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Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported two new MERS-CoV cases today, bringing the country's total to 821 cases.
The nation announced a ban on Christmas and New Years' festivities and a month-long response surge.
One mBio editorial defends federal pause, while another calls its language too vague.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported 38,042 new chikungunya cases in the Caribbean and Americas on Dec 12, bringing the outbreak total to 1,034,926.
The total includes 1,012,347 suspected and 20,209 confirmed locally acquired cases and 2,370 imported cases. The US Virgin Islands reported its second death since the Dec 5 report, bringing the outbreak fatality total to 155.
Chickens on two more farms in British Columbia have been infected with H5N2 avian influenza, bringing the total to 10 and the number of birds dead or scheduled for culling to nearly 234,000 since the outbreak's start just 2 weeks ago, say news sources and official reports.
Survivors face stigma and other complex issues because of the unique nature of the disease.
Though still below epidemic thresholds, US influenza activity has begun to pick up, and the vaccine mismatch with circulating H3N2 strains has reached two-thirds, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update.
In addition, two more children died from flu.
After several weeks with no new reports of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) respiratory infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 28 more illnesses, raising the national count since August to 1,149 cases in 48 states and Washington, DC. But an official said the agency is not aware of any new case clusters.
Officials discuss health system recovery in West Africa, while Swiss vaccine trials hit a snag.
Researchers who tested more than 1,000 horses, donkeys, and mules in Spain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) say they found no evidence of past infection with MERS-CoV, although they were able to infect horse cells with the virus in a lab.
Despite the incomplete uptake and moderate effectiveness of the seasonal influenza vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that vaccination prevented more than 7 million illnesses and about 90,000 hospitalizations during the 2013-14 flu season.
The WHO and others are waging a battle to stop an "ominous spike" in Ebola cases in eastern Sierra Leone, while the western region is also a concern.
The number of disease outbreaks linked to the drinking of unpasteurized milk has risen at an alarming rate, quadrupling from the period 1993-2006 to 2007-12, as more states allow the legal sale of raw milk, according to a study today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Canadian officials yesterday confirmed H5N2 avian flu in the three most recent poultry outbreaks in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, bringing to five the number of farms in the area infected with that strain, according to a report filed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
Lessons learned this fall: (1) don't over-reassure, (2) acknowledge uncertainty, (3) don't overemphasize panic, and (4) don't ridicule overreactions.
Ebola incidence in Sierra Leone health workers was 100-fold that of the general population.
The score suggests the nation has substantial health security but also room to improve.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has verified three more reports of an unexplained polio-like illness in children, raising the total to 93 cases in 33 states over the past few months, according to a Dec 4 update.
As groups tailor their response, the outbreak hits 17,800 cases, 6,331 deaths.
A 61-year-old man from the Najran province of Saudi Arabia has become the country's 819th MERS-CoV case-patient, according to an update today from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH).
