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Could Illegal Unaccompanied Minors Be Spreading New Mystery Virus to U.S.? October 1, 2014 - 3:56 PM By Michael Morris Subscribe to Michael Morris RSS The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a health advisory on September 26 stating that “nine pediatric patients were hospitalized with an acute neurologic illness of undetermined etiology.” The CDC is investigating the nine cases of acute neurological illness and paralysis in Colorado children to see if enterovirus 68 (EV-D68) is the virus responsible for their symptoms. CDC Enterovirus Investigation These illnesses, having occurred since August 1, 2014, are “characterized by focal limb...

What is the difference b/w an airborne pathogen and everything else?

Three decades after the world witnessed HIV begin to take its devastating human toll, scientists have isolated where the pandemic started in Kinshasa, in what was then Zaire, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The revelation is outlined in the journal Science, which dated the origin of the pandemic as early as the 1920s. While the virus is thought to have crossed into the human population years earlier, the Guardian notes, it remained largely localized until it reached Kinshasa, which catapulted throughout the region, and then world. A confluence of social factors led to what the authors call a...

Stars and Stripes Logo United Airlines contacting passengers who flew with Ebola victim By DAVID KOENIG The Associated Press Published: October 2, 2014 More than 80 people in Dallas are being monitored for symptoms of Ebola after coming into contact with patient Thomas Eric Duncan or others who Duncan had met, health officials said. DALLAS — United Airlines said Thursday it is notifying passengers who were on flights with a man later diagnosed with Ebola and telling them how to contact federal health officials. United said it is also telling passengers that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and...

Philip Sherwell October 3, 2014 The US government is scrambling to start production of the experimental Ebola drug that is viewed as the most promising medical treatment in the fight against the virus. The ZMapp serum was used to treat two American missionaries who recovered from Ebola, but is not available for the Dallas man currently fighting the disease as the limited supplies made for clinical trials ran out in August. Federal officials and two of the world’s largest charities are in advanced talks with pharmaceutical companies to launch accelerated production from genetically-engineered tobacco plants and animal cells. But even...

Government health officials said Thursday that they were tracking down as many as 100 people who may have had contact with a contagious Ebola patient and were forcing four adults to be isolated at home.State and county officials executed a communicable disease control order to force four unidentified people,believed to be adults, to remain inside the Dallas apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan developed Ebola symptoms. The order allows health workers to monitor the apartment’s occupants daily. Five children and an unknown number of adults share the apartment at The Ivy in Vickery Meadow in northeast Dallas.The apartment,where Duncan had been...

   Paul SzoldraOctober 2, 2014An unnamed American freelance cameraman/writer working for NBC News in Liberia has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus and will be flown back to the United States for treatment, NBC News reports. The freelancer was hired by NBC on Tuesday to support Dr. Nancy Snyderman on assignment in Monrovia, but he came down with symptoms of the virus on Wednesday, according to NBC. On Thursday, he was diagnosed as having the virus. The freelancer's condition comes just days after the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the first case of Ebola being diagnosed in...

August 5, 2014 Benjamin Zhang On the heels of the worst outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease in nearly 40 years — and the first case diagnosed in the U.S. — fears of the potential spread of the deadly virus through air travel have led to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue guidelines on how to deal with Ebola in the air. The Ebola Virus and its corresponding disease are spread through direct contact with the blood or contaminated bodily fluids of someone who is very sick. Direct contact may include emission of droplets into the...

The spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general says the United Nations believes air travel to and from the West African countries affected by the Ebola virus should continue despite the first reported case in the United States. Stephane Dujarric told reporters Thursday that "it's very important not to isolate these countries" as it would worsen their political and economic situations. He says aid groups need access to the region. The first reported U.S. case involves a man who flew from Liberia to visit relatives. His travel took him through Brussels and Washington before reaching Texas....

Michael Savage blames 'President Obola' for virus in U.S. Posted By -NO AUTHOR- On 10/01/2014 @ 8:44 pm In Health,Politics,U.S.,World Ebola has now entered the U.S. because of President Obama’s open-borders policy, charged talk-radio host Michael Savage. Savage who has a doctorate in epidemiology, said Obama refused to employ the basic epidemiological rule of quarantining a deadly virus, “because the far-left agenda is to have an open-borders policy.” Referring to the commander in chief as “President Obola,” Savage said the “only solution is zero travel in and out of West Africa for any American.” “You let nobody in from a...

A whistleblowing Border Patrol agent alleges that the Department of Homeland Security ignored health and safety concerns in attempting to transport illegal immigrants to a facility in Murrieta, Calif., the site of a high-profile confrontation between DHS and local citizens this past summer. In a whistleblower disclosure document obtained by National Review Online, the agent alleges that the federal government knowingly transported illegal immigrants to facilities that were unequipped to process them; disregarded repeated warnings from a Border Patrol agent about the public-health risks posed by the immigrants, many of whom were suffering from infectious diseases; rejected multiple offers of...

The emergency room at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood has been reopened after part of the ER was briefly closed this morning, hospital officials said. Earlier today, a man entered the ER with a high fever and a rash -- symptoms that resembled smallpox, a potentially fatal infectious disease. Following standard procedure, hospital officials quarantined one area of the ER. Doctors later said the man did not have smallpox. They have not said what he had.

Controversial new research suggests that contrary to the history books, the "Black Death" that devastated medieval Europe was not the bubonic plague, but rather an Ebola-like virus. History books have long taught the Black Death, which wiped out a quarter of Europe's population in the Middle Ages, was caused by bubonic plague, spread by infected fleas that lived on black rats. But new research in England suggests the killer was actually an Ebola-like virus transmitted directly from person to person. The Black Death killed some 25 million Europeans in a devastating outbreak between 1347 and 1352, and then reappeared periodically...

What do you know about Ebola? You probably are aware that it's a nasty, often fatal form of a viral hemorrhagic fever. You may also know that the current outbreak occured last December in Guinea, and that it has spread to Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leona and Nigeria. And unless you have lived under a rock for the past 24 hours, you also know that it has spread to the United States--Texas, to be specific. But here's a list of what you may not know, including how the Ebola virus impacts economies and supply chains, issurance issues including evacuation, exposures and...

October 1, 2014Erin Brodwin This flu season is already shaping up to be worse than the last. Because flu season occurs in different time periods around the world, health experts track outbreaks of the virus globally to try and predict how the illness will affect each country before anyone there actually gets sick. Predicting how bad a particular flu season will be is a tough call. But in many years, flu outbreaks in the southern hemisphere can help foretell the virus' severity in the US. A group of scientists organized by the WHO called the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response...

The world suddenly seemed a lot smaller when news broke Tuesday that the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. is being isolated and treated at a Dallas hospital. While the outbreak in West Africa has sickened more than 6,000 people and killed 3,083, it was only a matter of time before the virus hit closer to home, experts said. Dr. Edward Goodman, hospital epidemiologist at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, said he was not surprised that the Ebola virus came to his doorstep, given the number of cases in Africa. There is “plenty of opportunity for people to fly...

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...