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Numbers hint that season may have peaked, and obesity is being reported in many hospitalized flu patients.
China reported 11 new H7N9 flu cases today, including the first one in Beijing since last spring.
Four cases of wild poliovirus type 1, the first polio cases of the new year, have been reported in Pakistan, the only polio-endemic country in the world that saw an increase in cases last year, according to a Jan 22 report from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI).
H7N9 avian flu replicates well in finches, sparrows, and parakeets experimentally inoculated with the pathogen, and the birds shed the virus in high numbers and show few signs of disease, scientists reported today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Seven new cases threaten to push the second wave higher than the first one last spring.
The H5N8 strain of avian flu has been found in wild geese in the same South Korean province that has seen H5N8 outbreaks in domestic ducks, according to a story today in The Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper.
As 4 new cases are confirmed, the WHO notes a trend toward slightly younger patients and a lower death rate.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released updated guidelines for treating and preventing anthrax in adults and pregnant women, recommending, among other things, the simultaneous use of antimicrobial drugs and antitoxin in patients who have systemic disease.
The pace of H7N9 equals last year's peak of activity, with 23 new cases in the past 4 days.
The notice means no confirmed MERS cases have been linked to the 2013 Hajj.
A 52-year-old man in the southern province of Binh Phuoc has died of H5N1 avian flu, the first case in Vietnam in 9 months, Than Nien News reported today.
The number of confirmed or probable cases of chikungunya—a mosquito-borne disease that, aside from imported cases, had not been seen in the Caribbean until just last month—on St. Martin and nearby islands has spiked to 485, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in an update yesterday.
Some influenza markers are down, others up, and regions are seeing widely varying case levels.
Six more H7N9 cases were reported in China today, keeping the pace of infections close to last spring's peak.
A multistate outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg linked to chicken from Foster Farms in California has now sickened 430 people in 23 states and Puerto Rico, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday. That number represents 14 new cases since the CDC's previous update, on Dec 19.
A Bangladeshi doctor who was working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, died of a Middle East respiratory coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection on Jan 15, according to an Arab News report today. The case has not yet been announced by Saudi authorities.
Seven new H7N9 infections bring the latest 7-day total to 31 cases, near last year's peak level.
The bill provides increases for the CDC, DHS, and FDA and funds for pandemic readiness.
Early findings from sequencing of the H5N1 virus that recently caused the death of a Canadian woman suggest that it is similar to strains previously seen in China, according to a CBC News story yesterday.
Three locations in eastern China report four new H7N9 cases, and the WHO notes that six previously reported patients had links to poultry.
