Contagious Disease

The norovirus in the United States is on the rise. There has been a 17% increase in positive norovirus tests in the past few weeks. The virus is also referred to as the stomach flu. It is highly contagious and causes gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, and stomach pain.…

Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania had Marburg outbreaks in January and March of this year, respectively. As a hemorrhagic fever, Marburg is a relatively rare disease with a very high death rate. Like Ebola, it is transmitted through bodily fluids and symptoms include high fever and capillary leakage.…

As COVID-19 cases decline in the US, call centers and testing sites are closing. In Rockland County, New York, a call center set up in March 2020 to handle COVID-19 queries closed on Tuesday, having taken more than 19,000 calls. Massachusetts is closing its free PCR testing sites, known as "Stop…

The WHO has updated a number of its COVID-19 guidelines including those related to masking, isolation procedures, and treatments. Masks continue to be an important tool in preventing the spread of COVID-19, especially when worn by those who suspect they may have COVID-19, when they are around those…

Source: CNN

The North Korean government has imposed a 5-day lockdown on its capital city as it fights the "recurrent flu and other respiratory diseases". In August, North Korea claimed that it had eradicated the coronavirus without vaccines after reporting its first outbreak of Covid-19 in May of last year.…

BBC/TIM NICHOLSON

On Tuesday, January 31, the US public health emergency declaration for mpox came to an end. The virus hasn't completely gone away, but the average number of new cases per day reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in the single digits, as opposed to the August 2022 peak…

Monkeypox is a virus of the DNA that has caused brief outbreaks and are transferred through sexual interactions. In May of 2022, Portugal announced that they found the first strand of the resurge of this virus. Phylogenetic analysis reports have linked the MPXV genomes in the 2022 virus outbreak to…

Ebola is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans, but there are limited licensed therapeutics and vaccines available. In January 2023, the Ministry of Health of Uganda declared the end of the Ebola disease, 42 days after the last confirmed case tested negative. The outbreak was declared in…

Since the height of monkeypox at the beginning of August, cases in the United States have seen an 85% decrease. With infectious diseases being at the forefront of our world's health landscape, it is important to consider why monkeypox only lasted as long as it did. One possible reason is that the…

Low rates of Polio vaccination in young children are alarming New York State health officials, who worry about the disease resurging in modern America. The variant that is currently circulating has the ability to cause paralysis in many unvaccinated people. However, due to vaccine fatigue and…

The FDA approved Omicron-specific vaccines recommended for everyone ages 12 and up with a minimum of two doses of the original vaccine. However, with the public’s unfamiliarity with the vaccine, there have been a series of concerns about the effectiveness of these new vaccines. Along with the…

In China’s Shandong and Henan provinces, Chinese scientists have announced 35 infected cases of the new Langya henipavirus. With symptoms found in both humans and animals, this pathogen causes fever, cough, and fatigue – possibly related to the early days of COVID-19. However, there are no reports…