 birds, according to a report posted yesterday by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
In the first outbreak, all 46,217 birds died of the disease in three holding pens for layer hens on a farm at the Hadang chicken factory. The outbreak began Mar 21. Samples from the birds tested positive on Mar 26.
The disease has made a long-feared leap outside the Middle East, killing a man in Malaysia and infecting a nurse in the Philippines.
Encouraging results suggest that health departments may someday have an oral drug to help extinguish outbreaks.
Tongan health officials have confirmed a first-ever chikungunya outbreak affecting more than 10,000 people, according to an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) report today. The Polynesian archipelago nation is home to about 100,000 people.
A Jeddah outbreak increased by 5 cases, while the WHO reports 10 recent cases in UAE health workers.
Officials at the Pasteur Institute in Paris say the laboratory's loss of 2,349 "tubes" containing fragments of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus does not pose an infection risk, but they call the lapse an "unacceptable mistake," according to media reports.
China reported one new H7N9 influenza infection, in a 30-year-old man from Hunan province, according to a Chinese media report that quoted the province's health department.
The report was translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board. The patient is hospitalized, and the report didn't list his condition.
Dutch researchers say they've found five mutations that make H5N1 airborne transmissible in ferrets.
Guinea reports 10 more cases, bringing its total to 168, and Liberia reports 1 new case, for 26 total there.
Saudi Arabia announces nine new MERS cases as Yemen reports its first.
Northern states appear to have higher rates of Escherichia coli O157 than southern states do, and young children appear to be infected most often, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published today in Epidemiology & Infection.
