Tag: United States

Washington resident dies of complications from bird flu strain never before reported in humans

Colourized transmission electron micrograph of avian influenza A H5N1 virus particles (yellow), grown in canine kidney epithelial cells (blue). Photo: CDC and NIAID.

Washington resident dies of complications from bird flu strain never before reported in humans

Published November 21, 2025

Published by: CNN
Published on: November 21, 2025
By Katherine Dillinger, Jen Christensen

A Washington resident died of complications from an infection with a bird flu strain never before reported in humans, the state Department of Health said on Friday.

The patient was an older adult with underlying health conditions who had been hospitalized and undergoing treatment for infection with H5N5 avian influenza.

It’s the first reported case of bird flu in a human in the US in nine months and only the second reported human death from the virus in the United States, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the risk to the general public from the virus remains low.

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United Kingdom

Delay in COVID-19 lockdowns in U.K. resulted in some 23,000 more deaths: public inquiry

Published November 20, 2025

Published by: CBC News / Reuters
Published on: November 20, 2025

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson oversaw a “toxic,” “chaotic” and dithering response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a delay in locking the country down resulting in about 23,000 more deaths, a report by a public inquiry concluded on Thursday.

Britain recorded more than 230,000 deaths from COVID, a similar death rate to the United States and Italy but higher than elsewhere in western Europe, and it is still recovering from the economic consequences.

An inquiry, which Johnson ordered in May 2021, delivered a blistering assessment of his government’s response to the pandemic, criticizing his indecisive leadership, lambasting his Downing Street office for breaking their own rules and castigating his top adviser, Dominic Cummings.

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measles

Measles outbreak in Arizona and Utah could spell the end for U.S. elimination status

Published November 19, 2025

Published by: NBC News
Published on: November 19, 2025
By Aria Bendix, Erika Edwards

A measles outbreak in Arizona and Utah shows no sign of slowing, putting the United States dangerously close to losing its elimination status for the vaccine-preventable disease.

With holiday travel and gatherings approaching, doctors worry that transmission could escalate. If measles continues to spread through Jan. 20, that will mark a year of sustained transmission in the United States. At that point, the disease would no longer be considered eliminated and it would instead revert to being endemic, or constantly present.

The backward step seems highly likely.

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avian flu

1st US human bird flu case in 9 months confirmed with strain only seen in animals before

Published November 14, 2025

Published by: ABC News
Published on: November 14, 2025
By Mary Kekatos

A Washington state resident has tested positive for bird flu, marking the first human case confirmed in the U.S. in nine months.

The patient, who is an older adult with underlying health conditions, developed symptoms including high fever, confusion and respiratory distress and was hospitalized in early November, according to the Washington State Department of Health.

Testing confirmed the patient has H5N5, a strain of bird flu that has previously been reported in animals but never before in humans, according to the Washington State Department of Health. However, officials say the risk to the public is low.

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With an absent CDC and mismatched ‘subclade K’ flu strain, experts face upcoming season with uncertainty

influenza

With an absent CDC and mismatched ‘subclade K’ flu strain, experts face upcoming season with uncertainty

Published November 12, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: November 12, 2025
By Stephanie Soucheray

Earlier this month, a group of Canadian researchers published early influenza data for the 2025-26 season, issuing a warning: There has been an observed mismatch with the seasonal influenza vaccine strain and what is emerging as the dominant flu strain this season, H3N2 subclade K.

Based on early reports from Japan and the United Kingdom, the Canadian researchers wanted to publish these data to encourage enhanced surveillance in North America this season, especially given the tumultuous situation in the United States.

“This is not the time to be flying blind into the respiratory virus season,” Danuta Skowronski, MD, the epidemiology lead for influenza and emerging respiratory pathogens at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, told CIDRAP News. Skowronski was senior author of the paper, which was published in the Journal of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada.

