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(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) 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) 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) –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) – 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.
(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) Canadian officials said today that 19 million poultry in southwestern British Columbia's Fraser Valley would be destroyed in a vastly expanded campaign to stop highly pathogenic avian influenza.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization reported today on cases of H7 influenza in two poultry workers who had contact with infected birds in the outbreak area. The two patients both had conjunctivitis and have recovered, the WHO said.
(CIDRAP News) – US officials this week proposed that the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) be called on to help resolve the US trade dispute with Japan over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). But Japan, to the chagrin of US officials, reportedly plans to reject the proposal.
(CIDRAP News) China, including Hong Kong, and Singapore have begun to drop some of their procedures and safeguards related to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) after going 2 months or longer with no confirmed cases.
(CIDRAP News) The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) is urging Bayer Corp. to comply with a proposed federal regulatory action and withdraw enrofloxacin (Baytril) from the market because of the concern that its use in poultry promotes drug-resistant bacteria.
(CIDRAP News) Texas officials announced today that the state's outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) has been eradicated, after 352 noncommercial poultry flocks in the area were found to be free of the disease.
Meanwhile, a battle with a different strain of AI in southern British Columbia continued, as Canadian officials said yesterday they had confirmed the disease on a seventh farm in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver.
