Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
CDC is pulling back $11B in Covid funding sent to health departments across the U.S.
NBC News “Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary,” federal health authorities wrote to funding recipients this week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is pulling back $11.4 billion in funds allocated in response to the pandemic to state and community health departments, nongovernment organizations and […]
Mar 25, 2025
Tuberculosis was once a disease in decline, but a resurgence in cases has health officials puzzled
PBS Newshour An outbreak of tuberculosis, or TB – a lung disease that is often accompanied by a hacking cough – began in January 2024 in Kansas City, Kansas, and two nearby counties and continues as of early March 2025. To date, 147 people have been reportedly diagnosed with TB in the outbreak, with 67 becoming […]
Mar 25, 2025
HHS Closing Long COVID Office
MedPageToday Closure is part of the Trump administration’s “reorganization” The Office of Long COVID Research and Practice will close as soon as this week, according to an internal HHS email obtained by Inside Medicine. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by a government employee familiar with the situation. The email states that this action is […]
Mar 25, 2025
DC Health officials confirm measles case in the District
WTOP The D.C. Department of Health confirmed Tuesday a positive case of measles in a person who visited various locations in the District while contagious. The unidentified person traveled throughout the nation’s capital within the last week. Anyone not immune to measles who traveled to the potential exposure sites during the noted dates and times […]
Mar 25, 2025
What the COVID-19 pandemic tells us about how viruses evolve
NPR arly in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists predicted the coronavirus would mutate slowly. They were wrong. Hundreds of thousands of viral mutations and multiple seasonal waves later, researchers now know why. Turns out, SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that causes the disease COVID-19 — was making evolutionary leaps and bounds in one specific group of people. “When […]
Mar 25, 2025
UK draws up new disease-threat watch list
BBC The UK has a new watch list of 24 infectious diseases that could pose the greatest future threat to public health. Some are viruses with global pandemic potential – like Covid – while others are illnesses that have no existing treatments or could cause significant harm. Avian, or bird, flu is on the list, […]
Mar 25, 2025
Clade I Mpox Outbreak Originating in Central Africa
CDC Since January 1, 2024, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and several neighboring countries in Central and Eastern Africa have confirmed through laboratory testing more than 21,000 mpox cases and more than 65 deaths. There have also been travel-associated cases in other parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, and South America. The risk […]
Mar 19, 2025
Health official warns of prolonged measles outbreak as cases rise in TX, NM, OK
KOMO A measles outbreak has continued to spread across Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, with 321 confirmed cases as of Tuesday — an increase of 25 cases from Friday. Texas is bearing the brunt of the outbreak, with the majority of the cases reported in the state. The Texas Department of State Health Services on Tuesday reported […]
Mar 19, 2025
Close Relative of Highly Fatal Coronavirus Discovered in Brazil’s Bats
Science Alert Brazil’s bats are harboring a vast and diverse pool of coronaviruses, a new study finds, including a newly identified strain that may pose a danger to human health in the years to come. Scientists are taking the threat seriously and will soon conduct testing in a secure lab to see if the variant […]
Mar 19, 2025
How vulnerable might humans be to bird flu? Scientists see hope in existing immunity
NPR Bird flu has ripped through the animal kingdom for the past few years now, killing countless birds and crossing into an alarming number of mammals. Yet people remain largely untouched. Even though the official tally of human cases in the U.S. is most certainly an undercount, there’s still no evidence this strain of H5N1 has spread widely among […]
Mar 19, 2025