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measles

Canada officially loses its measles elimination status

Published November 10, 2025

Published by: The Globe and Mail
Published on: November 10, 2025
By Alanna Smith, Kristy Kirkup

Canada has been stripped of its measles elimination status after failing to interrupt transmission within one year of an outbreak that continues to spread in parts of the country.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said Monday it was notified by The Pan American Health Organization, a regional arm of the World Health Organization, that Canada lost its designation – an accomplishment it held for 27 years.

“While transmission has slowed recently, the outbreak has persisted for over 12 months, primarily within under-vaccinated communities,” the statement said.

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measles

Canada loses its measles elimination status

Published November 10, 2025

Published by: Radio-Canada
Published on: November 10, 2025
By Mélanie Meloche-Holubowski

The Pan American Health Organization has informed the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) that Canada no longer has the status of a country that has eliminated measles, due to an outbreak that has been ongoing for more than one year.

This status indicates that there is no continuous transmission of the disease for 12 months or more in a given geographical area.

“Despite considerable efforts by Canada, the country has lost its status. Measles is now considered to be endemic in this country,” PAHO director Dr. Jason Barbosa told a news conference.

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Alberta

Pharmacists decry ‘hurdles’ facing Albertans who want a COVID vaccine

Published November 4, 2025

Published by: Global News
Published on: November 4, 2025
By Ken MacGillivray, Skylar Peters

Changes to the Alberta government’s COVID vaccination plan this year mean many Albertans are facing long waitlists and a hefty bill to get their shot.

With the government-run program only offered through public health clinics and many of those clinics experiencing long waits, some Albertans are choosing instead to go to their local pharmacist to get immunized — as they have done in previous years.

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long COVID

COVID vaccination cuts risk of long-term symptoms in teens by over a third, data suggest

Published November 3, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: November 3, 2025
By Mary Van Beusekom

The risk of long COVID was 36% lower in adolescents vaccinated within 6 months before their first infection than in their unvaccinated peers, suggests an analysis of US Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) trial data published late last week in Vaccine.

The study, led by Massachusetts General Hospital researchers, involved 724 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years who were vaccinated against COVID-19 within the previous 6 months and 507 unvaccinated youth matched on sex, symptom onset, and enrollment date.

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cardiovascular disease

Covid and Flu Can Triple Your Risk of Heart Attack

Published October 29, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: October 29, 2025
By Nina Agrawal

The risk of a heart attack triples within the first few weeks after a Covid-19 infection, the study suggested, and quadruples in the month after a flu infection. The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, was a large review and analysis of existing research.

“It endorses a general idea that we’ve been thinking about and talking about for the past several years — that infections are generally not benign,” said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study.

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vaccines

Analysis: Last year’s COVID vaccines protected well against severe illness

Published October 28, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: October 28, 2025
By Stephanie Soucheray

The updated 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccines provided 57% protection against hospitalization and death, although their effectiveness waned over time, according to a study yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The study assessed effectiveness against infection, emergency department (ED) visits, and hospitalization. Protection against infection and ED visits was 45%.

The study was based on outcomes seen among Nebraskan residents during the 2024-25 respiratory virus season and used hospital discharge data from member hospitals of the Nebraska Hospital Association and data from death certificates from the Nebraska Office of Vital Records.

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research

A surprise bonus from COVID-19 vaccines: bolstering cancer treatment

Published October 20, 2025

Published by: Science
Published on: October 20, 2025
By Phie Jacobs

The innovative messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines that thwarted the ravages of COVID-19 may also help fight tumors in cancer patients, according to a new analysis of medical records and studies in mice.

People with cancer who coincidentally received the mRNA shots before starting drugs designed to unleash the immune system against tumors lived significantly longer than those who didn’t get vaccinated, a research team announced yesterday at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin. Laboratory experiments by the group suggest the vaccines rev up the immune system, making even stubborn tumors more susceptible to treatment.

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indoor air quality

Federal Contract for up to $40 Million Fuels Research to Revolutionize Clean Indoor Air and Defend Against Next Pandemic

Published October 16, 2025

Published by: UC Davis
Published on: October 16, 2025
By Melody Warnick

When a public building catches fire, its built-in systems automatically respond: Smoke alarms blare, sprinklers kick on, and occupants quickly evacuate.

