The Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) health ministry said today that all contacts of the last confirmed case have completed their 21-day monitoring periods with none showing any signs of illness, marking the beginning of the countdown to the end of the nation's ninth Ebola outbreak.
In the latest development in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Ebola outbreak, the country's health ministry yesterday reported three new suspected cases in Bikoro, one of the two remote hotspots, according to a daily update.
Russia's agriculture ministry reported 16 more highly pathogenic H5 outbreaks, mostly in backyard poultry, according to a notification today from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
Influenza illnesses can trigger asthmatic episodes that don't respond to treatment.
Authorities in a second Indian state are investigating two suspected Nipah virus infections, both of them in people who had traveled to Kerala state where they had contact with infected patients, Reuters reported today, citing a health official in Karnataka state.
The death toll for a Nipah virus outbreak in India's Kerala state now stands at 10, after at least 12 more people have been diagnosed as having the deadly virus, according to a Reuters report today.
Reuters said an additional nine people are being treated for infections with supportive care. Nipah virus is most commonly spread by fruit bats, and presents with severe, flu-like symptoms.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an additional claim for the cobas Zika test, manufactured by Roche Molecular Diagnostics, the company announced today in a news release. The approval allows the test to be used to screen pooled blood and plasma donations for the Zika virus.
According to Roche, the new application will streamline the screening process of multiple individual blood or plasma donations.
The United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) today issued draft guidance for the treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs).
A new meta-analysis of 42 flu studies found that vaccination over two consecutive seasons didn't reduce flu vaccine effectiveness (VE) compared with people vaccinated during the current season, but the researchers included the caveat that the overall quality of evidence was low, due to inconsistency and imprecision among the studies.
An updated analysis of the seasonal flu attack rate in unvaccinated people found that the virus infects 1 in 5 children each year and 1 in 10 adults, with symptomatic illness seen in about half of the infections. A team from Australia and New Zealand reported its findings yesterday in Vaccine.
