The King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) and Saudi Arabia's ministries of health and agriculture have launched a joint program for comprehensive MERS-CoV research on the Middle East, Arab News reported today as the country's Ministry of Health (MOH) reported no MERS cases for the 7th straight day.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) this week published a report on a 2-day medical countermeasure workshop it held in late March to discuss how to how better develop and deliver medical countermeasures (MCMs) for emerging infectious disease threats, based on challenges that flared up during West Africa's Ebola outbreak.
Jordan's health ministry today reported another MERS-CoV case, involving a 53-year-old man who had contact with an earlier case, according to a report from Kuwait News Agency (KUNA). The story's Amman dateline and the man's status as a contact suggest that his infection is likely related to a hospital outbreak in the Jordanian capital.
A side-by-side look at MERS-CoV and SARS infection patterns shows differences and some similarities, according to a study presented this week at the International Conference on Emerging and Infectious Diseases (ICEID) in Atlanta.
The committee that advises the federal government on biosecurity and dual-use research today approved a statement detailing its concerns about the US government moratorium on funding for "gain-of-function" (GOF) studies on influenza, MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus), and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
Several factors contributed, the WHO says, while experts call for case-control studies.
Only one prefecture in Guinea—Gueckedou—has reported continued community transmission and deaths in the Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak there as of May 18, says an update from the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa.
Compelling evidence and prudence dictate higher levels of respiratory protection for health workers.
Officials at the Pasteur Institute in Paris say the laboratory's loss of 2,349 "tubes" containing fragments of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) virus does not pose an infection risk, but they call the lapse an "unacceptable mistake," according to media reports.
The findings support the hypothesis that the SARS virus originated in bats.