Category: Emerging Infectious Diseases
Don’t ask when the pandemic will end. Ask how we’re going to live with covid.
Grid – The coronavirus isn’t going anywhere. We need to learn to minimize its impact. “A lot of people think of the pandemic as a hurricane: It has to be completely gone, blue skies,” said Amesh Adalja, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “That’s not the case. This is not […]
Sep 22, 2022
Uganda has confirmed seven Ebola cases so far, one death
Reuters – Uganda has confirmed seven cases of Ebola including in a man who died this week, and seven other deaths are being investigated as suspected cases of a strain for which the authorities do not yet have a vaccine, officials said on Thursday. The 24-year-old man who died had developed a high fever, diarrhoea […]
Sep 22, 2022
Why are so many viruses popping up again?
Washington Post – Several factors help explain why we’re hearing so much about viral outbreaks. Shifts in migration and travel patterns, global eating habits and the effects of climate change have created new opportunities for microbes to spread. Better testing and monitoring methods also mean we’re detecting these outbreaks sooner than in the past.
Sep 22, 2022
Can Long COVID Researchers Learn From ME/CFS?
Med Page Today – There are a dizzying array of case definitions for long COVID that vary in terms of what to name this condition, the duration of symptoms, the types of symptoms, and the medical comorbidities. The field of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has encountered comparable problems as they developed case definitions over the past 3 decades. […]
Sep 22, 2022
Uganda declares Ebola outbreak after Sudan strain found
Reuters – An outbreak of Ebola has been declared in Uganda after health authorities confirmed a case of the relatively rare Sudan strain, the health ministry and World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. A 24-year-old man in Uganda’s central Mubende district showed symptoms and later died.
Sep 22, 2022
NBC News – Covid was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, after heart disease and cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The same was true last year, provisional CDC data shows. Since April, Covid deaths have stayed relatively flat, at a weekly average of around 300 to 500 […]
Sep 22, 2022
H5N1 pathogenesis studies in mammalian models
(Virus Research) H5N1 influenza viruses are capable of causing severe disease and death in humans, and represent a potential pandemic subtype should they acquire a transmissible phenotype. Due to the expanding host and geographic range of this virus subtype, there is an urgent need to better understand the contribution of both virus and host responses […]
Dec 5, 2013
H5N1 Hybrid Viruses Bearing 2009/H1N1 Virus Genes Transmit in Guinea Pigs by Respiratory Droplet
(Science) Currently, there is anxiety that the avian H5N1 influenza virus will reassort with the highly transmissible and epidemic H1N1 subtype to trigger a virulent human pandemic. Y. Zhang et al. (p. 1459, published online 2 May) used reverse genetics to make all possible reassortants between a virulent bird H5N1 with genes from a human pandemic H1N1. Virulence was […]
May 2, 2013
Airborne Transmission of Influenza A/H5N1 Virus Between Ferrets
(Science) Highly pathogenic avian influenza A/H5N1 virus can cause morbidity and mortality in humans but thus far has not acquired the ability to be transmitted by aerosol or respiratory droplet (“airborne transmission”) between humans. To address the concern that the virus could acquire this ability under natural conditions, we genetically modified A/H5N1 virus by site-directed […]
Jun 22, 2012
(Nature) An engineered influenza virus based on a haemagglutinin protein from H5N1 avian influenza, with just four mutations, can be transmitted between ferrets, emphasizing the potential for a human pandemic to emerge from birds. Influenza pandemics in humans arise from animal influenza viruses, yet the molecular changes required for an animal virus to be transmitted […]
May 2, 2012