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The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the European Commission (EC) today released the first progress report of the Transatlantic Taskforce on Antimicrobial Resistance (TATFAR) and extended the US/EC partnership 2 additional years, HHS announced in a news release.
Also, the Saudi agriculture ministry for the first time offered MERS-CoV camel precautions.
The 2nd US patient is a health worker from Saudi Arabia, which saw 18 new cases.
The Caribbean chikungunya outbreak grew by 4,521 cases in the past week, with the increase almost entirely attributed to new cases in the Dominican Republic. In fact, for the first time in months, most nations reported no new cases.
Most of the new cases occurred among young adults in Jeddah and Riyadh, half of them asymptomatic.
Saying current regulations are insufficient, a German ethics panel has asked the German government to enact legislation to regulate dual-use research of concern (DURC) and set up a national committee to review DURC proposals, according to a ScienceInsider article yesterday.
Lebanon confirms its first case, while Saudi Arabia reports 14 more, with 5 deaths.
As part of ongoing avian influenza surveillance, China's agriculture ministry yesterday reported H7N9 detections in four live-poultry markets in three provinces, including one—Ningxia—that hasn't reported any human cases.
Guinea's health ministry has reported two more deaths in the country's Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, raising the fatality number to 157, according to an update today from the World Health Organization (WHO). No other probable or suspected cases have been reported, and the overall EVD illness count is 235.
As Saudi Arabia reports 28 new MERS cases, experts point up infection control issues in hospitals.
A hospital official said the first US MERS patient had some non-respiratory symptoms before he left Saudi Arabia.
Camel populations in Kenya have had antibodies to the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) as far back as 1992, according to an international research team that tested stored samples, according to a study yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Researchers who analyzed the blood of Chinese patients infected with H7N9 influenza found markedly elevated levels of angiotensin 2, which be a severity marker for the disease. The team from China reported its findings yesterday in Nature Communications.
Cases continue in Middle East hot spots as first US case-patient recovers.
The health ministry of Pakistan, the country with the most polio cases of late, has committed to setting up mandatory immunization counters for travelers at all its airports, border crossings, and seaports in response to yesterday's World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of a worldwide polio emergency, according to a story in the current issue of Pakistan Today.
Chinese health officials have confirmed what appears to be the first known H5N6 avian influenza infection in a human, a farmer from Sichuan province who had severe pneumonia and died, according to a post yesterday from ProMED-mail, the online reporting system of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
The first US MERS patients is a US citizen in his 60s who lives and works in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia reported 36 cases over the past 3 days, pushing its total well over 400.
A late-season "flu B" surge serves as a reminder that it can be severe in adults, as a recent study shows.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan declared polio's spread this year to be a public health emergency, and she spelled out temporary steps for curbing the threat.
