Two people have died and three hospitalised after developing a “pneumonia of unknown origin”, Argentinian health authorities have announced.
According to the Ministry of Health in Tucumán – a small region in the northwest of the country some 800 miles from the capital, Buenos Aires – six people in the same intensive care unit have contracted mystery pneumonia.
The World Health Organization has added the U.S. to its list of countries with circulating polio. It joins the likes of Somalia, Yemen, and Israel
September 13, 2022 at 9:46 PM GMT+1
The U.S. has been added to the World Health Organization’s list of countries with circulating polio, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday.
It now joins roughly 30 other countries with outbreaks, including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Yemen, Israel, and the U.K.
“We cannot emphasize enough that polio is a dangerous disease for which there is no cure,” Dr. José R. Romero, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a statement, urging anyone who is unvaccinated to get vaccinated.
In July of this year, an unvaccinated 20-year-old man in New York’s Rockland County was diagnosed with polio and paralyzed by the virus. Since then, polio has been identified in wastewater samples in neighboring counties.
Genetic sequencing has connected the paralyzed man’s case and wastewater specimens from New York to wastewater samples in Jerusalem, Israel, and London, indicating community transmission, according to the CDC.
Uganda confirms 7 Ebola cases, races to halt outbreak
Source: AP News
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda confirmed seven Ebola infections Thursday as authorities try to track down 43 contacts of known Ebola patients two days after authorities in the East African country announced an outbreak of the contagious disease.
A total of eight deaths, including one confirmed, are “attributable to the virus,” said Dr. Henry Kyobe, a Ugandan military officer who is tracking Ebola cases. He spoke of a “rapidly evolving” situation where “we think cases may rise in a few days.”
The epicenter of the outbreak is the central Ugandan district of Mubende, whose main town lies along a highway into the capital, Kampala. That travel link and several crowded artisanal gold mines there is concerning, Kyobe told the World Health Organization.
Ugandan authorities have not yet to found the source of the outbreak, and neither have they discovered the key first case. But they were able to confirm an Ebola outbreak of the Sudan type earlier this week after testing a sample from a 24-year-old man who had been initially treated for other illnesses, including malaria and pneumonia, when he sought care in his home town. Six others in the same area, including three children, died earlier in September after suffering what local officials called a strange illness.
There is no proven vaccine for the Sudan strain of Ebola, and “its very critical at this point that we treat this outbreak as serious, because we may not have the advantage that we have gained in terms of the advancement in medical countermeasures,” said Dr. Patrick Otim, an epidemiologist with WHO in Africa.
Team Links Malaria Spike with Mass Amphibian Die-Off by Kat Kerlin
September 23, 2022
Introduction:
(Futurity) Researchers have linked an amphibian die-off in Costa Rica and Panama with a spike in malaria cases in the region.
At the spike’s peak, up to 1 person per 1,000 annually contracted malaria that normally would not have had the amphibian die-off not occurred, researchers report.
Dozens of species of frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians quietly disappeared from parts of Latin America in the 1980s and 2000s, with little notice from humans, outside of a small group of ecologists.
Yet the new study shows the amphibian decline had direct health consequences for people.
“Stable ecosystems underpin all sorts of aspects of human well-being, including regulating processes important for disease prevention and health,” says lead author Michael Springborn, a professor in the environmental science and policy department at the University of California, Davis. “If we allow massive ecosystem disruptions to happen, it can substantially impact human health in ways that are difficult to predict ahead of time and hard to control once they’re underway.”
New Coronavirus That Could Infect Humans Discovered Lurking In Russian Bats by Tom Hale
September 23, 2022
Introduction:
(IFL Science) Scientists have revealed that a recently discovered coronavirus found in Russian bats has the worrying ability to infect human cells. Although the pathogen is very similar to SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, our current vaccines would be useless against it.
Khosta-1 and Khosta-2 viruses were discovered living in horseshoe bats near Sochi National Park back in 2020. The novel viruses were revealed to be sarbecoviruses, the same band of coronaviruses responsible for the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, as well as COVID-19.
In a new study, scientists from Washington State University have taken another look at “these weird Russian viruses” and discovered they are likely to be more dangerous than first hoped.
"Genetically, these weird Russian viruses looked like some of the others that had been discovered elsewhere around the world, but because they did not look like SARS-CoV-2, no one thought they were really anything to get too excited about," Michael Letko, corresponding study author and virologist at Washington State University, said in a statement.
"But when we looked at them more, we were really surprised to find they could infect human cells. That changes a little bit of our understanding of these viruses, where they come from and what regions are concerning," he said.
Cheese recall begins after listeria outbreak infects 6 people
Source: Axios
Six people have been infected by a Listeria outbreak across six different states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The big picture: Five of the infected people have been hospitalized, but there have been no deaths. State and local officials are still conducting interviews about what the infected people ate before they got sick.
Driving the news: Six people in New Jersey, California, Texas, Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts were infected by the outbreak as of Friday.
Five of the infected people have been hospitalized.
Haiti reports cholera deaths for first time in 3 years
Source: AP
By EVENS SANON
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s government on Sunday announced that at least eight people have died from cholera, raising concerns about a potentially fast-spreading scenario and reviving memories of an epidemic that killed nearly 10,000 people a decade ago.
The cases - the first cholera deaths reported in three years - came in a community called Dekayet in southern Port-au-Prince and in the gang-controlled seaside slum of Cite de Soleil, where thousands of people live in cramped, unsanitary conditions.
“Cholera is something that can spread very, very quickly,” warned Laure Adrien, director general of Haiti’s health ministry.
Food or water contaminated with the cholera bacteria can lead to severe diarrhea and dehydration that can be deadly.
