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A novel tick-borne phlebovirus related to the recently discovered Heartland virus that has infected at least eight US residents has been discovered in Tasmania state, Australia, according to a report yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
A WHO panel said the threat still does not qualify as a global public health emergency.
In addition to the Dutch MERS case, Saudi Arabia reports 16 new infections.
Confirmed cases of chikungunya in Haiti have skyrocketed from 14 to 1,529 in recent days, the Associated Press (AP) reported today.
Ronald Singer, a spokesman for Haiti's health ministry, said about 900 cases of the mosquito-borne disease have been in West department, where Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, resides. Another 300 cases were confirmed in the country's northwest.
A new case of H7N9 avian influenza has been reported in China, according to postings today on FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
The case-patient is a 71-year-old man from Meizhou Xingning in Guangdong province. His case was diagnosed yesterday, say the postings, and he is reportedly receiving treatment and in stable condition.
The 2 workers are being monitored, as Saudi Arabia reports 4 new MERS cases.
A measles outbreak in Ohio has reached 73 cases—the largest state outbreak since 1996—and has helped spur US cases to some of their highest levels in recent years, according to data from the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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.
The 2nd US patient is a health worker from Saudi Arabia, which saw 18 new cases.
Also, the Saudi agriculture ministry for the first time offered MERS-CoV camel precautions.
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.
A hospital official said the first US MERS patient had some non-respiratory symptoms before he left Saudi Arabia.
As Saudi Arabia reports 28 new MERS cases, experts point up infection control issues in hospitals.
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.
