Tag: outbreak

Wisconsin pharmacist arrested on charges of sabotaging COVID vaccine doses

Steve Gorman and Rebecca Spalding – January 1, 2021

Dec 31 (Reuters) – A Wisconsin hospital pharmacist was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of sabotaging more than 500 doses of coronavirus vaccine by deliberately removing them from refrigeration to spoil, police and medical authorities said.

The pharmacist, an employee of Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, at the time that 57 vials of vaccine were found left out of cold storage earlier this week, has since been fired but has not been publicly identified, officials said.

Each vial contains 10 doses. Nearly 60 of the doses in question were administered before hospital officials determined the medication had been left unrefrigerated long enough to render the vaccine ineffective. The remaining 500-plus doses were then discarded.

Moderna Inc, maker of the vaccine, has assured the hospital that receiving an injection of any of the doses removed from refrigeration poses no safety issue, other than leaving the recipient unprotected from COVID infection, said Dr. Jeff Bahr, Aurora Health Care Medical Group president.

Neither Aurora Health nor law enforcement offered any possible motive for the sabotage.

https://news.trust.org

Losing Jaw Bones and Eyesight: 9 Dead, Over 100 Hospitalised as Rare Fungal Disease Spreads in India

– December 18, 2020

As India inches towards a grim milestone of ten million COVID-19 cases, a new rare disease known as mucormycosis is spreading across the country. According to doctors, the COVID-triggered disease has a 50 percent mortality rate.

Authorities in northern and western Indian states have alerted people as hospitals have reported the rapid spread of a deadly fungal infection, mucormycosis, across the region. At least nine people have already reportedly died due to this rare disease, while over a hundred more have been hospitalised in different hospitals in Delhi and Ahmedabad.

“Since early reports of this rare disease spread through various mediums including that of media, more people have contacted hospitals. As of now, over a hundred people are being treated for this black fungal infection in different hospitals in Delhi alone”, Dr Manish Munjal, Senior Consultant at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital told Sputnik.

Doctors say that ignoring the early signs of the rare disease may be fatal.

“Nose obstruction, swelling in the eyes or cheeks, and black dry crusts in the nose are the early symptoms of the infection. These signs should immediately prompt the conduct of a biopsy in the OPD and start of antifungal therapy as early as possible”, Munjal added.

The doctor admitted that he found some cases in non-COVID patients as well, however, most of the infections are found in recovering COVID-19 patients.

Doctors say the frequency of cases as well as high morbidity and mortality has never been seen before and is alarming.

State chief of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot has also alerted people of the state about mucoramycosis. “In this disease, there is a risk of damage to many organs of the body including the brain. An alert for the disease has been issued in Mumbai and Ahmedabad”, Gehlot said.

https://sputniknews.com

‘Nobody knows’: Experts baffled by mystery illness in India

ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL – December 8, 2020

NEW DELHI (AP) — Health officials and experts are still baffled by a mysterious illness that has left over 500 people hospitalized and one person dead in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

The illness was first detected Saturday evening in Eluru, an ancient city famous for its hand-woven products. People started convulsing without any warning, said Geeta Prasadini, the director of public health.

Since then, symptoms ranging from nausea and anxiety to loss of consciousness have been reported in 546 patients admitted to hospitals. Many have recovered and returned home, while 148 are still being treated, said Dasari Nagarjuna, a government spokesperson.

Teams of experts have arrived at the city from India’s top scientific institutes. Different theories have been suggested and are being tested. The most recent hypothesis is contamination of food by pesticides.

“But nobody knows,” Prasadini admitted.

What is confounding experts is that there doesn’t seem to be any common link among the hundreds of people who have fallen sick. All of the patients have tested negative for COVID-19 and other viral diseases such as dengue, chikungunya or herpes. They aren’t related to each other. They don’t all live in the same area. They’re from different age groups, including about 70 children, but very few are elderly.

https://apnews.com

WHO urges govts to fight malaria as death toll from disease may exceed Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa

Baz Ratner – November 30, 2020

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday that gaps in access to life-saving tools are undermining efforts to curb malaria, as deaths from the disease will far exceed those killed by Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa.

In its latest World Malaria Report’, the WHO says progress against malaria continues to plateau. In some African states, the fight against the mosquito-borne disease has been set back due to gaps in access to life-saving tools, with disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic only aggravating the situation.

Last year, more than 409,000 people were killed by malaria globally, and most of them were children in the impoverished parts of Africa.

