The latest outbreak affects a farm housing almost 400,000 poultry.
The highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N8 has struck again in South Africa and Italy, while H5N1 has surfaced in China's Inner Mongolia province, according to reports from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and press services.
In sign of low but ongoing highly pathogenic H5N8 activity in Europe, Italy today reported three more outbreaks in poultry, according to a notification from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
The supply of Sanofi Pasteur's yellow fever vaccine YF-Vax is depleted in the United States until the middle of next year, the company said in a press release yesterday. Sanofi said the vaccine would be available again once Sanofi moves production to new "state of the art" facilities.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today updated its recommendations for testing pregnant women for Zika virus, mainly because one of the most frequently used tests—which detected immunoglobulin B (IgM) antibodies—is more likely to yield a false positive result, especially as incidence of the disease in the Americas decreases.
For the third week in a row, China reported just one H7N9 avian influenza case, a sign that the fifth and biggest wave of infections may be drawing to a close.
In other H7N9 developments, China's agriculture ministry this week announced plans to expand poultry vaccination to the whole country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new numbers on current outbreaks of Salmonella illnesslinked to backyard poultry. Since the last update on Jun 1, there have been 418 more cases, raising the total number of cases this year to 790, reported in 10 multistate outbreaks. The outbreaks involve 10 different Salmonella subtypes.
Basic molecular typing and routine hospital data can be used in resource-limited settings to do lab surveillance of antimicrobial resistance organizations, according to researchers in Sri Lanka who reported their findings yesterday in BMC Infectious Diseases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) may reverse a decision it made a month ago to launch a cholera vaccine campaign in Yemen, due to the aggressive spread of the disease and conflict conditions in the country, the New York Times reported today, citing a WHO spokesman who updated reporters at a briefing in Geneva today.
