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New Report
By Eric Toner, Jennifer Nuzzo, Ali Khan, Anita Cicero, Crystal Boddie, Matthew Shearer
From June 20-July 2, 2016, a six-person External Assessment Team from the UPMC Center for Health Security met with governmental leaders in Taipei, Taiwan to conduct an independent assessment of Taiwan's capabilities under the Internal Health Regulations (2005) and its related progress toward the "Protect, Detect, and Respond" goals of Global Health Security Agenda.
Read the Report
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Today's Headlines: October 28, 2016
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Zika Strategic Response Plan--Quarterly update, October 2016 (
WHO) This Quarterly Update gives key information on the situation, the response and updated funding information for organizations working as part of the response. In accordance with standardized planning best practice it provides an update of progress against the Zika Strategic Response Plan, Revised for July 2016 - December 2017, which remains the main strategy document.
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Surgeon General Wants to Know How Miami-Dade Is Spending Zika Funds (
WLRN) Florida's Surgeon General wants to know how Miami-Dade County is spending state funds in combating the Zika virus. In a letter sent Wednesday to Miami-Dade officials, Dr. Celeste Phililp says the state has sent $12 million to the county to combat Zika and she wants to make sure the mosquito-control strategies have been effective.
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CDC, Miami-Dade and Miami Beach Make Progress on Zika Prevention Efforts (
Infection Control Today) The CDC continues to support local efforts to prevent new infections of Zika in Miami-Dade County. To see the latest situation firsthand, CDC director Tom Frieden traveled to Miami on October 25. He met with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, toured areas with known, active Zika transmission, and discussed strategies to combat Zika in Little River, Miami Beach, and throughout South Florida during the coming months.
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Registries Helping CDC Track Pregnant Women Infected with Zika Virus (
Health Data Management) The CDC is working collaboratively with state, local and territorial public health departments on surveillance of pregnant women that have laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection. The CDC has established the US Zika Pregnancy Registry and the Zika Active Pregnancy Surveillance System in Puerto Rico to provide comprehensive monitoring of pregnant women and infant outcomes.
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Vector Competence of American Mosquitoes for Three Strains of Zika Virus (
PLOS: Neglected Tropical Diseases) In 2015, Zika virus (ZIKV; Flaviviridae; Flavivirus) emerged in the Americas, causing millions of infections in dozens of countries. The rapid spread of the virus and the association with disease outcomes such as Guillain-Barre syndrome and microcephaly make understanding transmission dynamics essential. Currently, there are no reports of vector competence of American mosquitoes for ZIKV isolates from the Americas.
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Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Reemergence of St. Louis Encephalitis Virus, California, 2015 (
Emerging Infectious Diseases) St. Louis encephalitis virus infection was detected in summer 2015 in southern California after a 12-year absence, concomitant with an Arizona outbreak. Sequence comparisons showed close identity of California and Arizona isolates and a relationship with 2005 Argentine isolates, suggesting virus introduction from South America and underscoring the value of continued arbovirus surveillance.
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Global Health Security
Mosquitoes - and Diseases Like Zika - Flourish When Economies Tank (
STAT) The news out of Puerto Rico is grim: Not only has the Zika virus infected nearly 25,000 people so far, including almost 1,700 pregnant women, but the US government has appointed a Financial Control Board to oversee the territory's government spending as it tries to cope with a nosediving economy and crippling debt.
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When Disaster Strikes, Aid Groups Often Strike Out. Why? (
NPR: Goats and Soda) Poorly managed projects. Questionable spending. Dubious claims of success. That's how an NPR report last year described recovery efforts in Haiti from international humanitarian groups after the earthquake in 2010. That's why NGOs--nongovernmental organizations--helping out in the wake of Hurricane Matthew know they need to get it right this time.
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In post-Ebola Sierra Leone, More Than Half the Population Face Food Shortages: UN (
Reuters) As Sierra Leone recovers from the deadly effects of Ebola, more than half the population face food shortages, and many will not cope if further disasters such as drought or floods strike, UN food agencies said on Thursday. Food shortages in most of the West African are caused by problems that predate the Ebola outbreak, the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization said.
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Medicine & Public Health
How Polio Vaccination Affects Poliovirus Transmission (
bioRxiv) A fundamental complexity of polio eradication is that the elimination of wild poliovirus alters the risk-benefit profile of using oral polio vaccine--as WPV is eliminated, OPV produces an increasing proportion of the paralytic disease burden since, in rare instances, OPV causes paralysis in vaccine recipients and generates circulating vaccine-derived polio outbreaks in under-immunized populations.
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Diagnostics in Ebola Virus Disease in Resource-Rich and Resource-limited Settings (
PLOS: Neglected Tropical Diseases) The Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa was unprecedented in scale and location. Limited access to both diagnostic and supportive pathology assays in both resource-rich and resource-limited settings had a detrimental effect on the identification and isolation of cases as well as individual patient management. Limited access to such assays in resource-rich settings resulted in delays in differentiating EVD from other illnesses in returning travellers, in turn utilising valuable resources until a diagnosis could be made. This had a much greater impact in West Africa, where it contributed to the initial failure to contain the outbreak.
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Effect of Live Poultry Market Interventions on Influenza A(H7N9) Virus, Guangdong, China (
Emerging Infectious Diseases) Since its first notification on March 30, 2013, avian influenza A(H7N9) virus caused 3 complete epidemic waves of human infection in China, comprising 670 laboratory-confirmed clinical cases and 274 deaths as of December 28, 2015. Despite the accumulating number of human cases, how this virus disseminated and transmitted across the 3 epidemic waves is not yet understood.
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Assessing the Epidemic Potential of RNA and DNA Viruses (
Emerging Infectious Diseases) A series of recent emerging infectious disease outbreaks, including the 2014 Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa and the continuing Zika virus disease epidemic in the Americas, have underlined the need for better understanding of which kinds of pathogens are most likely to emerge and cause disease in human populations. Many, although not all, emerging infectious diseases are caused by viruses, and these frequently emerge from nonhuman host reservoirs.
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Unusual Ebola Virus Chain of Transmission, Conakry, Guinea, 2014-2015 (
Emerging Infectious Diseases) In October 2015, a new case of Ebola virus disease in Guinea was detected. Case investigation, serology, and whole-genome sequencing indicated possible transmission of the virus from an Ebola virus disease survivor to another person and then to the case-patient reported here. This transmission chain over 11 months suggests slow Ebola virus evolution.
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Science & Technology
Synthetic Biology: Precision Timing in a Cell (
Nature) Living cells keep track of time with exquisite precision, despite using molecular components that are subject to unavoidable random fluctuations, known as noise. For example, natural circadian clocks can track the time of day, even in single-celled cyanobacteria.
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Other 21st Century Threats
ISIS Is Likely Preparing a Chemical Attack in Mosul (New York Post) The UN's public health agency said Thursday it has trained 90 Iraqi medics in "mass casualty management," with a special focus on chemical attacks, as part of its preparations for Iraq's operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group. The extremist group, which has ruled Iraq's second largest city for more than two years, is believed to have crude chemical weapons capabilities, and Iraqi forces say they are prepared to encounter them on the battlefield.
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