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University of Nebraska Medical Center

Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases

Uganda Ebola outbreak ‘rapidly evolving’ after 1 month

(ABC News) Uganda’s Ebola outbreak is “rapidly evolving” a month after the disease was reported in the East African country, a top World Health Organization official said Thursday, describing a difficult situation for health workers on the ground. “The Ministry of Health of Uganda has shown remarkable resilience and effectiveness and (is) constantly fine-tuning a response to what […]

Oct 20, 2022

As Cholera Outbreak Exacerbates Haiti’s Multiple Crises, Special Representative Says Security Council Must Act Decisively to Help Government Restore Order, Save Lives

(ReliefWeb) With the spread of cholera exacerbating the ongoing security, humanitarian, economic, and political crisis faced by Haiti, the Security Council must act — “and decisively so” — in response to its Government’s request for support to its institutions to restore order, and to save thousands of lives that will otherwise be lost, the United […]

Oct 18, 2022

New Lab-Made Covid-19 Coronavirus At Boston University Raises Questions

(Forbes) This was one of those should-have-seen-it-coming moments. On October 14, a team of researchers posted on bioRxiv a preprint that described how they had created a new hybrid version of the Covid-19 coronavirus in their lab at Boston University and used this lab-created virus to infect mice, which ended up killing 80% of the mice. These days, if […]

Oct 18, 2022

Was a study that created a hybrid COVID-19 virus too risky?

(Science) Science looks at the furor over an experiment that combined Omicron with a more lethal SARS-CoV-2 variant. This week, Twitter exploded with outrage about a study that seemed to have created a Frankenstein COVID-19 virus: a version of SARS-CoV-2 that combines Omicron, the fast-spreading but relatively mild variant that’s now everywhere, and a deadlier […]

Oct 18, 2022

Risk of reinfection, vaccine protection, and severity of infection with the BA.5 omicron subvariant: a nation-wide population-based study in Denmark

(The Lancet) Estimates of immunity and severity for the SARS-CoV-2 omicron subvariant BA.5 are important to assess the public health impact associated with its rapid global spread despite vaccination. We estimated natural and vaccine immunity and severity of BA.5 relative to BA.2 in Denmark, a country with high mRNA-vaccination coverage and free-of-charge RT-PCR testing.

Oct 18, 2022

Ugandan woman with Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever isolated

(Dispatch) Soroti Regional Referral Hospital has isolated a female patient confirmed to have Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a widespread disease caused by a tick-borne virus. The patient is from Aprikila Sub County in Kaberamaido District in Eastern Uganda. The patient was admitted to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital on Wednesday 12, October 2022 after a referral from […]

Oct 18, 2022

Authorized COVID Antiviral Fails to Cut Hospitalization Risk

MedPageToday – Molnupiravir failed to reduce the risk for hospitalization or death in high-risk COVID-19 outpatients who took the oral antiviral within 5 days of symptoms, a large open-label multicenter trial found. In more than 25,000 participants in the PANORAMIC study, the rate of all-cause hospitalization or death at 28 days was an identical 0.8% […]

Oct 18, 2022

The new COVID booster will protect older Americans this flu season. Here’s how to get shots into arms

Harvard Public Health – The new bivalent booster protects against the original COVID and the dominant Omicron variant. And yet, only 5% of adults eligible for the new COVID booster have received it. Local health departments can change that. Public health leaders have blamed Americans’ lack of urgency on mixed public health messaging about boosters, […]

Oct 18, 2022

Emmanuel, a TikTok-famous emu, has avian flu after a deadly outbreak on a Florida farm

NPR – Emmanuel, a widely beloved emu who went viral on TikTok, is in dire condition battling the avian flu. Taylor Blake’s family farm in South Florida, Knuckle Bump Farms, has lost more than 50 birds in just three days, Blake wrote on Twitter Saturday. Only two birds survived. “I am still trying to wrap […]

Oct 18, 2022

Radiographic Lung Changes Common With Pulmonary Long COVID Symptoms

MedPageToday – Radiographic evidence of pulmonary pathology was common months after acute infection among people with ongoing exertional or respiratory symptoms, early results of a study exploring the physiology of long COVID showed. Fully 55% of the subset of persistently symptomatic patients with a high-resolution CT showed radiographic evidence of pulmonary pathology at least 3 […]

Oct 18, 2022