• Mainland China Reports New Coronanvirus Deaths, Cases

    The number of new cases and related deaths from the new coronavirus rose Wednesday in mainland China, Chinese health officials said, while the discovery of new cases outside the mainland indicated the increasing spread of the outbreak. However, despite its increasing detection in numerous countries, the World Health Organization said the outbreak of the new coronavirus has not yet reached the level of a pandemic.

  • China nCoV Surge Exceeds 17,000 as More Support Announced for Vaccine Development

    With the addition of the new cases, China’s total now stands at 17,205 confirmed cases and 361 related deaths. More than 11,000 of the cases are reported from Hubei province, home of Wuhan, the outbreak’s epicenter. The World Health Organization (WHO) unveiled two new key resources, an online Q and A to answer some of the most common questions and knock down some myths, and two groups announced more support for vaccine development.

  • The Trump Administration Has Made the U.S. Less Ready for Infectious Disease Outbreaks Like Coronavirus

    As coronavirus continues to spread, the Trump administration has declared a public health emergency and imposed quarantines and travel restrictions. However, over the past three years the administration has weakened the offices in charge of preparing for and preventing this kind of outbreak. Two years ago, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates warned that the world should be “preparing for a pandemic in the same serious way it prepares for war.” Gates, whose foundation has invested heavily in global health, suggested staging simulations, war games and preparedness exercises to simulate how diseases could spread and to identify the best response. The Trump administration has done exactly the opposite.

  • DHS Issues Restrictions on Inbound Flights with Individuals Who Have Been in China

    In response to the evolving threat of the novel coronavirus, and to minimize the risk of spreading within the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has on Sunday begun to enforce restrictions for all passenger flights to the United States carrying individuals who have recently traveled from the People’s Republic of China. The restrictions began for flights commencing after 5:00 p.m. EST on Sunday, 2 February, and direct the arrival of U.S. citizens who have traveled in China within fourteen days of their arrival to one of seven designated airports, where the United States Government has enhanced public health resources in order to implement enhanced screening procedures. The administration is taking these actions to protect the American people.

  • Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response

    If the coronavirus begins to spread in the United States, what would we do? How would the U.S. government respond? Laurie Garrett writes that the answers to these questions “are especially worrying because the government has intentionally rendered itself incapable. In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure.” She adds: “The next epidemic is now here; we’ll soon know the costs imposed by the Trump administration’s early negligence and present panic.”

  • WHO Declares nCoV Public Health Emergency amid Virus Spread

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general on Thursday declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) for China’s novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, based on the nearly unanimous recommendation of its emergency committee. China’s surge of cases continues; India and the Philippines reported their first cases; and a handful of affected countries reported more cases, most of them linked to travel, but a few involving local transmission.

  • QAnon-ers’ Magic Cure for Coronavirus: Just Drink Bleach!

    QAnon, a fervently pro-Trump conspiracy theory which started with a series of online posts in October 2017 from an anonymous figure called “Q,” imagines a world where Donald Trump is engaged in a secret and noble war with a cabal of pedophile-cannibals in the Democratic Party, the finance industry, Hollywood, and the “deep state.” Will Sommer writes as the global death toll from an alarming new coronavirus surged this week, promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory were urging their fans to ward off the illness by purchasing and drinking dangerous bleach.

  • Three More Novel Coronavirus Cases Reported in U.S.

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Sunday that its testing has confirmed three more Wuhan-linked novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) cases, two in California and one in Arizona, raising the national total to five.

  • At Least Ten Chinese Cities on Lockdown; 830 Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

    The Chinese National Health Commission said Friday that there are 830 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus countrywide, while at least 25 people have died. At least 10 cities, and at least 33 million people, have been put on lockdown. Airports around the world have begun screening travelers for the coronavirus.

  • It Is Now 100 Seconds to Midnight

    The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than ever in its history. The Bulletin cites worsening nuclear threat, lack of climate action, and rise of “cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns” in moving the clock hand. December 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the first edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, initially a six-page, black-and-white bulletin and later a magazine, created in anticipation that the atom bomb would be “only the first of many dangerous presents from the Pandora’s Box of modern science.”

  • Outbreaks of Lethal Diseases Like Ebola and the Wuhan Coronavirus Happen Regularly. The U.S. Government Just Cut Funding for the Hospitals that Deal with Them

    The U.S. response to the 2014-2015 Ebola crisis has been to create a “tiered” hospital approach to the treatment of epidemics: Saskia Popescu writes that the expectations are that frontline facilities should be able to quickly identify and isolate potential patients and transfer them to an assessment or treatment hospital if necessary. But “many dangerous pathogens, including the disease now spreading in China, can be treated at run-of-the mill hospitals in the United States,” she writes. “The next epidemic could start with a patient checking in at a local urgent care clinic. Congress needs to ask if its current plan for special pathogen response prepares the country for that. It’s likely the answer is no.”

  • First Novel Coronavirus Case Detected in U.S.

    In rapidly escalating developments with the spread of the Wuhan-linked novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday the first U.S. case, involving a man who got sick after returning to Washington state from Wuhan and contacted medical authorities.

  • Edible “Security Tag” Protects Drugs from Counterfeit

    Manufacturing prescription drugs with distinct markings, colors, shapes or packaging isn’t enough to protect them from counterfeiting, DEA reports have shown. Researchers are aiming to stump counterfeiters with an edible “security tag” embedded into medicine. To imitate the drug, a counterfeiter would have to uncrack a complicated puzzle of patterns not fully visible to the naked eye.

  • New Agents to Fight Multidrug-Resistant Germs

    Resistance to antibiotics is on the rise worldwide. Fraunhofer scientists have joined forces with partners in the Phage4Cure project to explore alternatives to antibiotics. One objective is to vanquish multidrug-resistant pathogens with viruses called bacteriophages. Another is to see these phages approved to treat the dreaded hospital germ Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the most frequent bacterial cause of pneumonia.

  • Antibiotic-Resistant E coli Found in U.S. Veterinary Hospital

    Animals treated in Philadelphia veterinary hospital were found to be infected with a antibiotic-resistant strain of E coli. In the United States, the gene has been detected in only a few human bacterial infections, and never in companion animals. Only a handful of cases in dogs have been reported worldwide.