As researchers work on solving the complex puzzle of all the factors that influence flu vaccine effectiveness (VE), researchers today report that low VE of the H3N2 component during the 2012-13 flu season may have been due to poor immune response rather than adaptations in egg-grown vaccine viruses, as previously thought.
The Trump administration yesterday released its budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year, and it would cut the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget by about $900 million, with some increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
With the Winter Olympics just getting under way in South Korea, a norovirus outbreak has sidelined 32 workers, including 21 from the security staff, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Authorities have called in military personnel to help with security.
In a regular overview of recent MERS-CoV activity in Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today that between Dec 9, 2017, and Jan 17 the country reported 20 more cases, 8 of them fatal. Also, it reported a death in a patient covered in one of the WHO's earlier updates.
Data on infants born to women suspected of having a Zika virus infection in Texas show higher-than-average rates of birth defects and suboptimal levels of testing, according to a report today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
One more illness cluster has been reported among 21 recent H7N9 avian flu infections reported in China, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in an update today. Its report covers 9 lab-confirmed cases reported to the WHO by China on Jun 2 as well as 12 cases reported on Jun 9.
Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP) in a regular update today said the mainland from Mar 3 to Mar 9 reported 22 more H7N9 avian influenza cases, 3 of them fatal. The pace of infections in China's fifth and biggest wave has slowed some since illnesses peaked in February, but the country continues to report a steady stream of cases.
CEPI, a vaccine development partnership, was created in the wake of Ebola.
Federal officials have detected the MCR-1 resistance gene in another Escherichia coli isolate taken from a pig, bringing to three the number of US detections in 3 weeks, after the gene was found in late May in samples from a person and a separate pig.
At a time when growing bacterial resistance underlines the need for new antibiotics, records on eight antibiotics approved in the United States from 2010 to 2015 suggest that they cost more than older drugs but don't necessarily offer clear clinical advantages, according to a study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine.
