Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed a new MERS-CoV case today in the central city of Al-Kharj, the country's fifth case in under a week.
The new MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) case involves a 47-year-old Saudi man who had direct contact with camels, a known risk factor for the disease. He is hospitalized in stable condition and is not a healthcare worker, the MOH said.
Guangdong province in China has confirmed its fifth H5N6 avian flu infection in 3 weeks, the world's ninth such case, and Fujian province reported its first H7N9 avian flu case of the winter, Xinhua reported today.
The CDC is weighing a warning specifically for pregnant travelers, and federal experts say other mosquito-borne diseases can complicate diagnoses.
According to the first-ever global burden estimates for melioidosis, the disease is sharply underreported in 45 endemic countries, it's probably endemic in 34 more, and conditions are suitable for the disease in parts of the United States and Japan.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now investigating two separate Escherichia coli outbreaks tied to Chipotle restaurants, one involving 53 cases and the other 5, the agency said today in an update.
The criteria that Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) use in triaging West Africa Ebola patients resulted in more than a third of patients falsely testing positive, and the guidance needs to be revised, a study yesterday in Eurosurveillance concluded.
The first report from a surveillance system launched by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2009 to examine the acute gastroenteritis outbreak patterns that aren't part of foodborne or waterborne outbreaks found that noroviruses was by far the most frequently reported cause, with Shigella and Salmonella also making up a portion of the illnesses.
The Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH) said today that the number of locally acquired dengue fever cases has risen by 27 in less than a week, for a total of 139 cases on the big island of Hawaii.
Of the confirmed cases of dengue fever, 122 are in Hawaii residents and 17 involve visitors. Most of the total cases (78%, or 108) have occurred in adults, while 31 cases (22%) involve children. Illness onset occurred from Sep 11 to Nov 28.
Cases of tularemia in four US states have reached at least 104 for 2015, according to federal and state officials.
Saudi Arabia reported a new MERS-CoV infection yesterday in the city of Buraidah, while an international team of researchers found no serologic evidence that the virus is endemic in Kazakh camel herds.
