H7N9 snapdate: 316/317 cases by sex and week of onset/date reported

Click on image to enlarge.The dates along the bottom (x-axis) are the first Monday of the week begging with that date. Week 1 is that in which the first human case showed signs of disease.A quick look shows that the proportion of recent female avian influenza A(H7N9) virus human cases is consistently...

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H7N9 snapdate: Zhejiang in the East, Guangdong in the South

Click on image to enlarge.Zhejiang province is still climbing in eastern China despite market closures almost 2-weeks ago. Guangdong in the south surpasses 50 cases as well as Shanghai municipality and Jiangsu province, in terms of total counts.Fujian province adds a few cases (at least some markets...

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H7N9 snapdate: rolling average cases per day...

Click on image to enlarge.Seriously.This is really just an update from earlier today. My brain finally sorted out a niggling problem with the earlier version. The chart needed to show 2013's peak season (now added to the previous version as"Rolling daily Av. Peak 2013" and shown above in green)...

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H7N9 snapdate: hotspot map

Click on image to enlarge.Modified from here.  Guangdong province starts to see red while Guangxi very quickly moved from 1 case to 3.Activity in China's north east remains l...

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H7N9 update on some trends: 2013 vs 2014

As I'd previously predicted (it was a very safe bet) and as CIDRAP's excellent coverage confirmed, H7N9 Wave 2's peak month surpassed Wave 1's in total number of cases. Quite a few more cases in Jan-204 than Apr-2013.The total case number alone is no reason to run around like a headless chicken...

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H7N9 snapdate: age with time

Click on image to enlarge.Age groups selected to convey clearest trends without too many lines.A quick look at some age bands followed each week during the course of both waves of the avian influenza A( H7N9) virus outbreak.The interesting line to watch is that of the youngest age group...

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Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV): summing up 100 weeks

We stand at 182 cases with 78 deaths. The proportion of fatal cases (PFC) stands at 43%.Median age of all cases, including deaths, sits at 53-years (missing data on 13 cases); median age of fatal cases is 60-years47% of all MERS cases with data are >55-years of age; 36% are >60-years65% of cases are male (missing data on 18 cases)Underlying comorbidities feature in most severe...

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Monkey magic: Vero cells make more MERS-CoV RNA than any other animal's...

Apart from camel, goat, bat and human cells which draw the eye in studies on the source of MERS-CoV, did anyone notice the Vero cells? These cells are derived in the dim dark ages from African green monkey kidney (Cercopithecus aethiops). After infection, these monkey cells were shown...

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Why have a case definition that seems designed to miss transmission events? [UPDATED]

v2 24APR2015. Modified figure to exclude erroneous "uninfected" personFluTrackers just tweeted a link to a story they have posted from Korea which I've excerpted below. I don't usually excerpt, so take it as a measure of my complete dismay about this.Asymptomatic Carriers of AI Confirmed in...

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One Health Initiative is alive and well among Australian influenza specialists...

It struck me as really quite impressive how much influenza researchers (and a non-fluey ring-in like me) are already well aware of, and in some cases working on, the importance of animals in virus spread to humans. Admittedly, I'm a rhinovirus guy (or a metapneumovirus guy, or coronavirus...

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