There have been 131 confirmed human infections with avian influenza H7N9 virus in China, but so far there is little evidence for human to human transmission. Three out of four patients report exposure to animals, 'mostly chickens', suggesting that most of the infections are zoonoses. Whether or not the virus ...

At the 2013 ASM meeting in Denver, Colorado, Stanley Maloy discussed human infections with avian influenza H7N9 virus with Ronald Atlas, Ph.D., University of Louisville, KY; Robert Webster; St. Jude's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN; Albert Osterhaus; Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; and Carole Heilman, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD.

Just finished recording episodes of TWiV and TWiM at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Denver, Colorado. Here are some behind the scenes photos. Podcast episodes will be published later this week. ASM General Meeting 2013 Denver, a set on Flickr.

On episode #233 of the science show This Week in Virology, Vincent, Rich, Alan and Kathy review aerosol transmission studies of influenza H1N1 x H5N1 reassortants, H7N9 infections in China, and the MERS coronavirus. You can find TWiV #233 at www.microbe.tv/twiv.

Robert Herriman of The Global Dispatch interviewed me this week on the H1N1 - H5N1 reassortant study that has been in the headlines: There was much written concerning the research published earlier this month in Science, where researchers from China's Harbin Veterinary Research Institute reported creating an  avian H5N1 (highly pathogenic) and pandemic 2009 H1N1 (easily transmissible) hybrid, that ...