CIDRAP newsletters options
The WHO notes signs that flu strains, especially avian ones, are co-circulating at unprecedented levels.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today recommended changing two of the three strains in trivalent flu vaccines for use in the Northern Hemisphere's 2015-16 flu season.
The US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) today voted unanimously to recommend the use of meningococcal group B vaccines in high-risk groups, such as those with low immunity and college students threatened by outbreaks.
The recommendation comes in the wake of federal approval of two serogroup B vaccines in recent months—Wyeth's Trumenba last October and Novartis's Bexsero in January.
Two experts cite a perceived lack of public and global input, as well as potential conflict of interest.
The CDC says the findings point to a need for better antibiotic stewardship and infection control.
Officials reported fewer new cases overall last week than the week befeore, but progress stalled in Sierra Leone.
As Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported a new MERS-CoV case today, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) noted a high incidence of MERS cases linked to healthcare centers in a 2014 outbreak in Jeddah.
China's Guangdong province reported two new H7N9 avian influenza cases today, according to a report from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP).
One of the H7N9 case-patients is a 3-year-old boy from the city of Heyuan, who is hospitalized in stable condition. The other infection occurred in an 18-year-old woman from the city of Foshan. She is currently hospitalized in critical condition.
About 20% of Liberians who were unemployed during the Ebola outbreak have returned to the workforce.
Four of the cases are in Riyadh, and the ECDC discusses the potential role of camels in disease transmission.
US agencies reported on what they billed as an improved method for sifting food outbreak data.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported 41,424 new cases of chikungunya in the Caribbean and Americas in a report dated Feb 20 but posted yesterday, with more than 33,000 of those cases in Colombia, bringing the outbreak total to 1,248,093.
The new total includes 1,217,093 suspected and 27,529 confirmed locally acquired cases and 3,471 imported cases of the mosquito-borne disease.
Two of China's provinces—Anhui and Guangdong—reported a total of three new H7N9 avian influenza cases today, according to separate health department reports.
UN funding is needed to cover its response activities in the region through 2015, with an urgent need to ramp up before the rainy season.
WHO statements emphasize the lack of answers as to why cases keep popping up.
Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu has infected six additional patients in Egypt, one of them fatally, since the last report, according to the machine translation of an update from the country's Ministry of Health posted yesterday by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board, continuing the uptick in cases there in recent weeks.
The number of US measles cases since Jan 1 has reached at least 154, an increase of 13 in the past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update, and 118 of those cases are linked to Disneyland in California.
The new antigen test gives results in 15 minutes instead of the 12 to 24 hours needed for nucleic acid tests, and a report discusses a winning strategy in Liberia.
The hospitalization rate in the elderly sets another record, and the CDC reports 6 new flu-related deaths in kids.
A new case of MERS-CoV and one death in a previously reported case bring totals since June 2012 to 900 and 383, respectively, in Saudi Arabia, according to a report today from the country's Ministry of Health (MOH).
