Saudi Arabian officials today reported four Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases in Riyadh, one of them fatal and the other three severe enough to require intensive care.
Seven of the 26 exposed workers had been vaccinated against smallpox, and only 1 of them got infected.
Flu activity gained a bit more momentum last week but is still low overall, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update. The percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for flu rose again, to 5.4%, and for the first time one of CDC's regions—the one including south-central states such as Louisiana and Arkansas—saw clinic visits for flu-like illness rise above its specific baseline.
A study on aerosol transmission of the novel H7N9 virus in ferrets found evidence of limited spread at levels more robust than avian influenza viruses, but less than seasonal flu and the 2009 H1N1 virus, researchers reported yesterday.
The group, from Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, published its findings in Nature.
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(CIDRAP News) – With tougher security requirements set to take effect next April, few state public health laboratories plan to maintain stocks of certain pathogens considered most tempting to bioterrorists, according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) and officials with state labs.
(CIDRAP News) – A new report from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) offers a few predictions on when certain new countermeasures against biological threats will become available, including a forecast for two novel influenza drugs and possibly a next-generation anthrax vaccine within the next 5 years.
