The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded contracts to two companies to manufacture doses of avian flu vaccine for the nation's veterinary stockpile in case the measure is needed to combat the disease in poultry, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said in a press release yesterday.
Chinese officials have reported two H7N9 infections that occurred between September and Oct 10, but no details about the cases were available. The infections were noted in a government National Health and Family Planning Commission notifiable diseases overview in Chinese published on Oct 10 that was flagged, translated, and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
Vaccine effectiveness (VE) for both US-approved rotavirus vaccines— the five-strain (RV5) and single-strain (RV1) versions—is 80% in children, according to a study published yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Administering tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine together with the flu vaccine during pregnancy was found as safe as administering them sequentially, according to a retrospective cohort study published this week in Obstetrics & Gynecology.
The seasonal flu vaccine might cut the risk of contracting flu-associated pneumonia acquired in the community by more than half, a study today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is funding two projects to aid in developing better seasonal flu vaccines and in improving pandemic flu preparedness, the agency said in a news release yesterday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received reports of 113 additional cases of salmonellosis likely linked to cucumbers in the past week, raising the outbreak total to 671, the agency said in an update yesterday.
US officials need to ramp up active surveillance for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5 viruses and focus on vulnerable regions to prepare for a likely reintroduction of the disease this fall, US Geological Survey (USGS) experts said in a commentary yesterday in Virology Journal.
Both the H3N2 and B strains will differ in next year's Southern Hemisphere trivalent flu vaccine.
Kuwaiti health officials have notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about a fatal MERS-CoV case, in a 78-year-old man from Kuwait City who owned camels and had frequent contact with them, according to a WHO statement today.
