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Shadia Nasralla September 30, 2014VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria has reported its first case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus in a woman from Saudi Arabia who had recently traveled to the Alpine country, ORF Oe 1 radio reported on Monday, citing the health ministry. MERS, thought to originate in camels, causes coughing, fever and pneumonia, and kills about a third of its victims.(snip)

September 24, 2014 By Franklin Doloquee Two Ebola patients, who died of the virus in separate communities in Nimba County have reportedly resurrected in the county. The victims, both females, believed to be in their 60s and 40s respectively, died of the Ebola virus recently in Hope Village Community and the Catholic Community in Ganta, Nimba. But to the amazement of residents and onlookers on Monday, the deceased reportedly regained life in total disbelief. The NewDawn Nimba County correspondent said the late Dorris Quoi of Hope Village Community and the second victim only identified as Ma Kebeh, said to be...

The mysterious respiratory illness enterovirus has spread to more than half the United States — with symptoms ranging from mild colds to serious breathing problems, health officials said. Since mid-August, 175 people across 27 states have been diagnosed with the sickness caused by the enterovirus D68, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The enterovirus, a more virulent strain of the virus that causes the common cold, can lead to fever, sneezing and coughing in mild cases. Hospitalization for breathing difficulties and wheezing is required in more severe cases....

“Are you sick, señor?” the coyote asked, eyeing his customer. “You look sick.” Michael Nbume wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve and leaned on the tailgate of the battered truck. Inside its sweltering back, a dozen Latin Americans waited to head north, staring at the African. “No, it is just the heat. It is drier than in Liberia. I am not used to it,” Mbune lied in fluent English. He knew he was sick; he had seen so many die around him as the epidemic swept through the packed slums of Monrovia. When he first felt the...

Benjamin Hale, Slate September 20, 2014 As the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has spiraled out of control, affecting thousands of Liberians, Sierra Leonians, and Guineans, and threatening thousands more, the world’s reaction has been glacially, lethally slow. Only in the past few weeks have heads of state begun to take serious notice. To date, the virus has killed more than 2,600 people. This is a comparatively small number when measured against much more established diseases such as malaria,HIV/AIDS, influenza, and so on, but several factors about this outbreak have some of the world’s top health professionals gravely concerned: Its...

Eight bodies, including those of three journalists, were found after an attack on a team trying to educate locals on the risks of the Ebola virus in a remote area of southeastern Guinea, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

VENTURA (CBSLA.com) — The California Department of Health Thursday confirmed the first cases of enterovirus in the state. The cases were found in one patient in Ventura County and three children in San Diego County. More cases are anticipated in the coming weeks. Enterovirus causes respiratory illness and likely spreads when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or touches contaminated surfaces. Symptoms of EV-D68 include fever (although fever may not be present), runny nose, sneezing, cough, and body and muscle aches. Some children have more serious illness with breathing difficulty and wheezing, particularly children with a history of asthma. Parents should...

The Middle Seat The Trouble With Keeping Commercial Flights Clean With the Ebola Crisis in the Background, Standards for Disinfecting Planes Vary Based on Time, Class Just how clean are airplanes? Do they really get scrubbed down after each flight? WSJ's Scott McCartney joins Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break with the answers. By Scott McCartney Updated Sept. 17, 2014 The Ebola crisis and heightened concerns about the risk of spreading disease during air travel have focused concern on what airlines do to keep planes clean. It's a murky area without clear regulatory standards. The Federal Aviation Administration says it doesn't...

UPDATED 11:48 PM CDT Sep 17, 2014 Marine Phoenix identified as ship from Africa with sick crewNEW ORLEANS —In a statement released late Wednesday night, the Centers for Disease Control stressed that crew members on a freighter inbound to New Orleans were suffering from malaria and show no traces of Ebola. Official confirms 1 person aboard African ship has malaria. A crew member who fell ill on a ship from Africa is diagnosed with malaria, an official says. First responders who took those individuals to the hospital wore protective garb as a precaution, though health officials noted early on that...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Enterovirus D68 is likely coming -- if it hasn't already -- to a state near you. Since mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 140 cases of respiratory illness caused by Enterovirus D68 in 16 states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia. New Jersey also has confirmed a case of EV-D68, according to Donna Leusner, director of communications for the New Jersey Department of Health. And "in the upcoming weeks, more states will have confirmed cases of EV-D68 infection," the CDC said in a statement...

