A detailed clinical description of two cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in France, published online in The Lancet today, suggests that the incubation period for the virus may be longer than previously thought, and longer quarantine periods may be required to rule out infection among patient contacts.
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"Saudi Arabia said five more people have died of a deadly new virus from the same family as SARS, and two other people were in intensive care," Reuters reports.
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The journal Nature published an editorial and opinion piece on the emergence of the H7N9 avian influenza strain.
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"In China an influenza virus never before seen in people had, as The Economist went to press, infected at least 82 and killed 17. Meanwhile a new type of coronavirus, the family that brought severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), is festering in the Middle East," an editorial in the magazine states.
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A company hatched as a partnership between The University of Alabama in Huntsville and chemical engineering professor Dr. Krishnan Chittur is in the design phase for a device that can provide physicians one-hour pathogen testing capabilities.
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"Less than two weeks after Chinese officials released the genetic sequence of a new type of bird flu [H7N9], U.S. vaccine experts are well on the way to making a vaccine to protect people against it," NBC News's "Vitals" blog reports (Fox, 4/10).
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"A Saudi man infected with a deadly new virus from the same family as SARS has died, becoming the ninth patient in the world to be killed by the disease which has so far infected 15, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday," Reuters reports.
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Investigation into the mechanism of action of the novelcoronavirus HCoV-EMC, which recently emerged in the Middle East, has revealed that although human bronchial epithelia are very susceptible to infection with the virus, interferon I and III were both able to significantly reduce its replication in cell culture.
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The World Health Organization has sent a team to Jordan at the request of the country’s Ministry of Health to help investigate the emergence of a novel coronavirus that resulted in the deaths of two people earlier this year, and to assist with further epidemiologic surveillance.
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It's not a matter of if a worldwide pandemic will strike but when, say experts like veterinarian and epidemiologist Jonna Mazet, a professor in the Department of Medicine and Epidemiology in the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. That's why Mazet, who leads an early warning pandemic system called PREDICT, monitors the world's hot spots, or "hot interfaces" for signs of emerging diseases.
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Hollywood's latest thriller “Contagion” seems to have captured the public’s interest with strong sales at the box office. In the movie tens of millions of people are wiped out by the rapid spread of a killer airborne disease. It's a scenario real-life experts say is entirely plausible.
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In a new development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.
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In an age where the next pandemic could leap continents in the hours it takes for an international flight to take off and land, University of Utah Professor Paul Hu fears the death toll may depend on how fast and efficiently world health officials can respond to an outbreak.
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The Australian Federal Government scrapped the funding to the Australian National University’s Master of Applied Epidemiology (MAE) program. This group helps Australia’s response to major disease outbreak and will be disbanded at the end of next year. According to Emeritus Professor Robert Douglas who founded this program, this has been responsible for Australia’s response to serious epidemic outbreaks in the past.
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More than 30 million people in the United States travel to resource-limited areas of the world each year. This global mobility may contribute to the spread of infectious diseases such as influenza, measles, and meningitis and may also put individual travelers at risk for malaria, typhoid, dengue fever and hepatitis.
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The latest research to combat emerging infectious diseases threatening Australia is being presented at the Sydney Institute of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity Conference at the University of Sydney today.
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Pathogens can now be easily tracked in time and space as they evolve, an advance that could revolutionize both public health and inform national security in the fight against infectious diseases. Developed by researchers that include scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, Supramap is a new, powerful, web-based application that maps genetic mutations like those among the different strains of avian influenza onto the globe.
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Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/05e801/political_and_poli) has announced the addition of Frost & Sullivan's new report "Political and Policy Analysis for the Chinese Healthcare Industry 2010" to their offering.
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Viruses love plane travel. They get to fly around the world inside a closed container while their infected carrier breathes and coughs, spreading pathogens to other passengers, either by direct contact or through the air. And once people deplane, the virus can spread to other geographical areas.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/5ec1bd/special_report_th) has announced the addition of Decision Resources, Inc.'s new report "Special Report: The Pandemic Paradigm: Balancing Commercial Opportunities with Public Health Concerns in the Face of A/H1N1 2009" to their offering.
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