In its ongoing response to safety lapses at two of its high-containment labs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced the members of an external lab safety work group. The 11-person group will advise CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, and the CDC's new director of lab safety, Michael Bell, MD, according to a statement.
Oklahoma health officials today reported the state's first Heartland virus infection, in a Delaware County resident who died from complications from the illness.
Two new H7N9 influenza infections were reported in China today, both from Anhui province, according to a health department statement translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
Both patients are men, ages 69 and 58, who are hospitalized in critical condition. The cases are the second and third to be reported in Anhui province this week and lift its overall number of H7N9 cases to 14.
Saudi Arabian officials today reported four Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases in Riyadh, one of them fatal and the other three severe enough to require intensive care.
Early findings from sequencing of the H5N1 virus that recently caused the death of a Canadian woman suggest that it is similar to strains previously seen in China, according to a CBC News story yesterday.
Narrow-spectrum antibiotics were associated with a 10-hour shorter hospital stay compared with broad-spectrum therapy for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children—an 18% drop—according to a multicenter retrospective cohort study yesterday in Pediatrics.
Construction has begun on a plant in north Florida that will enable the Department of Defense (DoD) to produce its own vaccines and drugs against potential bioterror threats, an effort that appears to duplicate Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) efforts, the Los Angeles Times reported.
A Lancet report adds to expectations that hepatitis C might be treated without months of injections.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued a proposed rule under the 2011 FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) for improving the safety of food for animals. The proposed rule is open for public comment for 120 days, the agency said in a press release.
At a malaria conference in South Africa today, researchers reported more promising findings for a vaccine that is furthest along in development, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) officials said they now intend to submit a regulatory application for it to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2014, according to a company press release.
