In its report on flu sample cross-contamination today, the CDC detailed departures from best practices and reporting delays.
The number of travel-related US chikungunya cases has grown to 580, an increase of 96 in the past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update. The number of locally acquired cases stayed at 4, for 584 total US cases.
H7N9 avian flu, which emerged in humans in China in the spring of 2013 and has since caused more than 450 cases, was found to replicate well in both the upper and lower respiratory tracts of cynomolgus macaques, a model for humans, and to show extended replication in the upper tract, indicating the possibility of prolonged shedding and transmissibility, say findings of a study today in mBio.
An H5N1 avian flu virus that killed a Canadian woman in January had two uncommon mutations that may have helped increase its ability to bind to human cells, researchers from Singapore and Canada reported yesterday in a letter in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
An analysis of seven children infected with H7N9 avian influenza during the outbreak's second wave in China found that the illnesses were mild, a phenomenon that could contribute to spread of the virus. Researchers from China's Guangdong province published their findings today in an early online edition of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Significantly fewer infectious organisms are transferred through a fist bump than through a handshake or even a "high five," so fist bumps would be a more hygienic way of greeting others, says a study from the United Kingdom released today in the American Journal of Infection Control, the journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
Genetic comparisons between variant H3N2 (H3N2v) influenza viruses collected from swine at Ohio fairs in 2012 and those collected from case-patients from a large outbreak that year showed an almost 100% match, according to a study today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday that it might be impossible to trace how H9N2 avian flu samples it sent to a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) lab in Athens, Ga., became cross-contaminated with the lethal H5N1 strain, Reuters reported yesterday.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said this week that the safety of gain-of-function (GOF) studies like a recent one involving the generation of a 1918-like influenza virus merits more public discussion, given the obligation of researchers to "first do no harm."
The hearing revealed systemic problems and worries about the safety culture of lab workers.
