Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Why Florida is seeing the highest proportion of counties with ‘moderate’ COVID hospitalization rates
CBS News As COVID-19 hospitalizations rise across the country, Florida is seeing higher admissions levels than other states. As of Monday, 43 of Florida’s 67 counties reported moderate levels of weekly new hospital admissions for COVID-19 — a higher proportion than any other state in the U.S., data from the Centers for Disease Control and […]
Sep 12, 2023
Virginia Department of Health announces statewide outbreak of meningococcal disease
NBC News The Virginia Department of Health announced Wednesday, August 30, a statewide outbreak of meningococcal disease. On average, before the coronavirus pandemic, there were only eight or nine cases in Virginia. The current outbreak now involves 27 confirmed cases, including five deaths in the past year. “Is certainly above what we would expect to […]
Sep 5, 2023
CDC alerts doctors to an increase in RSV cases among young children and babies
NBC News Cases of the respiratory illness are ticking up in Florida and Georgia, the CDC said Tuesday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alerted doctors Tuesday about a rise in severe cases of RSV among young children in Florida and Georgia. Regional increases have usually predicted the beginning of RSV season nationally, the CDC wrote in its […]
Sep 5, 2023
Long COVID symptoms can improve, but their resolution is slow and imperfect
The Conversation Around 5–10% of people who get infected with SARS-CoV-2 will experience symptoms that persist way beyond the initial acute period, a clinical syndrome we are learning more about, known widely as long COVID. Shortness of breath, brain fog, lethargy and tiredness, loss of smell or taste are common features of long COVID, as is the development […]
Sep 5, 2023
More COVID-19 studies suggest BA.2.86 may be less immune-evasive than feared
CIDRAP Two more lab groups—one from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and the other from Harvard University—have reported results of antibody neutralization lab experiments, which suggest vaccination or previous infection offer some protection against the highly mutated BA.2.86 SARS-CoV-2 variant. In other developments, countries uploaded more BA.2.86 samples to genetic sequencing databases, and the United Kingdom updated […]
Sep 5, 2023
What to know about COVID, the flu and RSV this fall
Axios What’s happening: A potent flu virus, resurgent COVID-19 and rebounding RSV are combining to prompt new warnings in Colorado about the coming seasons when all three will be circulating. What they’re saying: “This is why we’re encouraging everyone, and especially kids, parents and grandparents, to get their vaccinations early,” Michelle Barron, the senior medical director of infection prevention […]
Sep 5, 2023
Three lessons from Covid that could help global leaders prevent the next pandemic
STAT Everyone has things that, looking back, they would have done differently in the early days of 2020, had they known how the Covid-19 pandemic would tear across the globe. But those regrets may be particularly poignant for global leaders whose actions (or lack thereof) had direct impacts on how Covid-19 spread. Joanne Liu, a […]
Sep 5, 2023
CBP Reminds Travelers of Restrictions Relating to Avian Flu
Homeland Security Today U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is reminding the traveling public of the restrictions for avian commodities originating from or transiting Mexico including hunter harvested, non-fully finished avian trophies and meat. “We want to remind the traveling public that fresh eggs, raw chicken, and live birds or poultry continue to be prohibited […]
Sep 5, 2023
RSV Advisory Issued by the U.S. CDC
Precision Vaccinations The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced a Health Alert Network Health Advisory CDCHAN-00498 to notify clinicians and caregivers about increased respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) activity in the Southeastern United States. Historically, such regional increases have predicted the beginning of the RSV season in the U.S. Across both prepandemic and pandemic years, RSV circulation began […]
Sep 5, 2023
Airborne transmission of human-isolated avian H3N8 influenza virus between ferrets
Cell H3N8 avian influenza viruses (AIVs) in China caused two confirmed human infections in 2022, followed by a fatal case reported in 2023. H3N8 viruses are widespread in chicken flocks; however, the zoonotic features of H3N8 viruses are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that H3N8 viruses were able to infect and replicate efficiently in organotypic […]
Sep 5, 2023