An outbreak of ten cases of poliomyelitis caused by circulating vaccine-derivied poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) is ongoing in Pakistan, centered in the Kila Abdulla/Pishin area of Baluchistan. The same virus strain has spread to the neighboring Kandahar province in Afghanistan, where two paralytic cases have been reported. Vaccine-derived poliomyelitis is a well-known consequence of immunization …
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its latest estimates on the number of new HIV infections in the United States: HIV remains a serious health problem, with an estimated 47,500 people becoming newly infected with the virus in the United States in 2010. Youth make up 7% of the more than 1 million …
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report summarizes a mumps outbreak that occurred in 2011 on a university campus in California: On September 29, 2011, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) three cases of mumps among students recently evaluated at their university’s student health services with symptoms suggestive of mumps. …
December 2-8 is National Influenza Vaccination Week. It was established in 2005 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to highlight the importance of continuing immunization throughout the holiday season. This year the push to immunize against flu comes as the disease has begun to increase substantially throughout the United States, as shown in the …
I was scheduled to deliver a lecture on picornaviruses to a virology class at Yale University this week, but had to cancel at the last minute. I prepared this screencast to make up for my absence. The Picornaviridae is a family of non-enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses which contains some well known viruses including poliovirus, rhinovirus, …
In August this year I received the following note from Michele Hardy, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Montana State University: I’m writing to ask if you’d be willing to participate in my undergraduate/graduate virology course this fall. We have several guests per semester that we Skype in to talk with students. I …
