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Masking is now required for staff in long term care homes across Ontario amid a recent rise in COVID-19 outbreaks, cases and resident hospitalizations, the provincial government says. A Nov. 2 memo from the Ministry of Long-Term Care to LTC licensees says the requirement is based on advice from Dr. Kieran Moore, chief medical officer of health. Homes were expected to implement the requirement no later than Nov. 7, it says. The masking requirement also applies to students, support workers and volunteers when they are in resident areas indoors. The ministry further strongly recommends that visitors and caregivers wear a...

For Immediate ReleaseTuesday, October 5, 2021Office of Press Relationspress@usaid.govToday, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is launching an ambitious new project that will work with partner countries and the global community to build better preparedness for future global health threats. Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens - Viral Zoonoses (DEEP VZN), a five-year, approximately $125 million project (pending availability of funds), will strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people’s lives and...

Cruise with 55 COVID cases will remain at sea until this weekend Ship set to return to Fort Lauderdale on Sunday after skipping stops in Curaçao and Aruba Published: December 23, 2021, 9:06 AM Updated: December 23, 2021, 9:12 AM FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A cruise out of South Florida will skip two ports after 55 people onboard tested positive for COVID-19. Royal Caribbean International confirmed Thursday that its Odyssey of the Seas ship will not stop in Curaçao or Aruba as planned. “The decision was made together with the islands out of an abundance of caution due to the...

On Friday’s “CNN Tonight,” New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams (D) said that “temporarily shutting down the schools” in areas of the city that have large coronavirus outbreaks is “smart, it’s a great way to go, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — After only their first few weeks of work, tensions already are high among lawmakers meeting in-person at some state capitols — not because of testy debates over taxes, guns or abortion, but because of a disregard for coronavirus precautions. In Georgia, a Republican lawmaker recently was booted from the House floor for refusing to get tested for the coronavirus. In Iowa, a Democratic House member boldly violated a no-jeans rule to protest the chamber’s lack of a mask rule. And in Missouri, numerous lawmakers and staff — some fearing for their health after a COVID-19...

3 Out of 5 Deadliest Coronavirus Outbreaks Were in State Nursing Homes Socialized medicine isn’t the answer unless the question is, “How do we kill more senior citizens?” Fri May 15, 2020 Daniel Greenfield 5 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. The lockdown model sought to flatten the curve by preparing hospitals for a massive influx of patients by clearing out everyone including elderly patients, who were sent back to nursing homes. The hospitals, with a few limited exceptions, were not overwhelmed,...

Since the first case of coronavirus on 1st December 2019, there have been over 100,000 cases of the disease worldwide, in over 65 countries. Despite the extreme measures taken to try and reduce the spread, the WHO has been careful not to call it a pandemic at this stage. You may remember previous pandemics that have occurred over the last decade or more, including swine flu, bird flu, and SARS, but it can be hard to figure out how coronavirus compares. Take a look at our guide below to see how coronavirus compares to these outbreaks and historical pandemics that...

Milan, Italy. Daegu, South Korea. Qom, Iran. Many of the world’s largest coronavirus outbreaks took root in and around well-traveled cities, but they have since grown to encompass entire countries. Cases have spread across Italy’s north and down to Rome, leading to a lockdown of the entire country. Iran’s capital, where leaders dismissed the virus just two weeks ago, has seen thousands infected. And cases continue to surge across Europe. New cases in past week Total cases Cases per 100k residents Italy 11,255 15,113 25 Iran 6,562 10,075 12 Spain 2,691 2,950 6 France 2,496 2,876 5 Germany 1,887...

Epidemiologist Eric Lofgren says the experience was a valuable snapshot into human behaviour during a pandemicIn the late summer of 2005, a mysterious plague affected an estimated four million people, but caused no deaths — at least not in the real world. When an update to the multiplayer online game World of Warcraft introduced an in-game condition called Corrupted Blood that acted as a viral disease, players around the world faced a virtual pandemic as their characters unwittingly infected others and rapidly perished. Today, some epidemiologists believe it can offer insight into the spread of viral infections, including a new...

