Amid a widespread measles outbreak, the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) is considering recommending that physicians be compensated for counseling parents about the importance of childhood vaccines, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.
The committee is also looking at a recommendation that would set a minimum vaccination coverage goal for clinicians, the story said.
Vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) is not associated with an increased risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI) among teen girls, according to a study yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Tuberculosis cases decreased by 6% during 2012 in 29 European countries, while hot spots in northern Europe and the Baltic states remained, according to a report issued today by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)
UK labs that handle the most dangerous pathogens have reported at least 116 accidents or other biosecurity breaches in the past 5 years—about one every 2 weeks—The Guardian reported today.
The committee that advises the federal government on biosecurity and dual-use research today approved a statement detailing its concerns about the US government moratorium on funding for "gain-of-function" (GOF) studies on influenza, MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus), and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
A hospital cluster of five confirmed MERS-CoV cases in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has been traced to a patient from Taif near Mecca, the country's Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a statement today.
The count of confirmed enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) cases in the United States reached 796 today, and the number of unexplained neurologic illnesses with potential links to the virus has risen to 37, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Vaccination coverage of young US children against all routinely recommended vaccines remained high and even increased for certain vaccines last year, according to data from the National Immunization Survey (NIS), published today in Morbidity Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
In 2013, just 57% of girls and 35% of boys had received 1 of 3 doses of HPV vaccine.
A 67-study meta-analysis found that vaccines recommended for US kids were safe and that serious side effects were rare, according to a Rand Corp. report today in Pediatrics.
