A fatal yellow fever case has been confirmed in a resident of Itatiba, a city in Brazil's Sao Paulo state, located about 50 miles north the state's capital city, according to an Oct 17 city government statement translated and posted yesterday by ProMED Mail, the online reporting system of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
A study in children tested for flu over three seasons at a New Orleans hospital found modest but consistent flu vaccine effectiveness, that a switch from the inactivated trivalent to quadrivalent (four-strain) formulation didn't seem to help or hurt effectiveness, and that the inhaled version of the vaccine didn't perform as well, but improved over successive seasons.
One of the 7 cases, involving a nonagenarian, proved fatal.
Today the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) announced three new MERS-CoV cases in Riyadh.
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said there were three separate hospital-based outbreaks of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) in that city. At least one of the new cases is tied to the hospital outbreaks, but none of the patients are healthcare workers.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) confirmed today that there are at least three children with circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 in the Deir-Ez-Zor governorate of Syria. Two children have developed acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), and one child has tested positive for the virus but is currently healthy.
Poorly maintained water systems are typically to blame, and those in long-term care facilities are especially vulnerable.
Medimmune scientists have been investigating what's behind the decreased FluMist effectiveness that prompted US vaccine advisors to recommend against it this year, and today they reported that reduced fitness of H1N1 vaccine virus strains are the likely culprit.
Yesterday the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health (MOH) said there was a new case of MERS in the city of Arar, while Austrian officials reported a case in a tourist from Saudi Arabia.
Infections with Legionella bacteria have quadrupled since 2000, and the CDC says outbreaks are preventable through proper management of water systems, such as cooling towers.
China has two new H7N9 avian flu cases, both in men in the same district of Yongzhou city in Hunan province, according to local health officials.
