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OTTAWA - Canadian health authorities are worried an outbreak of West Nile virus infection in Louisiana, which has killed four of 58 infected people, could mean the mosquito-borne illness is changing the way it spreads. "Something seems peculiar about Louisiana with such a large number of human cases," said Harvey Artsob, head of zoonotic diseases at Health Canada. "It's important for us to understand why, so that all our messages of reassurance in other parts of North America still hold. What's changed in Louisiana?" As Canadians head to summer cottages this weekend, the official government message remains that West Nile...

A US government laboratory mistakenly mixed a common flu strain with a dangerous and deadly type of bird flu and shipped it to another lab, authorities said Friday. The latest news followed admissions of mishandled anthrax and forgotten smallpox vials at separate US government labs, and raised new concerns about the safety of dangerous agents which could be used as bioterror weapons. No one was endangered by the mixed flu strain, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden, who nevertheless said he was "astonished" that protocols could have been violated in that way. "Everything we have looked...

QUEENSLAND vet Alister Rodgers lost his battle with the lethal Hendra virus overnight, dying after two weeks in a coma. State Health Minister Paul Lucas today sent his deepest sympathies to Dr Rodgers' widow, Linda, and children Courtney and Duncan. “This is a terrible tragedy for his family and they are being supported by the staff of Princess Alexandra Hospital,” Mr Lucas told Parliament this morning. Dr Rodgers, of the Rockhampton Veterinary Clinic, was infected with the virus when he treated a sick filly - thought at the time to be suffering from snakebite - at the J4S stud in...

After the COVID-19 pandemic, we're all a little wary of biosecurity hazards, and the news out of Australia today isn't too comforting. In 2021, 323 vials containing samples of deadly viruses went missing from a lab in Queensland, Australia. The breach wasn't discovered until 2023, and for whatever reason—it sounds like red tape — an investigation is just now underway, over a year later. Health Minister Tim Nicholls announced the news on Monday. [snip] ...a statement: "I want to stress that there have been no public health incidents linked to these materials, so we have no evidence so far of...

"Exotic animal dealer who had monkeypox has Q fever - But S. Milwaukee man probably caught rare, flu-like ailment while inspecting cows, not selling pets" _______________________________________________________ The South Milwaukee pet dealer at the center of the monkeypox outbreak has now been diagnosed with a second rare animal-borne disease: Q fever, which he likely got from his job as a federal meat inspector. He also still has four prairie dogs that he refuses to euthanize even though public health officials want him to in the interest of preventing future monkeypox infections. Scott Knapp, owner of SK Exotics, disclosed his new illness...

Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So...

Bioengineered bird flu souped up via gain-of-function lab work could be developed in a shockingly short period of time, former CDC Director Robert Redfield told News Nation recently: I think it puts our world at great risk. We have the risk of natural spillover, but there is a species barrier. I’m obviously most worried about bird flu. Right now, it takes five amino acid change for it to be effectively infecting humans. That’s a pretty heavy species barrier but this virus is already now in 26 mammal species, as you saw most recently in cattle. But in the laboratory, I...

A dog in Paris has caught monkeypox after sharing the bed with its gay owners who were infected with the disease. The two Parisians developed symptoms at the beginning of June before they developed the lesions showing a monkeypox infection. The two men aged 44 and 27, who live together in a non-monogamous relationship, developed sores a week after having sex with other men. … Their Italian greyhound had also developed ulcerations and pustules on its stomach. A PCR test confirmed the canine had also come down with monkeypox, confirming the first case of a domestic pet contracting the virus....

Squirrel breeding is a real job—and apparently a very dangerous one if you're dealing with the wrong kind of squirrel. After the mysterious deaths of three German men who all worked as breeders of variegated squirrels—a kind of squirrel native to Central America that's sometimes kept as an exotic pet—researchers have identified a new virus that had apparently jumped from the squirrels to the men, LiveScience reports. The men, who were in their 60s and regularly socialized together, died between 2011 and 2013 from inflammation of the brain, and researchers say at least two of them had been scratched or...

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...

The French government has been notably restrained in their criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for unleashing a pandemic upon the world.  One possible reason for their reticence is a single, highly embarrassing fact: They essentially built the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s P4 lab in which the coronavirus now sweeping the world was being researched, and from which it escaped.  That the French delivered the turn-key, high-containment biolab to China has long been public knowledge, but now a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has added riveting details to the story.  The insider information comes from interviews with French...

SHOULD WE BE READY FOR THE REEMERGENCE OF SARS? Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination (375), which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored. SARS-CoV is highly capable of jumping interspecies barriers and is an excellent candidate as an emerging or reemerging pathogen.