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(CIDRAP News) – Canada's official report on its response to the mad cow disease case in Alberta suggests that the case might have resulted from the importation of American cattle or contaminated feed into Canada, among other possibilities.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today removed Toronto from the list of areas with recent local transmission of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), leaving Taiwan as the only place where the disease is not officially contained.

Toronto had a 4-month, two stage SARS outbreak that was the largest outside Asia, with almost 250 probable cases and at least 38 deaths. The city thought it had beaten the disease once before.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today it has confirmed monkeypox in six rodents from a shipment of African mammals that is believed to be the source of the current monkeypox outbreak in the United States.

(CIDRAP News) – A team of experts who reviewed Canada's response to the recent mad cow disease case in Alberta recommended last week that Canada increase its efforts to ensure that high-risk parts of cattle do not end up in either human food or animal feed.

(CIDRAP News) – Despite progress in the past 2 years, local emergency response agencies in the United States remain dangerously unprepared for major terrorist attacks, according to a new study by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank.

(CIDRAP News) – Stampede Meat, Inc., Chicago, is recalling about 739,000 pounds of frozen beef products because of a possible link to five Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections in Minnesota, Kansas, and Michigan, the US Department of Agriculture announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A Taiwanese man who was thought to have the first case of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in Japan does not have the disease after all, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today.

Japanese health officials told the WHO that laboratory testing showed the man has influenza B, according to a WHO statement. The 33-year-old man arrived in Tokyo Jun 21 and experienced a high fever and other symptoms 2 days later.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering a new computer model to help hospitals and health systems estimate how many staff members they would need to dispense antibiotics or vaccinate people in response to bioterrorism or a major disease outbreak.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of human monkeypox cases under investigation in the United States continued to decline in the past week as 11 new possible cases were reported but 19 others were ruled out, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

June 26 (CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday reported the first probable case of SARS in Japan, involving a 33-year-old Taiwanese man who came to Tokyo on June 21 for sightseeing.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday canceled its warning against travel to Beijing, site of the world's largest SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrom) outbreak, signaling that the disease is finally under control in the Chinese capital.

(CIDRAP News) – Experience in the current US military smallpox immunization program makes clear that heart inflammation is a possible complication of vaccination, but the overall record suggests that smallpox vaccination today may be safer than in the past, according to reports published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

June 23, 2003 (CIDRAP News) — The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Hong Kong free of local transmission of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) today, four months after the disease arrived from mainland China and began spreading through the city.

Editor's note: This story was revised from its original form to clarify terminology regarding the DNA chip being offered to researchers.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) today announced it will offer a quartz chip containing the DNA of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus to help researchers quickly detect tiny differences between strains of the virus.

(CIDRAP News) – Julie Gerberding, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), expressed confidence yesterday that the monkeypox outbreak will be choked off.

(CIDRAP News) – Because of the risk of heart inflammation, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended yesterday that the federal smallpox immunization program not expand now beyond smallpox response teams to the larger population of health workers and emergency responders.

(CIDRAP News) – Thousands of food handlers each year have hepatitis A and can potentially pass the disease to diners, a fact that poses tough problems for public health agencies, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – The number of suspected cases of human monkeypox in Wisconsin, where the outbreak was discovered, has begun to drop off, according to Herb Bostrom, director of the Wisconsin Bureau of Communicable Diseases.

June 17, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – Taiwan, one of the places hit hardest by SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), has been removed from the World Health Organization's list of areas to avoid, the WHO announced today.

June 16, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has canceled its travel warnings for several areas of China in response to the steady waning of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) there.