But what if the life-threatening danger isn’t fire but invisible airborne contaminants that can make occupants sick? Could a similar smart-building system monitor and improve the quality of the air indoors, where Americans spend 90 percent of their time?

With a contract for up to $40 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an ambitious multi-institutional research team led by Virginia Tech and including researchers at the University of California, Davis, aims to create just such a system.

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long COVID

Long Covid Is Real — And It’s Changing an Entire Generation

Published October 16, 2025

Published by: Rolling Stone
Published on: October 16, 2025
By Eli Cahan

Hundreds of thousands of kids in America are struggling with an illness that many doctors and schools refuse to recognize

In January 2020, just weeks before the NBA shut down and Costco shelves emptied and Tom Hanks got sick, Joy Corbitt’s only brother died in his mid-forties with symptoms of Covid. Which meant, from the pandemic’s earliest days, Joy was taking no chances.

She’d heard that Black and brown people like her seemed to be getting sick and dying at higher rates than other Americans. And that kids were either not getting sick, or getting less sick, or getting sick in ways we didn’t really understand. So, when it came to protecting her then-14-year-old daughter Lia, the North Carolina mother was vigilant.

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anti-vaxxers

Trump Rattles Vaccine Experts Over Aluminum

Published October 15, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: October 15, 2025
By Christina Jewett

Federal health officials are examining the feasibility of taking aluminum salts out of vaccines, a prospect that vaccine experts said would wipe out about half of the nation’s supply of childhood inoculations and affect shots that protect against whooping cough, polio and deadly flu.

The review at the Food and Drug Administration began after President Trump listed aluminum in vaccines as harmful during a press briefing about the unproven link between Tylenol and autism.

Aluminum salts have been in vaccines since the 1920s and are added to enhance the immune-stimulating effect against the virus or bacteria covered by the inoculation. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, has been a longtime critic of aluminum in vaccines, which he has suggested is linked to autism.

Vaccine experts said the tiny amount of aluminum salts in vaccines — often measured in the one-millionth of a gram — has a long track record of safety and is essential to generating lasting immunity from disease. Developing vaccines without aluminum salts, they said, would require an entirely new formulation from scratch.

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war on science

Chaos following mass firings, rehirings at CDC

Published October 13, 2025

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: October 13, 2025
By Stephanie Soucheray

Late Friday night more than 1,000 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were sent an email saying they had been let go due to reduction-in-force (RIF) efforts at the end of the second week of the federal government shutdown.

Some, however, were mistakenly fired and were rehired the next day, according to sources close to the situation.

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war on science

They Fought Outbreaks Worldwide. Now They’re Fighting for New Lives.

Published October 13, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: October 13, 2025
By Apoorva Mandavilli

The Trump administration’s new global health strategy, released last month, lists its most important goal as outbreak prevention and response, both to protect Americans and to safeguard the economy.

Containing the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a decade ago cost the United States $5.4 billion globally and more than $70 million domestically, the strategy report notes, adding, “As we have unfortunately seen all too frequently, an outbreak anywhere in the world can quickly become a threat to Americans.”

Yet, the freeze on America’s foreign aid in January disrupted many programs that extinguished outbreaks. Citing “waste, fraud and abuse” at federal agencies, the administration also laid off thousands of scientists, including many who worked on preventing and containing infectious diseases.

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war on science

Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error

Published October 11, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: October 11, 2025
By Apoorva Mandavilli, Sheryl Gay Stolberg

The Trump administration on Saturday raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were mistakenly fired on Friday night in what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse.

Among those wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of the federal measles response team, those working to contain Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and the team that assembles the C.D.C.’s vaunted scientific journal, The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

After The New York Times reported the dismissals, two federal health officials said on Saturday that many of those workers were being brought back. The officials spoke anonymously in order to disclose internal discussions.

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Tag: United States

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Hundreds of thousands of kids in America are struggling with an illness that many doctors and schools refuse to recognize

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