he deaths of 10 people in the past week of a mysterious disease in several cities in Venezuela, including the capital of Caracas, have caused panic within the population and has prompted doctors to sound the alarm. A government spokesman minimized the warnings and described efforts to notify the public of a disease that has killed four adults and four children as a "campaign of disinformation and terrorism." Despite the government's indifference, the country's doctors insist there is plenty of reason for concern about a highly dangerous and contagious disease of unknown origin.

The committee members requested HHS tell them by Sept. 26, why the administration’s warnings have become more dire, the problems to date with containment, the protocols to respond to Ebola in the U.S., how federal funding have been spend to combat Ebola, the current risk the diseases posses to the U.S., assessments of hospitals to respond to an outbreak, as well as the status of medicine.

Tom Miles and Kate Kelland, ReutersSeptember 12,2014 West Africa's Ebola outbreak is running ahead of health authorities' ability to contain it, particularly in the three hardest-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday. "The Ebola outbreak that is ravaging parts of West Africa is the largest and most complex and most severe in the almost four-decade history of this disease," the WHO's director general Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva. "The number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them." (snip)

In response to an inquiry about unaccompanied minors from one of its school divisions, Virginia’s Department of Education issued a memo this month reminding its 132 divisions about their obligation to educate all children. According to the memo, under federal and Virginia law, the state expects that many of the unaccompanied minors who enroll in public school will be considered “homeless.” “In addition, division superintendents cannot exclude from school attendance those homeless children who do not provide the requisite health or immunization information required of other students,” the memo continued. Full title: Immigrant Children to Be Classified as 'Homeless' to...

#BREAKING: A potential case of #Ebola is being treated at a Miami-area hospital, officials from @CDCgov confirmed. http://on.nbc6.com/A1i24K6

Hundreds of children have been hospitalized across several states with a respiratory illness that seems like a cold but can grow far worse, CNN reports. Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma have already called the CDC for help in tackling an enterovirus that appears to be EV-D68. The current hospitalizations may be "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases," says a CDC director. "We're in the middle of looking into this. We don't have all the answers yet." The virus itself resembles a bad cold (nasty summer colds are often...

I accidentally discovered why we have so-called "progressives" (actually, they're communists!) in our midst. In the interest of preserving and expanding my reputation as being something of a Renaissance Man, I periodically surf the Net and YouTube for new terms and subjects. As a member of my cat's "staff" (if you didn't know, dogs have owners and cats have staff), a few years ago, I investigated a strange little parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. It causes toxoplasmosis and scientists tell us that it affects up to half the population. Once infected, a human will live with it for his or her...

By The Week Staff August 30, 2014Think Ebola is alarming? Scientists expect a much deadlier virus to emerge in the not-distant future. How likely is a pandemic? Epidemiologists believe we're statistically overdue for a global viral outbreak, which occurs every generation or so. This year's Ebola crisis is probably just a dress rehearsal: Though the virus has killed at least 1,420 people in Africa in the last five months, Ebola is transmitted only through intimate contact with bodily fluids and doesn't have the global reach of a true pandemic, such as Spanish influenza in 1918. Humanity had no prior exposure...

Full Title: Bedbugs spotted at least 21 times on subways in August, say sources — MTA hiring expert to review efforts “We’ve never had sightings to this magnitude,” said Joe Costales, a chairman with Transport Workers Union Local 100. “We’ve had isolated incidents in crew quarters, but it’s no longer an isolated scenario. It’s throughout the system.”

The crowd of supporters stretched around Main Street on a busy Saturday in August, hundreds of Hamptonites curving past the Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co. stores, waiting patiently to greet Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton had taken a break from her beach vacation to sign copies of her latest memoir, “Hard Choices.” Her presence transformed BookHampton, the bookseller the Clintons frequent on their working summer vacations, into a sort of pre-campaign event with Secret Service agents, and well-wishers including Martha Stewart and Howard Dean. The shores of Long Island are not exactly a proxy for the enthusiasm Mrs. Clinton...