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(CIDRAP News) – Five SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) patients have been released from Chinese hospitals this week, leaving only two still hospitalized with the disease, according to reports from China.

(CIDRAP News) – The dengue fever epidemic in Indonesia has subsided after 58,301 cases were reported in 4 months, which rivaled the pandemic year of 1998, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

There were 658 deaths among cases of dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever reported from January through April, the WHO said yesterday. The case-fatality rate of 1.1% was lower than in previous years, officials said.

(CIDRAP News) – Food workers with a potentially infectious intestinal illness would be sent home under a recommendation adopted recently by a group that advises the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on safety guidelines for the retail food industry.

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese researchers have found the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in the intestinal tract, sweat glands, and kidneys of SARS victims, suggesting that food, sweat, and body wastes could spread the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week announced four grants totaling more than $28 million to develop techniques for electronically simulating natural or terrorist-caused infectious disease outbreaks and responses to them.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal and state disease investigators have rejected a theory that a cluster of 17 suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) cases were linked to restaurants at Garden State Racetrack in Cherry Hill, N.J.

(CIDRAP News) – Almost 5 years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the US Public Health Service joined in calling for removal of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal from vaccines. By 2001, all the vaccines recommended for children under age 7 were available without thimerosal or with only trace amounts.

(CIDRAP News) – Neither of two researchers who apparently contracted SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in a virology laboratory in Beijing worked directly with the SARS virus, which complicates the problem of determining how they acquired it, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

(CIDRAP News) – Vietnamese officials have reported an isolated avian flu outbreak in a southern province, more than a month after the country declared itself free of the disease, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday it had traced the rendered remains of a Texas cow that should have been tested last week for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and would make sure they are not fed to cattle.

(CIDRAP News) – US Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors at a slaughter plant in Texas neglected to test a cow for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) after the cow showed suspicious signs, the USDA said yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese authorities have upgraded three more suspected SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases in China to confirmed status, signaling that all nine cases in the current outbreak have been verified.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week announced it would spend $18.8 million to begin a three-stage process for setting up a national animal identification system to help contain animal disease outbreaks.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the goal of the effort is a system to identify farms and other sites exposed to foreign animal diseases.

(CIDRAP News) – It's official: federal health authorities say that from now on, all children between the ages of 6 months and 23 months should receive an annual influenza shot.

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese authorities have confirmed that a woman who died Apr 19 had SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), marking her as the world's first victim of the disease this year.

(CIDRAP News) – Chinese officials today upgraded two cases of suspected SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) to confirmed status, bringing the number of confirmed cases in the current outbreak to four, according to news service reports.

A total of nine cases have been reported in China since Apr 22, the World Health organization (WHO) said yesterday. One of the patients died Apr 19, and the other eight were hospitalized, the agency said.

(CIDRAP News) – The incidence of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections dropped 36% from 2002 to 2003, and long-term declines in the rates of several other common foodborne illnesses continued in 2003, the CDC reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – The Bush administration today released a long catalog of what it considers the nation's biodefense and public health preparedness gains over the last 3 years and promised more improvements to come.

(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.