Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) today reported an asymptomatic MERS-CoV infection in a man in Riyadh who is a household contact of a previous MERS patient.
Influenza activity around the United States continued its retreat toward summertime levels last week, but four more flu-related children's deaths were reported, according to today's weekly update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Yellow fever case totals in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to climb, with Namibia now reporting its first suspected case, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) situation report yesterday.
The performance of the seasonal influenza vaccine was exceptionally weak in the 2014-15 season, a failure that was attributed largely to its low effectiveness against a drifted strain of A/H3N2 virus that became dominant. Now, US researchers have reported clear genetic evidence that the drifted strain undermined vaccine effectiveness (VE).
Takeda Pharmaceutical Company today announced a $38 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, part of a partnership to develop a safe, effective, and affordable Sabin-strain inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) for developing countries.
A novel avian flu subtype, H3N6, was found co-circulating with other viruses on duck farms in China's Hunan province, according to a May 6 study in Scientific Reports.
Ahead of its upcoming meeting, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) has posted a draft of a working group's recommendations to guide federal officials in evaluating proposed gain-of-function (GOF) studies on H5N1 flu and other dangerous pathogens, and an outside company tasked with crafting a risk-benefit analysis of GOF research has posted its final report.
An undisclosed number of labs operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been cited for serious biosecurity violations six times since 2003, and a CDC lab in Fort Collins, Colo., was suspended for lab safety breaches, the agency admitted for the first time to USA Today yesterday.
As part of the effort to preserve medically important antimicrobials, pharmaceutical companies will henceforward be required to report sales of antimicrobial drugs for food animals by species, not just overall totals, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday.
Following the development of a rapid diagnostic test for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) strains, the World Health Organization (WHO) today recommended a shorter treatment regimen for patients with uncomplicated MDR-TB infections.
A meta-analysis of the influenza literature indicates that there is no consistent or typical figure for the percentage of flu infections that are asymptomatic, which adds to the difficulty of responding to outbreaks, according to a new report from Australian and British researchers published in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
A Salmonella outbreak linked to alfalfa sprouts that sickened 26 people in 12 states appears to be over, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in a final notice about the event.
Ending a 9-day stretch with no new cases, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) yesterday reported a MERS-CoV infection in a 72-year-old man from Hail in the north central part of the country, according to an MOH notification.
The man is in stable condition, and an investigation into the source of his illness found that he had contact with camels before he got sick.
No new MERS-CoV cases have been reported today, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has posted information on the case reported recently from Qatar as well as details of several previously reported cases from Saudi Arabia.
Death rates and demographic characteristics associated with H5N1avian flu infections have remained relatively stable, even in Egypt, where human cases surged dramatically more than a year ago, according to a study yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Late death from Ebola disease in survivors of earlier episodes is very rare, occurring in less than 1% of patients in a cohort study of Sierra Leone survivors published yesterday in BMJ. The study additionally found that the infecting dose of Ebola as measured by exposure level does not affect the severity of disease.
A preponderance of secondary MERS-CoV infections tend to occur in older and/or male relatives of a primary MERS patient and those with preexisting medical conditions, say findings of a study yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID). Risk factors for household transmission included sleeping in the same room with a MERS patient and direct patient care.
After a quiet 3 months, France is reporting avian flu activity in the southwestern part of the country, according to Avian Flu Diary, an infectious disease blog. The 2 new outbreaks raise the total number of French outbreaks to 79 since November of 2015.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today reported another outbreak of Salmonella linked to live poultry in backyard flocks, with 287 new cases and 10 previously unaffected states reporting infections. Those cases nearly double the 324 that the CDC reported on Jun 2.
The US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) yesterday issued a public health alert over the risk of Salmonella infection related to preparing and consuming whole hogs for pig roasts, after investigation into a recent outbreak in Washington state linked illnesses to Kapowsin Meats for a second year in a row.
Carbapenems, penicillins, quinolones, macrolides and ketolides, and the newest cephalosporins were among the antibiotics that a World Health Organization (WHO) expert panel yesterday rated as "critically important" for human medicine of highest priority in limiting their use in food animals to combat resistance to the drugs.
A dose of H5 avian influenza vaccine may set the stage for a stronger cellular immune response if a person later encounters a different strain of H5 virus, which suggests that this prime-boost strategy could be useful in fighting an H5N1 pandemic, according to a study reported Jul 20 in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The rate of new suspected and confirmed cases of yellow fever continues to decline in Angola, but health officials are concerned about disease activity in Benguela province, where surveillance gaps and reporting delays are occurring, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in its weekly update.
Originally published Jul 21.
Egypt recently reported three new H5N1 avian flu cases, all in people who had been exposed to poultry or their environments, according to a monthly update from the World Health Organization (WHO) on animal-to-human flu transmission events for the middle of June through the middle of July.