Climate Change Drives Another Outbreak: In California, It’s a Spike in Valley Fever Cases by Natalie Hanson
October 6, 2022
Introduction:
BERKELEY, Calif. (Courthouse News) — California researchers say climate change is driving a statewide spike in Valley fever throughout the Southwest as the region experiences swings between extreme drought and warming temperatures to unexpectedly high precipitation.
Valley fever, scientifically known as coccidioidomycosis, is an infectious disease that affects residents of the Southwest. People can contract it by breathing in dust that contains spores of the Coccidioides fungus, which grows in soil and can be stirred up by strong winds, digging or other disturbances.
In a study published Wednesday in Lancet Planetary Health, a group of scientists report how California’s recent droughts have helped drive transmissions of the pathogen. California is experiencing the highest recorded level of Valley fever and experts are starting to study how much of a role the state’s changing climate plays in the future spread of this and other diseases.
Scientists analyzed more than 81,000 coccidioidomycosis surveillance records from state and local agencies collected over 20 years. They found multiyear cycles of dry conditions followed by a wet winter can amplify Valley fever transmission. Arid counties like Kern and Kings see the most fluctuation in precipitation, while wetter coastal counties like Monterey and Ventura see the most fluctuations in temperature. Scientists say this could explain why rates have skyrocketed more dramatically in wetter, cooler counties.
“We know that the extreme precipitation deficit that has plagued California in recent decades is one of the greatest environmental challenges in the western U.S.,” said Jennifer Head, assistant environmental health science researcher at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, who led the research.
The strain that is spreading is of the Sudan variety for which there is no known vaccine. Hard lockdowns and travel bans are the only way to stem its spread at this point.
To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
Why This Ebola Outbreak in Uganda Might Be More Worrisome Than Others by Matt Filed
October 7, 2022
Introduction:
(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) Experts and government officials in Uganda and around the world are watching nervously as a rare strain of Ebola causes a widening outbreak in the East African country. The death toll from the highly lethal virus has grown to perhaps 30 people since the first confirmed case in early September, when a man fell ill in the Mubende district in central Uganda. A subsequent investigation revealed a cluster of deaths in the month before the 25-year-old died, according to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC).
Unlike the strain of the virus that killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2016 in several West African countries, the so-called Sudan strain causing the Ugandan outbreak has no approved vaccines or treatments. It’s caused several outbreaks before, including one that killed 17 people in Uganda in 2012. With the confirmed and probable cases now above 60, experts are worried about where this outbreak will end up. “It’s definitely concerning,” an expert told Nature. “The slope of that curve is pretty sharp.” Several experimental shots are in development and trials could begin this month in Uganda, according to the journal.
This isn’t Uganda’s first bout with Ebola, and previous preparation, officials say, is already bolstering the country’s response, including the setting up of treatment centers and mobile testing facilities. Still, though, officials say that the country needs more help, as the outbreak continues to spread. “Uganda is responding well & is improving every day,” Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, the WHO representative to the country, said in a post on a WHO twitter feed. “The country needs more support from partners to improve response efforts.”
As the outbreak a decade ago showed, Ebola can spread far and wide and sicken an enormous number of people. The West African Ebola outbreak primarily affected Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, but the disease turned up in several other countries, including the United States. To reduce the chances of that happening again, the US government is requiring passengers who’ve spent time recently in Uganda to travel through one of five designated US airports for screening. That may stop Ebola from reaching the United States, but some say more international resources are needed in Uganda.
Gates Foundation pledges $1.2B to eradicate polio globally
Source: AP
BERLIN (AP) — The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says it will commit $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide.
The money will be used to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026. The initiative is trying to end the polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two endemic countries, the foundation said in a statement Sunday.
The money also will be used to stop outbreaks of new variants of the virus. The announcement was made Sunday at the World Health Summit in Berlin.
The foundation says in a statement on its website that it has contributed nearly $5 billion to the polio eradication initiative. The initiative is trying to integrate polio campaigns into broader health services, while it scales up use of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2.
So far, this flu season is more severe than it has been in 13 years
Source: Washington Post
Influenza is hitting the United States unusually early and hard, already hospitalizing a record number of people at this point in the season in more than a decade and underscoring the potential for a perilous winter of respiratory viruses, according to federal health data released Friday.
While flu season is usually between October and May, peaking in December and January, it’s arrived about six weeks earlier this year with uncharacteristically high illness. There have already been at least 880,000 cases of lab-confirmed influenza illness, 6,900 hospitalizations and 360 flu-related deaths nationally, according to data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One pediatric death has also been reported.
Not since the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic has there been such a high burden of flu, a metric the CDC uses to estimate a season’s severity based on laboratory-confirmed cases, doctor visits, hospitalizations and deaths.
“It’s unusual, but we’re coming out of an unusual covid pandemic that has really affected influenza and other respiratory viruses that are circulating,” said Lynnette Brammer, an epidemiologist who heads the CDC’s domestic influenza surveillance team.
WHO: Tuberculosis cases rise for the first time in years
Source: AP
GENEVA (AP) — The number of people infected with tuberculosis, including the kind resistant to drugs, rose globally for the first time in years, according to a report Thursday by the World Health Organization.
The U.N. health agency said more than 10 million people worldwide were sickened by tuberculosis in 2021, a 4.5% rise from the year before. About 1.6 million people died, it said. WHO said about 450,000 cases involved people infected with drug-resistant TB, 3% more than in 2020.
Dr. Mel Spigelman, president of the non-profit TB Alliance, said more than a decade of progress was lost when COVID-19 emerged in 2020.
“Despite gains in areas like preventative therapy, we are still behind in just about every pledge and goal regarding TB,” Spigelman said.