Based on ABC News, Yahoo NewsWho'd wanna be a ferret? They are great for growing influenza viruses and testing their ability to transmit between animals as a model for human-to-human transmission. Ferrets are apparently also useful for hosting Hendra virus (HeV) replication. Because ferrets are cheaper and easier to test vaccines on than horses, they are used as...
Coronavirusauruses.....
I've always been interested in just how long this virus or that virus have been with us. Have they evolved along with their original animal host, or with humans, or just jumped ship relatively recently - months rather than millions of years ago.Well, here is a cool potential answer.Wertheim and colleagues revisited the age debate with the coronaviruses in their viewfinder, back in...
MERS-CoV cases rise by 3...how is the health of 83M?
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's (KSA) Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed MERS-CoV in a 67-year old female (67F) with underlying disease. That took 7-days to confirm and announce. The MERS-CoV tally is now at 94 cases, 46 deaths (PFC of 48.9%).The other 2 new cases are both 39Fs and healthcare workers (form Asir and Riyadh) exposed to known cases; both have mild disease. This is against...
Patients with diabetes or chronic renal failure at high risk for MERS...
A recent New England Journal of Medicine editorial piece, accompanying that huge MERS-CoV case study previously discussed here, notes the immediate concern of October's Hajj pilgrimage to the hot zone, Saudi Arabia. Perlman and McCray also note that MERS-CoV is a system-wide infection and that while the average number o new cases from each index case (R0) is reportedly...and...
Editors Note #10: A re-post of the Zombie comparison....
A local news site, brisbanetimes.com.au has reprinted my earlier article on World War Z being an extreme epidemiology event-giving viruses teeth and legs. For which I am most grateful.Does that mean 20-years in virology has lead me to being "that zombie guy"??If you drop by, please also have look through the MERS-CoV and influenza A(H7N9) virus stuff on the blogs here and on Virology...
Reporting on the MERS-CoV event..behind the scenes timeline
In an Eastern Mediterranean Heath Journal (EMHJ) journal issue dedicated to MERS-CoV, there is an article entitled "Novel coronavirus: the challenge of communicatingabout a virus which one knows little about" written by Gregory H�rtl, Head of Public Relations/Social Media for World Health Organization.The article details how the World Heath Organization,...
Anarchy, air travel and contagion
A new paper by Nicolaides and colleagues looks, in great detail (as this group, who have previously published travel-related contagion modelling, does) at the spread of a disease due to human movement and how the choices made about that movement could help or hinder its spread.They point to the dilemma of policy makers for the next big outbreak. Should they:Restrict/redirect...
If you gave a virus legs and teeth...
Following on from my post on extreme epidemiology, zombies and World War Z, there is an article today in livescience (yes, it's all in fun).The article, including some commentary from Prof Robert Smith? (that's an intentional "?"), an expat Aussie mathematician based at the University...
MERS-CoV case and death confirmed by WHO....from 4-days ago?
The latest Disease Outbreak News (DON; they can be found here prior to archiving here) from the World Health Organisation announces that an 83-year from Asir region is positive for the MERS-CoV and another, previously identified case, died.This is a great example of why tracking ID can make you think you're in a Doctor Who episode!I reported these 2 cases (from other's...
Influenza A(H7N9) virus infects cells from the upper and lower respiratory tract...
Chan and colleagues from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) used tissue taken from (explanted) different parts of the conducting airways and respiratory epithelium to demonstrate the ability of H7N9 (A/Shanghai/1/2013 [Sh1], A/Shanghai/2/2013 [Sh2] and duck) to replicate in different regions and how well it does that compared to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A/H5N1,...
Influenza A(H7N9) virus review of 1st Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province death
Chen and colleagues provide a detailed description of the 1st death in this region (paper accepted in May). I believe this 39-year old male (39M) case was also briefly described in an earlier Lancet article.Some key facts: The patient had a chronic hepatitis B virus infectionHad contact with poultry (he was a cook) prior to presenting with cough and diarrhoeaClinical features also...
Human endemic coronaviruses and underlying conditions....
Human coronaviruses (HCoVs), that is, the ones that circulate all the time, not the ones that spillover from an animal host to cause havoc and mayhem, come in four flavours....HCoV-229EHCoV-OC43HCoV-NL63HCoV-HKU1On the back of my last post, I thought I'd start looking into what HCoVs do among those with some sort of pre-existing disease or condition.Generally speaking, the...
MERS-CoV & SARS-CoV zoonoses....what about the endemic human CoVs?
Hat tip to Crawford Kilian's story...Arab News carries a piece entitled "Unpredictable MERS �deadlier than SARS�" noting a comment along this line by senior author, Prof Ziad Memish, on the recent Lancet large MERS-CoV case-study. Prof Memish is also senior infectious diseases consultant at King Fahad Medical City, Professor at Alfaisal Univeristy and King Saud University, President of...
Possible death of existing MERS-CoV case (83M from Asir) and 2 new cases
Crawford Kilian has an article from the press about the death of an existing case (83M) and 2 new cases - #2 is "a man" and #3 a 63F. I'll update this as any detail becomes available. If confirmed by the KSA MOH and WHO will bring the tally of cases (including deaths) to 93 and the deaths to ...
The Wolverine: the rebuttal's inner animal?
If World War Z is a tale of extreme epidemiology, then perhaps The Wolverine gives screen-time (and claws) to some of the feelings a Chief Investigator may cycle through, just after reading their Assessment Letters around June each year (Down Under at least). Then we put them in a drawer for a day or two while we put the animal away again. Or...
