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."
In the wake of finding smallpox vials in a storage area earlier this month and a congressional hearing today on federal lab biosecurity (see related story), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the earlier discovery also included more than 300 vials of pathogens such as influenza and dengue viruses, as
As the United States celebrated Independence Day late last week, federal officials announced that Foster Farms has recalled chicken products implicated in a Salmonella outbreak that has now reached 621 cases in 29 states.
The number of chikungunya cases imported into the United States rose by 41 in the past week, to 114, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an update yesterday. The number of states reporting imported cases climbed from 22 to 27, plus the US Virgin Islands.
Multidrug-resistant Salmonella has decreased and resistance to two important classes of antibiotics remains low, but resistance to the bacterium that causes typhoid fever is worrisome.
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.
Saudi Arabia has begun work on a case-control study to try to pinpoint how people contract MERS-CoV, something that critics of the government's response have been demanding for many months, according to a Reuters report today.
California has logged 1,100 new cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in the past 2 weeks, bringing its season total to 4,558, almost twice as many as in all of 2013, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) said today in a news release.
The detection this week of wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) from Equatorial Guinea in Brazilian sewage and the virus's movement from Cameroon into Equatorial Guinea point up the high risk of international spread of the virus from the western portion of central Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.
The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday said it is working with local and international health partners in Iraq to address pressing concerns—including measles and polio risks—of populations hit hard by recent instability there.
