Japan's health ministry has given fast-track approval to a new flu antiviral with a different mechanism of action than neuraminidase inhibitors that offers a one-dose treatment option, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
The proposed law would direct $200 million a year for 5 years to research.
Adults born from 1958 to 1979 may have experienced a drop in protection against 2009 H1N1 during the 2015-16 flu season because of priming with other H1N1 viruses during their younger years, according to a group led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings add more weight to calls for more broadly protective flu vaccines.
About 11% of a population sampled in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) had Zaire Ebola virus (EBOV) immunoglobulin G antibodies, providing serological evidence of Ebola prevalence in populations not currently experiencing an Ebola outbreak.
The Trump administration is making no effort to prioritize game-changing flu vaccines, the experts say.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) recorded two new cases of MERS-CoV in Riyadh in recent days.
On Jan 5, a 48-year-old Saudi man from the country's capital was diagnosed as having MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) after presenting with symptoms. He is in stable condition. The MOH said the man had direct contact with camels, a known risk factor for MERS-CoV.
Researchers are relieved to resume experiments, but some public health questions remain.
For the first time since 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its pandemic influenza guidance, emphasizing the need for better tracking during the human-to-human transmission phase. The new guidance was published yesterday.
The WHO defined and named phases of an influenza pandemic. In the alert phase, when human-to-human transmission begins, the agency said there is no need for case-counting.
The world rarely receives advance notice of a significant public health threat, but the detection of the highly pathogenic form of H7N9 avian influenza in China serves as a second warning, an expert from the World Health Organization's collaborating center in Australia said today in a Cell Research commentary.
