A mumps outbreak centered in Anchorage, Alaska, has chugged along for more than a year and reached nearly 400 cases despite a series of vaccination recommendations that expanded to include the entire state, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today.
In an update yesterday that came a day after the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) Ebola outbreak was declared over, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it now considers the risk to the region and the rest of the world as low.
In the largest-ever genetic study of mosquitoes, researchers tracked the movement of insecticide resistance between different African regions and identified several rapidly evolving resistance genes that could be used to develop new tools for tracking resistance, monitoring insecticide use, and developing new control methods. The team from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute reporting its findings yesterday in Nature.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) reported two new cases of MERS-CoV in Al Hofuf late last week, one of which was fatal. These are the first cases reported by the MOH in 10 days.
On Sep 21, the MOH confirmed that a 48-year-old Saudi man with direct camel contact was diagnosed as having MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) infection after presenting with MERS symptoms. He is in stable condition.
Also, waning immunity probably contributes to outbreaks, the study found.
The investigation into a cluster of Elizabethkingia anopheles infections in Illinois that were distinct from outbreaks reported in neighboring Wisconsin and Michigan found that the illnesses probably reflect ongoing sporadic infections in critically ill patients, a team from Illinois and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today in Morbidity and Mortality
Malaria deaths in Africa have dropped by more than half in the past 15 years, but some countries still struggle with high malaria mortality rates, according to a study yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In issuing its final report yesterday on eight Salmonella outbreaks linked to contact with backyard poultry, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the 895 illnesses reported is the largest number ever reported in outbreaks linked to chicks and ducklings.
A study yesterday in Pediatrics showed how an urban health system achieved human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates of 89.8% in teen girls and 89.3% in teen boys by using low-cost interventions, including "bundling" the HPV vaccine with other vaccines, and offering vaccines at every healthcare visit.
Screening of 1,427 bacterial isolates collected from patients in a large Hong Kong hospital during roughly 1-month period in December 2015 yielded 5 that were positive for MCR-1, a gene linked to resistance to colistin, a last-line antibiotic. A team from Hong Kong reported their findings yesterday in a letter yesterday to Emerging Infectious Diseases.