The media recently reported that Los Angeles County’s ongoing typhus epidemic had infected Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood. "Who gets typhus? It's a medieval disease that's caused by trash,” she wondered. Greenwood is partially correct. The typhus outbreak, like the hepatitis outbreak, was directly caused by social justice policies that legalized public vagrancy, and leaving trash and human waste on sidewalks. The piles of trash, human waste and people combine to create horrifying diseased conditions. Before Greenwood, many Los Angeles patients who had been diagnosed with typhus were indeed homeless. "There are rats in City Hall and City Hall East,"...

Flu activity is beginning to pick up for the 2018-2019 season, and one of the earliest deaths was already reported.

A report today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a small outbreak of carbapenemase-producing carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CP-CRE) at a Kentucky hospital in 2016 highlights multiple introduction of the worrisome pathogen in a rural facility and demonstrates the possible role of cleaning equipment. The investigation by physicians and epidemiologists from the CDC and the Kentucky Department of Health, appearing today in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), describes an outbreak that started on Aug 11, 2016, when two Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)-producing isolates from clinical cultures were reported from patients in a small community hospital...

WHO recommendations for testing for Ebola virus disease and confirming a case WHO is alarmed by media reports of suspected Ebola cases imported into new countries that are said, by government officials or ministries of health, to be discarded as “negative” within hours after the suspected case enters the country. Such rapid determination of infection status is impossible, casting grave doubts on some of the official information that is being communicated to the public and the media.

...The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been linked with at least two of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history. One, the Great Plague, which lasted from the 14th to 17th centuries, included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death, which may have killed nearly two-thirds of Europe in the mid-1300s. Another, the Modern Plague, struck around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning in China in the mid-1800s and spreading to Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia. Although past studies confirmed this germ was linked with both of these catastrophes,...

It’s hard to be thinking about severe weather after the very cool weather many of us have been experiencing, especially where it has recently snowed. However, we are heading into another severe weather season that generally runs from late October through November. Now, this season is predominately found in the southern United States from Texas to Georgia.

Call me sick or just a little morbidly curious, but I’ve always been fascinated by end-of-days entertainment, with one notable (and ironic) exception: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “End of Days.” There is just something about various post-apocolyptic scenarios that makes me happy. Maybe it’s the fact that in a planet decimated by disease, everyone’s bad credit will likely be wiped out. Or I won’t have to wait as long for a table at my favorite lunch spot. Or maybe it’s everything that the big screen and small screen has taught us goes along with deadly outbreaks of disease that has humanity teetering...

CDC: Flu outbreaks reported in 11 states By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer Fri Feb 1, 8:29 PM ET WASHINGTON - Flu season is in full swing, with wide outbreaks in 11 states — and a new strain is starting to emerge that this year's vaccine doesn't specifically target, the government's public health chief said Friday. People still should get their flu shot, and there's plenty available, Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press. So far, the majority of flu cases are being caused by strains that are a good match...

'100 bird flu outbreaks' in Burma Outbreaks of the virus were first reported in Mandalay in March Bird flu has spread in Burma with more than 100 outbreaks across the country, a UN official has said. He Changchui of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a press conference the situation was "more serious than we imagined". He said the outbreaks were mainly in the central district of Mandalay and the northern district of Sagaing. On 13 March Burma confirmed its first case of H5N1 since November 2004 and the number subsequently rose to five. Mr He, who is...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 2, 2005--Hundreds of U.S. soldiers have been infected with a potentially deadly drug resistant bacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii, that apparently originated in Iraqi soil, according to Forbes.com Medical & Science Writer Matthew Herper. Visit www.forbes.com for this exclusive report, "The Iraq Infection." According to Herper's report, "most of the victims are relatively young troops who were injured by the land mines, mortars and suicide bombs that have permeated the Iraq conflict." While no active duty soldiers have died from the infection, five deaths did occur among extremely sick patients who were in the same hospitals as the injured...

BEIJING-The number of people infected by what Chinese authorities believe is a pig-borne bacterial disease has jumped from 31 to 141, state media said on Thursday as officials insisted the outbreak could be contained.The World Health Organization said it was watching developments closely, but a spokesperson said the disease appeared to be localized and posed no threat nationally.China's Ministry of Health said the death toll in rural Sichuan province had risen to 31, the official Xihua news agency said."We have the technology and procedures to bring the disease under control," the China Daily quoted an unidentified ministry official as saying...