The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today said it and state health partners are investigating 28 more suspected acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) cases, lifting the national number of suspected cases for 2018 to 219.
The experts also called for 3 new pandemic candidate vaccine viruses.
Public Health England (PHE) yesterday released its provisional seasonal flu vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimates for the 2017-18 flu season, which revealed low overall effectiveness and no protection against H3N2, but variable findings in different age-groups.
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, today announced the formation of a new task force to address drug shortages and long-term strategies for preventing them.
Health officials in Minnesota and Wisconsin are investigating a Salmonella outbreak linked to frozen breaded chicken products, and Canadian authorities are probing a similar outbreak also linked to the same type of product.
In a major development today on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly under way in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank Group announced the launch of a new mechanism to firm up global health security, an independent monitoring board to regularly assess country preparedness to handle outbreaks, pandemics, and other health emergencies.
Federal officials have added 23 cases and three newly affected states to a multistate outbreak of Escherichia coli cases linked to romaine lettuce and gave what amounts to an all-clear to resume eating the lettuce, according to updates yesterday.
The federal government needs to develop better vaccine production capacity, support strong global security, and bolster nationwide public health to be better prepared for the next pandemic, a high-level tabletop exercise yesterday sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security found.
Twelve more people in five states have been sickened with Salmonella from eggs produced by an Indiana farm, bringing the outbreak total to 35 cases in nine states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an update yesterday.
Experts agree that the next flu pandemic could well be devastating—and how ill-prepared the world is.
