Emerging Infectious Diseases
When the mosquito-borne Zika virus scare occurred in the United States in 2016, Florida took the threat more seriously than other states, according to a new study.
Floridians were nearly twice as likely as non-Floridians to take steps to protect themselves from Zika, a study by the Annenberg... Read More »
EcoHealth Alliance has teamed up with Microsoft’s AI for Earth program to develop new tools to detect and prevent outbreaks of new and emerging diseases in an effort to bring about an end to the Pandemic Era.
Under the partnership, EcoHealth Alliance will receive a grant and will have access... Read More »
Officers in the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have for seven decades tackled some of the most pressing public health challenges in the United States and abroad.
However, student loans might deter many potential EIS officers, who... Read More »
Researchers are espousing the benefits of an effort in delivering new single-dose vaccines that fully protect against infectious diseases such as Zika, Lassa fever, and Ebola.
GeoVax scientists said they have developed a flexible “Plug and Play” technology platform recently presented at ASM... Read More »
University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers have determined treating silent malaria cases could help stop the spread of the disease to others.
Officials said silent malaria cases are circumstances in which individuals are infected with malaria parasites without... Read More »
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. plans to undertake a three-year, $50 million project that will expand the contract development and manufacturing capacity of the company’s Camden fill/finish facility in Baltimore.
Slated for completion in 2021, the expansion project also aims to address... Read More »
With the death toll from the ongoing Nipah virus outbreak in India rising to at least 17, EcoHealth Alliance officials have warned that the outbreak could become an international incident if it spreads to neighboring states.
The outbreak is centered in the Indian state of Kerala. Five nearby... Read More »
Members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health on Wednesday considered proposed updates to the nation’s law on preparing for and responding to national and global public health emergencies resulting from any chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) agent, toxin,... Read More »
Traces of Alkhurma hemorrhagic fever virus have been found in ticks embedded in birds migrating from Africa to Europe, providing new insights about how the virus spreads to new regions, according to a recent study led by researchers at Uppsala University.
First identified in Saudi Arabia in the... Read More »
Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has dispatched a team of volunteer epidemiologists, physicians, communication experts, injection prevention and control experts and data managers to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
As of June 2, the World... Read More »
Recently released study findings are lending new insight concerning the dengue virus impact in Ethiopia.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne RNA virus representing one of the most serious and rapidly spreading arboviral diseases in the world.
Details published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases... Read More »
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) recently announced the winner of a biothreat competition, which called for the design of an early warning system that uses existing data sources to reveal emerging biothreats.
DHS S&T issued the $300,000 Hidden... Read More »
A recent Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) symposium focused on the global response to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa and strategies since to put health security policies into practice.
The symposium was part of the Commission on Strengthening America’s Health... Read More »
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) presented and joined statements reflecting various aspects of its priorities at the 71st World Health Assembly in Geneva last week.
In one statement, IDSA expressed its support for recommendations on the global strategy and plan of action on... Read More »
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security recently developed a framework to help identify microorganisms that are most likely to cause a global pandemic to inform future preparedness and response efforts.
The report from the researchers, "The Characteristics of Pandemic... Read More »
A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) review has found that most states meet performance standards for infectious disease threats related to safety and coordination of first responders, but states reported mixed results regarding electronic lab reporting, epidemiology capacity, and... Read More »
A team of USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers recently announced the development of a new prototype for a portable instrument capable of early-stage malaria detection.
Details of the portable optical diagnostics system (PODS) prototype featured in ACS Sensors outline the process of... Read More »
Amid a deadly outbreak of the bat-borne Nipah virus in India that has already killed 10 people, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) said on Thursday it will provide up to $25 million to Profectus BioSciences Inc. and Emergent BioSolutions Inc. for the development and... Read More »
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on May 23 approved 22-1 the pending Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2018, S.2852.
S. 2852, introduced on May 15 by U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), would reauthorize certain programs under... Read More »
Results of a recent survey examined the thoughts of Americans concerning the potential impact infectious and emerging diseases facing other countries will have in the United States.
The effort, commissioned by Research!America and the American Society for Microbiology, showed 95 percent of... Read More »
With tuberculosis killing 1.7 million people in 2016, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) led more than 900 doctors, scientists, and researchers in calling United Nations (UN) Ambassador Nikki Haley to secure “concrete commitments” in this fall’s UN General Assembly High Level... Read More »
Scientists at Harvard Medical School have discovered that antibodies made in response to a vaccine for one hemorrhagic fever virus -- Junin -- can also disarm another virus, Machupo.
This breakthrough is significant because it sets the stage for the design of vaccines that can work against... Read More »
The lack of both a protective vaccine and a proactive worldwide plan for tackling the spread of a catastrophic global pandemic resulted in the death of 150 million people across Earth during the recent Clade X simulation exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
And minus... Read More »
People around the world are becoming more resistant to antifungal treatments, and according to researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Exeter, the end result could be increased outbreaks of disease and food shortages.
Improvements must be made to how existing drugs are... Read More »
Government officials and health experts from around the world will attend the 71st World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva this week, where the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) will give presentations on the importance of health and security and the Global Health Security (GHS) Index.
NTI experts... Read More »
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), who crafted and sponsored the nation’s original law protecting public health during man-made and natural disasters, and then took the lead on the law’s subsequent restructuring, again has commanded the next phase of reauthorizing the Pandemic and All-Hazards... Read More »
Researchers maintain there is a link between a person's olfactory makeup and the ability to detect if they have contracted malaria.
The work of ETH Zurich investigators published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailed the process of examining volatile chemicals released from... Read More »
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) recently used computer modeling to map the process by which the Ebola and Zika viruses infiltrate host cells.
The researchers, who published their work in the journal Biomolecules, aimed to understand the specific structure-function... Read More »
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has called on the federal government to provide sufficient funding and guidance to establish a disaster health response system, and for all 50 states to put required licensing arrangements into place, to ensure public health amid “complicated threats.”... Read More »
The upcoming Clade X exercise hosted by the Center for Health Security, which is part of the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, will show the world how United States presidential advisors would handle policy decisions for an unfolding mock pandemic crisis.
“The... Read More »
Researchers recently developed a machine learning tool that can identify whether emerging strains of the bacterium Salmonella may cause dangerous bloodstream infections rather than food poisoning.
The tool speeds up the process for identifying the genetic changes that cause new invasive types of... Read More »
As the World Health Organization’s (WHO) declared a new Ebola outbreak in the Kongo on Tuesday, researchers from the University of Kent announced their findings that mass vaccination is not a viable option to prevent or contain Ebola outbreaks.
The team of researchers concluded that... Read More »
Machine-based algorithms in use by an international team of researchers have found a way to predict people’s susceptibility to cholera through gut bacteria.
Out of trillions of bacteria swimming around the gut, the artificial intelligence (AI) determined a hundred microbes that establish... Read More »
A clinical trial examining the effectiveness of a universal influenza vaccine is currently underway, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Officials said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)-sponsored Phase 2 effort focuses on M-001 as a means of garnering... Read More »
Researchers last week published findings in the journal Scientific Reports which utilized a marmoset monkey model of Zika virus infection to understand how Zika causes congenital disease in their human counterparts.
"We were interested in using primate models to better understand how the Zika... Read More »
