CIDRAP newsletters options
Saudi Arabian health officials on Feb 15 announced the death of a young adult cancer patient from the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), bringing the number of fatal MERS cases in that country to 60.
The 22-year-old man is from Eastern province, the Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) said. The nation has reported 145 MERS-CoV cases.
The CDC said flu is still hitting some states hard, but overall the disease continues to decline.
Spanish researchers estimate this season's flu vaccine is only 24% effective so far, much lower than a Canadian estimate last week.
The slowdown continues, with only two new cases in Guangdong province, one of China's hotspots.
Individuals in the San Francisco Bay area are being told to stay alert for symptoms of measles after an infected and contagious student at the University of California, Berkeley, attended classes and used public transportation before his diagnosis last week, according to news sources.
A genetic analysis hints that reassortants could be one factor fueling recent cases.
Officials offer few details on what exaclty the 30-nation "Global Health Security Agenda" involves.
Two doses of quadrivalent (four-strain) human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine provide good protection against genital warts (condylomata), but three doses are better, according to a large Swedish study published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Health officials in China's Jiangxi province today reported their third recent human case of H10N8 avian flu, which proved fatal, according to a provincial statement in Chinese translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
The patient, a 75-year-old man from the capital city of Nanchang, got sick on Feb 4 and was hospitalized with severe pneumonia. He died on Feb 8.
The Malaysia case is the first one outside China, and 8 other H7N9 cases were confirmed.
A 7-year-old Cambodian boy and his 3-year-old sister died from H5N1 avian flu late last week, a health official said today, but only the boy was tested, according to Xinhua, China's state news agency.
Scientists with the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) have identified a new coronavirus in pigs on four Ohio farms that recently had outbreaks of diarrheal disease, the ODA announced yesterday.
The rate of new infections slowed today, as the WHO confirmed seven previously reported cases.
The newly identified virus is a betacoronavirus, a group that also includes MERS-CoV.
Protection from three doses of pertussis vaccine against disease requiring hospitalization waned significantly even by 4 years of age, Australian researchers reported yesterday in Pediatrics, a finding that supports current US recommendations of four early doses.
Two provinces in Vietnam have reported outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu in poultry, an article from Xinhua, China's news agency, reported today. One of the outbreaks follows one in the same province late last month, raising alarm over the infection's spread to other areas and to humans.
The new infections include the first 2 cases of the second wave from Anhui province.
The count of confirmed and probable chikungunya cases on Caribbean islands and neighboring areas reached 1,446 late last week, a spike of 411 cases in only 4 days, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported on Feb 7.
The ECDC said St. Martin has reached 601 cases on the French side of the island, an increase of 125 cases, and 60 on the Dutch side, which saw a dramatic 51-case increase.
Most of a group of French pilgrims who traveled to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj last fall had respiratory symptoms during their journey, and some had influenza, but none tested positive for the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), according to a report in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Several key measures of flu activity dropped again last week, but many states still had widespread activity.
