The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that tests have ruled out plague in several patients in Seychelles under monitoring and treatment for probable or suspected pneumonic infections. The set of samples included one from a 34-year-old man who had returned from Madagascar and who was previously identified by the Seychelles health ministry as a probable imported case, based on a weakly positive result on a rapid test.
Cases are now at 684, with 57 deaths; 474 of the cases are pneumonic, a serious form.
The first shipment of Anthim (obiltoxaximab) injection, a novel treatment for the inhalation of Bacillus anthracis, which causes anthrax, has arrived in the US Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) according to a press release yesterday from Elusys Therapeutics, Inc. Elusys manufactures Anthim and has received more than $240 million from the US government to develop the drug over the past 15 years.
Also, the CDC's travel notice said local officials are scaling up flea control and have cancelled mass gatherings.
Syria has confirmed seven new cases involving vaccine-derived poliovirus 2 (cVDPV2) infection and Pakistan has reported four detections of wild poliovirus 1 (WPV1) in environmental samples, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) said today in its weekly update.
After a lag in reporting last week, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) updated it information on MERS-CoV cases over the weekend, noting three new cases since the agency last reported on Sep 25.
The World Health Organization (WHO) advisory committee that reviewed the most recent influenza developments and recommended strains for the Southern Hemisphere's 2018 flu season also looked at the newest genetic findings with zoonotic influenza viruses and recommended three new candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs).
An experimental drug that belongs to a new class of antibiotics showed promise in lab tests against multidrug-resistant (MDR) gram-negative bacteria, and was protective against the bacterium that causes plague in mice, according to a study yesterday in mBio.
A review and meta-analysis of studies on bacterial transmission and antibiotic resistance during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca has found rising rates of resistance among certain gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, researchers report in Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease.
President Donald Trump announced yesterday that Francis Collins, MD, PhD, an Obama administration holdover, will stay on as permanent director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), multiple media sites reported.
