China's Jiangxi province on May 1 announced a new H7N9 avian influenza case, involving a 39-year old woman from Jiujiang who is hospitalized in critical condition, according to a provincial health department statement translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
Avian flu has struck domestic birds in Niger, Taiwan, and South Africa, according to separate reports posted yesterday by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
School closures in Michigan during the fall wave of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic had little impact on disease spread, according to a retrospective study by a team based at the University of Michigan. The group published its findings yesterday in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The number of US measles cases since Jan 1 has reached at least 154, an increase of 13 in the past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update, and 118 of those cases are linked to Disneyland in California.
The world is "dangerously unpreprepared" for future pandemics, and a private-public sector proposal that includes a pandemic facility and insurance coverage could help countries across the globe mitigate the risk, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said today in a speech at Georgetown University.
TFAH says many states have a mediocre level of infectious-disease preparedness.
The score suggests the nation has substantial health security but also room to improve.
Federal health officials reported today that enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) has been detected in another patient who died recently, as the case count rose to 664 and Tennessee joined the list of affected states.
Today's update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put the number of deaths of EV-D68-infected patients at five, one more than before, but it provided no details about the case.
Large contracts for developing improved diagnostics for influenza in point-of-care settings have been awarded to two companies by the federal government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today.
The plan aims at providing clearer guidance on the timing of key actions like vaccinations.
