Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) today announced a new MERS-CoV case, involving a 55-year-old expat man from Wadi Aldwasir who is hospitalized in critical condition. It's not clear if his illness is part of a recent hospital cluster reported from Wadi Aldwasir; he is not a healthcare worker and his infection source is listed as primary, meaning he didn't likely contract the virus from another person.
Puerto Rico may be underreporting or downplaying the numbers of babies born in the territory with Zika-related birth defects, Stat reported today, citing an unnamed former US health official.
Brazil, reporting thousands of new chikungunya cases, almost single-handedly produced another big jump in cases in the Americas for the second straight week, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) reported late last week.
PAHO reported 9,522 new confirmed and suspected cases in its Apr 14 update, after logging 7,231 new cases the week before. The case count for 2017 has now reached 29,841, PAHO said.
Today the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed two new cases of MERS-CoVin separate cities.
A 61-year-old Saudi woman from Turbah is in stable condition after presenting with symptoms of MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus). The source of her infection is listed as primary, meaning it's unlike she contracted the virus from anyone else.
Meanwhile, Taiwan reports its first 2017 case, and HHS funds a potential new diagnostic test.
One research group reports promising findings in mice, and another announces the launch of a trial in humans.
Zika virus has been silently circulating in West Africa for more than two decades, according to a study of 387 blood samples collected from 1992 to 2016, researchers from Harvard University, Nigeria, and Senegal reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
The virus was first identified in 1947 but wasn't linked with known epidemics until 2007 and hadn't been linked to neurologic disease before 2015.
Texas advises all pregnant women in 6 southern counties to get tested.
A bipartisan group of 47 lawmakers sent a letter to President Trump yesterday, asking him to continue support for a comprehensive response across US government agencies to the Zika virus threat.
Follow-up of women who delivered Zika-affected newborns found that only 1 in 4 received the recommended brain imaging after birth.
