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(CIDRAP News) – The University of Minnesota and Texas A&M University will receive a total of $33 million to set up centers to research food contamination threats and foreign animal diseases, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced today.

Editor's note: This article was revised a few hours after publication to include additional information from the World Health Organization.

(CIDRAP News) – Close to 500 people have been quarantined in China's new outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), but so far the disease has not spread beyond people connected with a student who apparently was infected in a government laboratory, according to news service reports.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday announced the opening of a new high-security food safety laboratory in Athens, Ga.

The $1.65 million lab is designated as biosafety level 3 (BSL-3), the second highest of four biological security ratings, the USDA said in a news release. It will be operated by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese authorities today reported one new confirmed case of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and two new suspected cases, including one death, all of which may be linked to a laboratory at China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) in Beijing.

(CIDRAP News) – A 20-year-old nurse in Beijing has a suspected case of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), according to Chinese news reports. If confirmed, the case would be the first in the Chinese capital since last year and the first in China or anywhere since January.

(CIDRAP News) – Foxes and cats have joined civets on the list of animals in southern China that may carry the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus, according to recent Chinese news reports.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) yesterday launched a new Web site designed to make it easier for the public to find safety information about meat and poultry.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal government researchers have reported promising results in animal testing of a candidate SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) vaccine that combines a weakened form of vaccinia virus with a gene from the SARS coronavirus.

(CIDRAP News) – Disease experts recently determined that a Yonkers, N.Y., man had H7N2 avian influenza last fall, but they have not been able to discern how he contracted it, according to a report in today's New York Times.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to buy 4 million doses of influenza vaccine this year in an unprecedented step to prevent the kinds of shortages that occurred last season.

"This is a contingency in the event of a run on the vaccine like we had last year," said Curtis Allen, a spokesman for the CDC's National Immunization Program (NIP). He said the CDC has never stockpiled flu vaccine before.

(CIDRAP News) – Ten US military personnel were found to be HIV-positive after they received smallpox shots in 2003, but they were not harmed by the vaccine, according to a new online report in Clinical Infectious Diseases.

(CIDRAP News) – A Pennsylvania meat company recently became the first firm to meet US Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards for supplying irradiated ground beef for the federal school lunch program, the USDA confirmed this week.

Qualipaq Meats of Swoyersville, Pa., has met specifications that the USDA released in May 2003, according to Kathryn Mattingly, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) in Washington, DC.

(CIDRAP News) –British biotechnology company Acambis plc has temporarily stopped recruiting volunteers for clinical trials of the cell-culture smallpox vaccine it is making for the US government because at least three cases of myopericarditis have occurred in one of the trials.

(CIDRAP News) – The dengue fever epidemic in Indonesia totaled 52,013 cases with 603 deaths between Jan 1 and Apr 4, but it has passed its peak in some provinces, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

(CIDRAP News) – Two new outbreaks of avian influenza forced Thailand last week to further postpone plans to declare the country free of the disease, according to news service reports.

The latest outbreaks were in Chon Buri province, southeast of Bangkok, and Khon Kaen province, in the northeast, according to the Bangkok Post and Agence France-Presse (AFP).

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has rejected a Kansas beef company's proposal to test all its cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a bid to reopen Asian markets for the company's meat.

(CIDRAP News) – More than 800 donated blood units went unused because of West Nile virus (WNV) infection in 2003, but enough infected blood escaped detection to cause six WNV cases in blood recipients, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The six cases in 2003 compare with 23 reported in 2002. The 2002 cases led to the rapid development of nucleic-acid amplification tests (NATs) for WNV in blood.

(CIDRAP News) – Looking back on the 2003-04 influenza season, federal health officials say it was rougher than the previous three seasons but not unusual for years when the predominant flu virus is A(H3N2).

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that recent regulations designed to keep bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) infectivity out of the food supply will cost the beef industry from $110 million to $149 million a year.

(CIDRAP News) – An updated foodborne illness guide for physicans and nurses was written with an emphasis on "living in the post 9-11 environment," the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in announcing the book's release today.