Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
We must revisit the covid-19 pandemic to prepare for future outbreaks
New Scientist Yes, it really has been five years. On 7 January 2020, we published an article with the headline “Doctors scramble to identify mysterious illness emerging in China”. By then, at least 59 people had been infected with what we now know to be SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind covid-19. The rest is – well, has now […]
Jan 2, 2025
Canadian Teen Recovers From Severe H5N1 Bird Flu Infection
MedPageToday A 13-year-old Canadian girl recovered after being hospitalized in critical condition with H5N1 avian influenza, researchers reported. The girl was hospitalized on Nov. 7 and transferred to BC Children’s Hospital the next day, where she was intubated and put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and treated with three different antivirals, David Goldfarb, MD, of […]
Jan 1, 2025
NIH officials assess threat of H5N1
NIH Balancing enhanced vigilance and “business as usual.” Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza A virus (HPAI H5N1) remains a low risk to the general public, and public health experts in the United States believe that available treatments and vaccines, as well as those in development, are sufficient to prevent severe disease. However, the National Institutes […]
Jan 1, 2025
Norovirus Outbreaks Are Rising Nationwide, C.D.C. Says
NYT Here’s what to know about symptoms and treatment, as well as how to reduce your risk of infection. There have been an unusually high number of norovirus outbreaks sickening people across the country this month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 91 suspected or confirmed norovirus outbreaks in the […]
Jan 1, 2025
Mpox: German school temporarily closed after case reported
DW Contacts have been informed after several members of a family were found to have contracted mpox. Two school-age children are among those infected. A school in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia was closed as a precaution on Monday after two children were found to be infected with the mpox virus. The mpox clade 1b variant was […]
Dec 18, 2024
Whooping Cough Is Up 600% — What Are The Deadly Disease’s Symptoms?
Forbes Cases of whooping cough are more than six times higher than they were this time last year, statistics from the Centers for Disease Control show. Officials reported 553 cases for the week ending December 7 — the most recent figures available — compared to 105 in the same week last year. Whooping cough is a highly […]
Dec 18, 2024
Tiny Coffins: Measles Is Killing Thousands of Children in Congo
NYT Werra Maulu Botey could not bear to close his daughter’s coffin. Waiting to bury her, he slid the rough wooden lid back, again and again, to adjust her small head and smooth the cloth that cradled it away from her cheeks. Olive died of measles, at the age of 5, the evening before. She […]
Dec 18, 2024
Congo’s health ministry identifies flu-like disease as severe malaria
CBC Democratic Republic of Congo’s health ministry said on Tuesday that a previously unidentified disease circulating in the southwestern Kwango province is a severe form of malaria. Earlier this month, local authorities said the disease had killed 143 people in the country’s Panzi health zone in November. The symptoms of the disease are fever, headache, […]
Dec 17, 2024
Delaware reports probable human case of H5 bird flu
BNO News A probable case of H5 bird flu was found during routine flu surveillance in Delaware, according to state and federal officials. The source of the infection – which would be the first in Delaware – is unknown. The CDC said the case in Delaware meets the definition of a “probable case,” which means […]
Dec 17, 2024
5 animals die after bird flu exposure at Arizona zoo; 25 employees exposed to virus
USA Today Officials in Arizona this week said nearly a half-dozen animals including a cheetah and a mountain lion at a Phoenix-area zoo died and others are sick after being exposed to the bird flu. Maricopa County Department of Public Health officials reported the Wildlife World Zoo and Aquarium in Litchfield Park, about 20 miles west of Phoenix, […]
Dec 17, 2024