A year after the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Boende, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 22.5% of healthcare workers (HCWs) had Ebola virus (EBOV) antibodies in their blood, even though only 15.1% reported contact with suspected, probable, or confirmed Ebola virus patients, according to a study today in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Since May 1 state health officials have reported more than 100 cases of Cyclospora infections, compared with 18 to 33 over the previous 3 years, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) said in a news release yesterday. Other states are also reporting increased cases.
Utah also reported six new cases.
People with Parkinson's disease (PD) have a 30% higher risk of COVID-19 death, according to a University of Iowa news release yesterday and a recent study in Movement Disorders.
The national count of confirmed enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) cases reached 160 in 22 states on Sep 19, which is seven more cases and three more states than reported a day earlier, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Austria has reported its first MERS case, involving a visiting Saudi Arabian woman, while her home country has reported yet another case.
The Austrian health ministry said yesterday that the Saudi woman arrived in the country a few days ago and is now isolated in a Vienna hospital in critical condition, according to a Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) story today.
A survey of 244 members of three infectious diseases societies reveals that the most common approached to antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) are antibiotic reviews with prospective audit and feedback (PAF), prior authorization for select antibiotics, and guideline development, according to a study today in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
A US study of almost 17,000 patients finds modest two-dose Pfizer COVID vaccine effectiveness (VE) against hospitalization and emergency department (ED) admission for Omicron BA.1 (the original Omicron variant) and the BA.2 subvariant, but three-dose VE was 79% and 71% for hospitalization, respectively, and 72% and 21% for ED visits.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported two more MERS cases today, both of which occurred in Riyadh.
The first patient is a 53-year-old Saudi man who is in stable condition, the MOH said. The other patient is a 24-year-old foreigner who is hospitalized in an intensive care unit (ICU).
Although early reports during the 2010-11 flu season suggested possible safety concerns over febrile seizures in kids with the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) Fluzone, just-released epidemiologic findings show no statistically significant association, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
An outbreak of an especially large and severe enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) outbreak in kids younger than 10 in Spain's Catalonia region that began in the middle of April has so far sickened 87, with 22 still in the hospital, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said today in a risk assessment.
Accelerate Diagnostics presented three studies today at IDWeek 2019 in Washington, DC, that show promising results for its rapid phenotypic susceptibility test, according to a company press release.
Unpublished data from a large randomized controlled trial in the United Kingdom indicate that dexamethasone, a cheap, widely available steroid, reduces deaths in hospitalized COVID-19 patients requiring respiratory support.
Wastewater COVID detections declined to the minimal level and are highest in the Midwest.
An analysis of US nursing home surveys shows substantial progress in antibiotic stewardship element implementation, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday announced 10 more cases of Salmonella Typhimurium illness linked to pet hedgehogs, and 6 more states are affected. The new cases raise the outbreak total to 27 cases in 17 states.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) released new guidelines for treating leishmaniasis, a parasite transmitted through bites from sand flies and on the rise in American tourists and military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The multistate outbreak of Salmonella Heidelberg linked to chicken from producer Foster Farms in California has now sickened 416 people in 23 states and Puerto Rico, according to an update today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The last-reported case count was 389 on Nov 19.
A single-center study in North Carolina showed that a multifaceted initiative was associated with a significant and sustainable decrease in inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for patients with asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB; bacteria in the urine) and asymptomatic pyuria (ASP; elevated white blood cells in the urine), researchers reported today in Antimicrobial Stewardship & Healthcare Epide
Federal officials have added 23 cases and three newly affected states to a multistate outbreak of Escherichia coli cases linked to romaine lettuce and gave what amounts to an all-clear to resume eating the lettuce, according to updates yesterday.
COVID-19 hospitalization and all-cause death rates for patients with end-stage kidney disease undergoing dialysis, as well as kidney transplant recipients, climbed steeply early in the pandemic, and both exhibited racial disparities, according to a study published yesterday in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).
H7N9 found after poultry markets reopened in China in 2013
After only a handful of reports released earlier this month, Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed six new cases of MERS-CoV over the weekend.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) modeling study used data from 59 US case investigation and contact tracing (CICT) programs to estimate that the programs prevented 1.11 to 1.36 million COVID-19 cases, and 27,000 to 34,000 hospitalizations over 60 days in winter 2020-21, well before the Delta and Omicron variant surges.
With the Winter Olympics just getting under way in South Korea, a norovirus outbreak has sidelined 32 workers, including 21 from the security staff, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Authorities have called in military personnel to help with security.
