In issuing its final report yesterday on eight Salmonella outbreaks linked to contact with backyard poultry, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the 895 illnesses reported is the largest number ever reported in outbreaks linked to chicks and ducklings.
In another breaking development, the CDC today urged pregnant women to avoid nonessential travel to 11 Southeast Asian countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today described a case of MERS-CoV in a Saudi man diagnosed with the virus while he was visiting Vienna, Austria. This is the second case of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) reported in that country and was noted in recent media reports.
On Sep 17 the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health (MOH) reported one new MERS-CoV case, involving a Saudi man from Riyadh who had contact with camels.
The 50-year-old man is in stable condition after presenting with symptoms of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus). The MOH said the patient had direct contact with camels, a known risk factor for contracting the respiratory virus.
Spain has reported its first two cases of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF)—one of them fatal—a tick-borne viral disease that is found in eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and much of Asia.
A meta-analysis by German researchers yielded the conclusion that healthcare personnel (HCP) faced about twice as high a risk of H1N1 infection as other groups during the 2009 influenza pandemic, says a report published yesterday in PLoS One.
A study in Liberia has produced more evidence of persistence of the Ebola virus in semen after patients' recovery from the disease, with some of them still testing positive more than a year after recovery and greater age indicated as a possible risk factor.
Blood serum from rhesus monkeys that had survived Ebola virus (EBOV) infection offered little protection to other rhesus monkeys that were treated with the serum several days after exposure to the virus, according to an Aug 28 report in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
A trial of the antiviral drug favipiravir in Ebola patients during Sierra Leone's outbreak suggests that it can reduce viral load, improve clinical symptoms, increase the survival rate, and prolong survival time, Chinese and African researchers reported yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID).
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests on scallops implicated in Hawaii's hepatitis A outbreak yielded positive results on two samples, according to an update yesterday from the agency on the investigation.
