Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Dengue Fever Threatens to Gate-Crash the 2024 Summer Olympics
Wired Measles, bedbugs, and dengue have all been cited as concerns for tourists and athletes at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, with the tropical virus in particular forcing authorities into action. Every time the Olympics come around, it seems there’s a different disease stalking the event. At Rio 2016 it was Zika. At the postponed […]
Jul 30, 2024
COVID-19 Is Widespread In ‘Common Backyard Wildlife’ In US
Forbes A new study has determined that the COVID-19 virus is widespread amongst wildlife in the United States. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was recently detected in six common backyard species. Additionally, antibodies indicating prior exposure to the virus were found in five species. Depending upon the species, exposure rates ranged from 40-60%. The […]
Jul 30, 2024
Dengue Fever’s Worrisome Surge
MedPageToday Readers, sometimes I wish we could meet face to face and talk. If so, today I would ask: who here has dealt with the world’s most common mosquito-borne virusopens in a new tab or window and poster child for the 21st century’s explosion of epidemic, vector-borne blights? My guess? Some of you have seen travelers with […]
Jul 30, 2024
The Bird Flu Threat Keeps Growing
Wired Human cases keep ticking up, are very likely to be underreported, and offer the virus the opportunity to learn how to spread from person to person. Ongoing Outbreaks of avian influenza have decimated poultry flocks and wild birds across the United States and worldwide. The virus, known as H5N1, is also increasingly adapting to mammals […]
Jul 30, 2024
Man dies after contracting Ebola-like tick-borne disease in Spain
CNN A man has died from an Ebola-like disease named Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) after being bitten by a tick in Spain. The 74-year-old died of organ failure on Saturday in an isolation unit at the La Paz-Carlos III Hospital in the Spanish capital, Madrid, a spokesperson for the hospital told CNN on Monday. CCHF causes severe […]
Jul 30, 2024
What’s different about this summer’s FLiRT COVID wave
Salon COVID could be a staple of summer, experts say. t’s not only a so-called “brat summer,” 2024 is also turning out to be a FLiRT summer — as in the collection of COVID-19 variants driving the latest summer wave. Based on wastewater sample data, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention reports that COVID levels have increased […]
Jul 30, 2024
Five CA music festival attendees diagnosed with Valley fever
KRON News The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) is urging people who attended the Lighting in a Bottle festival to see a healthcare provider if they are experiencing respiratory symptoms after five attendees were diagnosed with Valley fever, officials said. State officials say over 20,000 people attended the festival in Buena Vista Lake, and five have […]
Jul 30, 2024
The Highly Infectious FLiRT Variants Behind the Summer Covid Wave
Wired The latest dominant Covid variants have stronger infectiousness than their predecessors and the ability to evade vaccine-induced antibodies. The northern hemisphere is entering yet another Covid wave—while much of the world acts as if the pandemic were over, cases are surging again. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recorded an uptick in […]
Jul 24, 2024
Health warning issued as Hauntavirus kills four people in two US states
Daily Mail Officials have issued a health warning over an incurable rat disease after four people died from the infection this year. Hantavirus — which is fatal in 36 percent of cases — typically causes about 30 cases per year in the US, mostly in western and southwestern areas. But some states are now recording […]
Jul 24, 2024
The virus that causes polio has been found in Gaza. Here’s why that is grim news
Science On top of relentless bombings and artillery strikes, mass displacement, the collapse of the health system, and starvation, the children of Gaza now face an additional health disaster: a high risk of paralytic polio. On 16 July, the Ministry of Health of Gaza announced poliovirus had been detected in six wastewater samples collected in late […]
Jul 24, 2024