MERS-CoV cases climb...still a one hump camel

Click on image to enlarge...not that I'm implying anything about camels!We're about 97-weeks or 1.87 years into the MERS-CoV outbreak. That' sis calculated by taking the week beginning Monday 19-Mar-2012 as Week 1 (if Excel hasn't failed me at least). It was in Week 1 that a 40-year old healthcare worker...

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Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) by sex...

Click on image to enlargeI haven't updated my MERS-database since before Xmas. Wow.It's painful to look at. Not because of a swag of new cases, I mean its tough to actually look at what's happening because the data, even with WHO expanding their coverage to include a more fixed set of information...

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Tracking virus-related deaths using publicly available data...

Click on image to enlarge.Here's the cumulative case chart overlaid with the cumulative deaths and PFC. see the story behind the term PFC here, created by VDU to avoid issues around case fatality rate/ratio (CFR) which relies on knowing when cases have recovered.I have two PFC values charted here. In...

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H7N9 hasn't left, it's just been building capacity... [UPDATED WITH NEW WHO DON]

Click on image to enlarge.I updated this chart a week ago, when the avian influenza A(H7N9) virus tally was at 158.This morning I check FluTrackers list and its sitting at 189 cases; 31 reported so far this week. Just to be clear though, not all of those cases acquired their infection in this week....

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A quick comparison of the rate of H7N9 case climb over different 2-month periods...

Click on image to enlarge.While there has definitely been a lot of H7N9 human case activity centred around Guangdong province of late, but how does it compare with the 2013 H7N9 hotzones of Shanghai, Zhejiang province and Jiangsu province? This rough comparison of a 2-month period uses the...

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H7N9 cases: trekking to the next peak

Click on image to enlarge.I have switched this chart to depict the case number per week using a line rather than bars. While not technically accurate, it is just more clear than a bar format as the dataset grows. Please be aware that the dots on the line are the actual data...

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H7N9: males and females among total and fatal lab-confirmed cases...

Click on image to enlarge.Males are the predominant host for H7N9 cases that are severe enough to warrant a hospital visit (or the contacts thereof). As ever, we have no real idea of the extent to which H7N9 is circulating among those who are not ill enough to present to...

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Things I did not know #125,326...H5N1 is enzootic (=endemic in animals) in some countries...

Makes perfect sense of course, I just hadn't seen that in print in my short time looking at flu.Helen Branswell has a piece on CTVnews about the Canadian H5N1 cases, noting that the genome will be deduced and submitted to the GISAID database.So officially, H5N1 is considered enzootic in poultry (endemic for animals) in at least 6 countries (circulating, or epizootic, in at least 9 others):BangladeshChina...

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H7N9 age with time: is a younger adult demographic emerging this time around?

This is a big graphic - sorry for that - but I thought it best to show the distribution of age bands (this is updated from the paper I co-authored recently with Joseph Dudley) alongside the shifting age in total numbers and proportion of cases each week. The data are all publicly sourced and verified...

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Helix...a show about dual use research of concern (DURC), black goo, pretty people and an absence of grounding in good virology [EDITED]

I'm not really here to critique TV shows but this one has some "virology' in it, so I'm making an exception. Plus, I've been yelling at people about it. So time to rant in print and get it out of my system.I was really looking forward to this show turning up. Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed the tension and the creepiness of the first 3-episodes. I really...

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An idiots list of influenza genetic changes..

I knew someone would have done this already! Many thanks to Prof Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Dr Eileen Maher who answered my email and pointed me to a massive list of the known genetic changes that determine influenza virus phenotypic characteristics of importance, in a downloadable...

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An idiot's list of key influenza mutations...Draft 2 (please correct and contribute-updating constantly)

Okay, I admit that keeping the number-amino acid shorthand-number codes for all the influenza virus mutations out there has totally escaped me as a thing of interest so far. Probably because I can't remember them! So, like many things on VDU, I'm starting a page that may serve...

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H5N1 case in Canada had been diagnosed with pneumonia...testing at the source would have been helpful

And now, from a fantastically detailed post onto ProMED by Fonseca and colleagues, we see that the H5N1 case was diagnosed with pneumonia.On 28-Dec, the patient presented to a local emergency department."A chest X-ray and CT scan revealed a right apical infiltrate. A diagnosis of pneumonia was made; the patient was prescribed levofloxacin and discharged home."One sad point made in the ProMED...

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Adjustment to dates....

Got myself confused didn't I?!I mentioned in a post last week that..I started within Week #35 (given that Week#1 starts from Feb-5; the week in which symptoms were reported for the index case on Feb-11). Prior to Week #35, things were very quiet going back to April-2013. A couple of cases in July. That date, Feb-11, is in fact when the son of the confirmed index case was ill. The son...

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H7N9 by area of case acquisition...

This is another way of looking at the sites of origin of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus cases in southern and eastern China. After adding in the most recent 7-cases today, Guangdong province now comprises 9.9% of cases. Females dropped a little from yesterdays post, but remain a more frequent...

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