Ebola update: for 23-April, WHO update [UPDATED]

These data are tallies from all sites.Specific numbers from towns and countriescan be found from the Update itsel.Click on image to enlarge.The latest figures tell a story of linear increase driven by Guinea. There is plateauing of the proportion of fatal cases (currently sitting...

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MERS is a respiratory disease and MERS-CoV is a respiratory virus... PART I

The diseaseDefinition time. The Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a disease (a change in the body away from normal function towards abnormal function) comprised of a bunch of signs and symptoms (the syndrome bit) that is identified in patients who turn up ("present") to their doctor/clinic/hospital with signs (things the doctor can see or measure e.g. coughing, sneezing...

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An update on the April outbreak of MERS-CoV...

We are in week 110 of the MERS-CoV outbreak event, that's 2.12 years and 386 cases including approximately 113 deaths (PFC of 29.3%, the lowest to date) since the first known cases became ill in Mar of 2012.Just a few quick charts to keep track of things. http://www.flickr.com/photos/xikita/48647105/in/photostream/CC...

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MERS-CoV partial spike gene sequences do not implicate viral change in April's Jeddah human case cluster

Stars highlight difference in scale at left-hand side, (x-axis) numbers. Seasons based on info [2]Click on image to enlarge.With a new article at ScienceInsider written by Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape on Twitter)[1], it seems that the idea of a Spring start to human detections of MERS-CoV in Saudi...

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Dump the garbage...

Sharon from @FluTrackers and I had an exchange on Skype this morning - always a useful way to message, even with my high rate of typos - and we agreed (or perhaps I bullied) that there was little point to keeping  "TheUAE12" (as I've taken to calling the 12 cases announced in the Kuwaiti News Agency [1]) on the list. In the past I've also argued that if samples get dropped,...

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And then that happened....

Noting to see here. Ignore the blip. These are not the data you were looking for.Click on image to enlarge.I had a big post written about the lack of cases and how that was unlikely to be real and how hypothesis, hand-waving and guesswork rush in to fill a vacuum because nature abhors a vacuum and humans...

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Ebola update: some additional numbers for Guinea & Liberia from 20-April, WHO-AFRO update

Click on image to enlarge.The case curves are flattening which is a good sign that he 2014 West African Zaire ebolavirus outbreak is being brought under control. Nothing new is happening in Sierra Leone-no new case onsets have occurred there since 6-Apr. Nothing has tested positive in Mali.The...

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The Spatial Epidemiology of Malaria - Part 2

In my previous post, I described the striking variation in the RDT positivity rate seen among different villages of the Bugoye sub-county. For example, from the village of Bugoye, we observed that 30% of RDTs were positive for malaria, while from the neighboring village of Izinga, the rate was more...

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A situation well in control....?

Click on image to enlarge.Is the slowly-spreading epidemic of MERS-CoV changing gears or are the vastly shortened times required to reach each 100 cases just a blip?I don't know but here's a chart that tells a story of spe...

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Ebola update: some additional numbers for Guinea from 17-April, WHO-AFRO update

These numbers slightly change the numbers I last posted from 18-April. A small uptick in deaths and lab confirmations and a change to the most recent illness onset which is now 17-Apr. The clock is still waiting to start on the 2-incubation periods required, without new cases, before the region...

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MERS-CoV cases and deaths by month and growing tallies: a look at the impact of 2 clusters on a "slowly growing epidemic"

The yellow star are to highlight that the y-axis (left-hand side values) in 2014is set to a higher maximum valuethan for 2012/2013.Click on image to enlarge.The 2 healthcare-associated clusters (paramedic cluster and Jeddah cluster) are the driving factors underpinning the case number spike...

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Where the Guinea ebolaviruses hang in the jungle of the genus Ebolavirus

The 3 complete genomes from the NEJM article are boxed in pink. Viruses that belong to the species Zaire ebolavirus, are boxed in blue (including the Gueckedou and Kissidougou isolates). With my thanks to Dr Stephan Gunther for providing these 3 genome sequences for this tree. Alignments were made...

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Naming the new Zaire ebolavirus variants

The recent NEJM paper [1,2] on the Guinea Ebola outbreak listed 3 full genome sequences (detected from infected people using standard "Filioviridae-specific RT-PCR assays" and published "real-time RT-PCR assays targeting the glycoprotein (GP) or nucleoprotein (NP) gene".My thanks to Dr Stephen Gunther...

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