A Malaysian man who recently returned from a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia has been diagnosed as having MERS-CoV.
Flu hospitalizations are also on the rise, with the highest levels in seniors, a pattern often seen in H3N2-dominant seasons.
The CDC said the H3N2-dominant trend will make neuraminidase inhibitor antivirals especially useful this flu season.
A new meta-analysis of 14 studies shows that vaccine effectiveness (VE) against influenza A H3N2 drops 33% within 6 months of immunization, while VE against influenza B declines by 19%. A small VE decline against influenza A H1N1 was not statistically significant.
Mandating the vaccine is not supported by solid evidence, some experts say.
Recent reports of mutations introduced by egg-based flu vaccine production arriving on the heels of a tough flu season in Australia raise worries about a similarly difficult season ahead for the United States, experts said in a New England Journal of Medicine commentary yesterday.
Tests on a traditional healer in Kenya who was a contact of one of the lab-confirmed Uganda Marburg patients has tested negative, and other high-risk contacts in Kenya have completed their 21-day monitoring periods, with no other illnesses detected, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.
In its latest global flu update, the World Health Organization (WHO) notes that flu increased slightly in the Northern Hemisphere last week and globally influenza A H3N2 is still the dominant strain.
According to the WHO, respiratory illness indicators were at or below seasonal thresholds in Mexico and the United States, and following historical trends in Canada.
In experiments designed to discover reasons for the relatively low effectiveness of last season's flu vaccine against the H3N2 strain—despite what experts thought was a close match between the vaccine strain and circulating viruses—researchers found that the culprit was a mutation that arose during production when the virus was passaged in chicken eggs.
Madagascar's number of confirmed and suspected plague infections has climbed to 1,801, including 127 deaths, over the past few days, with the number of new cases from the pneumonic form of the disease continuing to decline, according to the latest situation report from the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa.
