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(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday it was joining the probe of a growing Escherichia coli O157:H7 outbreak associated with Taco Bell restaurants in the Northeast.

(CIDRAP News) – A new diagnostic tool that involves thousands of fragments of genetic material on a glass slide can identify a vast range of different pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and parasites, according to a report from an international team of researchers.

(CIDRAP News) – An outbreak of Escherichia coli infections in people who ate at 11 Taco Bell restaurants in New York and New Jersey has sickened more than 3 dozen people in 3 states and prompted the company to remove green onions from its outlets nationwide.

Business people convinced of the possibility of an influenza pandemic agree: Convincing reluctant managers, organizing continuity planning, and educating employees can be challenging.

But if getting better prepared for a pandemic is tough, business managers say, keeping prepared is tougher.

How does a global company keep sharp its planning for a disaster that may be long in the making, acute at the onset, months in duration, and bigger in scope than any one-time event?

For Don Ainslie, global security officer at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2 years of minding avian flu's advance and planning for a human influenza pandemic has presented just such a challenge.

(CIDRAP News) – A third case of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) has been reported in a US resident, but health officials believe he contracted the disease in Saudi Arabia when he was a child.

(CIDRAP News) – Poultry infected with H5N1 avian influenza pose the greatest risk of bringing the disease to the Americas, according to a new study by British and US researchers that challenges US efforts to detect flu in migratory birds.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded four contracts worth $11.4 million in an effort to develop a 30-minute test for H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Bank estimates it will cost between $1.2 and $1.5 billion to fight avian influenza over the next 2 to 3 years, a sizable increase since last January.

Editor's note: The Salmonella serotype involved in this outbreak was incorrectly listed as Norfolk in this story when first published.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials are investigating a second Salmonella outbreak linked to restaurant tomatoes that occurred over the summer and early fall, sickening 106 people in 19 states.

(CIDRAP News) – Canadian infectious disease and critical care experts, working on behalf of Ontario pandemic planners, have developed one of the first triage plans for pandemic influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Internet rumors of a case of H5N1 avian influenza in a little boy in Rimouski, Quebec, were just that, Canadian Press reported today.

Several Web sites on pandemic flu reported rumors that a boy was seriously ill with avian flu at a hospital in the city, but hospital officials dismissed them as entirely false, according to the CP story.

Editor's Note: Shortly after publication of this article, the guidelines referred to were removed from the WHO Web site pending further peer review. A revised version was published in January 2007, with changes in the sections on considerations for launching an investigation, contact tracing, monitoring of healthcare workers, and technical references. A link to the revision appears at the end of this article.

(CIDRAP News) – H5N1 avian influenza has been confirmed at a second poultry farm near the site of a recent outbreak, South Korea’s agriculture ministry told news services today.

(CIDRAP News) – Restaurants that have a certified kitchen manager (CKM) seem to have a lower risk of serving food that triggers infectious illnesses, according to a study comparing restaurants that were involved in disease outbreaks with those that were not.

(CIDRAP News) – A 35-year-old Indonesian woman died of H5N1 avian influenza today, marking the country's 57th death from the virus, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – South Korea has reported its first outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in nearly 3 years, on a poultry farm in North Jeolla province, about 100 miles from Seoul.

More and more companies are starting to integrate pandemic preparedness into their business continuity programs. That's good news--and helping to facilitate it is one of the reasons this newsletter was launched.

(CIDRAP News) – Two new reports on human cases of H5N1 avian influenza that occurred in Turkey and Indonesia last year show that the illness proved difficult to diagnose, with many tests yielding false-negative results.