According to a survey conducted in the middle of November, only 43% of Americans said they have been vaccinated against flu, 14% plan on being vaccinated, while 41% said they don't plan on being immunized against the disease.
Annual sentinel surveillance of Neisseria gonorrhea isolates in 25 European countries has found decreasing susceptibility to ceftriaxone, according to a study yesterday in BMC Infectious Diseases.
Saudi Arabia yesterday reported a new MERS-CoV case for epidemiologic week 47, which involves a 52-year-old man from Riyadh.
The ministry of health said the man didn't have a history of recent contact with camels and wasn't known to have been exposed to another known MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) case. He is currently hospitalized.
In children, flu vaccine effectiveness declines over 9 months following immunization, according to a study in Hong Kong that took place over five flu seasons. A team based at the University of Hong Kong reported its findings on Nov 12 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
A new study in Vaccine led by a group from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates a multi-season flu vaccine effectiveness (VE) of 41% among patients with high-risk medical conditions, compared with 48% for those without.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today said it and state health partners are investigating 28 more suspected acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) cases, lifting the national number of suspected cases for 2018 to 219.
Prior vaccination did not reduce the subsequent season's vaccine effectiveness in children 2 to 17 years old.
Save for the 2009-10 pandemic, the season was the worst in recent years.
Today the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Xofluza (baloxavir marboxil) for the treatment of flu in patients ages 12 years and older who have been symptomatic for no more than 48 hours.
Xofluza is the first novel flu treatment approved by the FDA in nearly 20 years; the FDA approved the neuraminidase inhibitors oseltamivir and zanamivir in 1999.
In avian flu outbreak developments, the United States reported the detection of low-pathogenic H5N2 in a Minnesota turkey flock and Laos reported a highly pathogenic H5N1 outbreak in backyard birds.