The toll may be higher this year. “Our estimates are that depending on the level of service disruption … there could be an excess of malaria deaths of somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 in sub-Saharan Africa, most of them in young children,” said Pedro Alonso, director of the WHO’s malaria program.

Even moderate disruptions in access to treatment could lead to a considerable loss of life, the WHO said. A 10 percent disruption in access to effective antimalarial treatment in sub-Saharan Africa could lead to 19 000 additional deaths, while disruptions of 25 and 50 percent could result in an additional 46,000 and 100,000 deaths respectively.Despite recent achievements, progress in fighting the disease in the region has stalled, Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, warned.

https://www.rt.com

Ebola-like virus which causes massive bleeding found to jump from human to human after Bolivia outbreak

RT – November 16, 2020

Scientists have sounded the alarm over an Ebola-like virus from Bolivia which has been found to spread from person to person, killing three out of every five confirmed patients.

The rodent-borne Chapare virus first emerged in 2004 in the Bolivian province from which it gets its name, about 370 miles east of the country’s capital city, La Paz.

New research has shed light on the deadliness of the disease and how it spread from patient zero.

Following a 2019 outbreak in the country, researchers have found that, though it comes from a different viral family than Ebola, it also causes hemorrhagic fever, which can, in turn, cause life-threatening organ failure and bleeding.

At present, there is no treatment for Chapare outside of intravenous hydration and supportive care. The virus causes fever, headache, abdominal pain, rash and bleeding of the gums, and is believed to result from contact with rat urine or droppings.

Dr. Caitlin Cossaboom, an epidemiologist with the US Centers for Disease Control, presented findings from her research into a 2019 outbreak to the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s annual meeting on Monday.

A 65-year-old rice farmer was patient zero in the outbreak who then spread the disease to a 25-year-old doctor who treated him.

“The night before he died, she suctioned saliva from his mouth, and then she fell ill nine days later,” Cossaboom explained.

The 48-year-old paramedic who transported the doctor to hospital was the next to be infected after performing CPR on her.

A gastroenterologist conducted an endoscopy on the doctor and developed symptoms 14 days later. All of the cases resulted in exposure to bodily fluids from an infected person.

Patient zero, the doctor and the gastroenterologist all died from the Chapare virus, while the ambulance worker and another infected person survived.

https://www.rt.com

New deadly disease dubbed VEXAS gives men fevers, blood clots, and inflammation

Strange Sounds – October 28, 2020

There are likely hundreds of men in the United States, if not more, who suffer from a just-discovered genetic disease that causes symptoms including blood clots in veins, recurrent fevers, lung system abnormalities, and — in 40% of patients — death. 

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health discovered the disease, named VEXAS, by working backwards: Rather than grouping people with similar symptoms and searching for biological explanations, they searched the genetic makeup of 2,500 people for variations that could be linked to the wide-ranging symptoms of their undiagnosed inflammatory conditions.

“We had many patients with undiagnosed inflammatory conditions who were coming to the NIH Clinical Center, and we were just unable to diagnose them,” said Dr. David B. Beck, clinical fellow at NHGRI and lead author of the paper.

“That’s when we had the idea of doing it the opposite way. Instead of starting with symptoms, start with a list of genes. Then, study the genomes of undiagnosed individuals and see where it takes us.“

Using that method, the scientists eventually identified three middle-aged men who all had the same mutations in a gene called UBA1. They later discovered 22 other men with the same mutations and similar symptoms, like blood clots and fevers.

The research team named the disease VEXAS after its key characteristics: vacuoles (unusual cavity-like structures in certain cells), E1 enzyme (which is related to UBA1), X-linked (per the chromosome it’s connected to), autoinflammatory (meaning the immune system accidentally attacks the body) and somatic (since the condition seems ot pop up sometime during the patient’s life, rather than at birth).

The researchers suspect VEXAS has only been found in men because it’s linked to the X chromosome, of which men only have one. Women’s additional X chromosome, they hypothesize, could be protective in this case.

https://strangesounds.org

Scientists discover ‘devastating’ NEW genetic disease that’s killed 40% of known patients by attacking lungs and immune system

RT – November 1, 2020

The new condition, which is caused by genetic mutations, has shown a particularly high death rate, as patients were not responding to any currently available treatments, the researchers said.

The disease – ‘vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory and somatic syndrome’ – has been dubbed VEXAS. It causes symptoms that include blood clots in veins, recurrent fevers, abnormalities in the lungs, and vacuoles – unusual cavity-like structures – in the myeloid cells, which play a crucial part in the human immune system.

Researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) came across the disease after analyzing the genome sequences of more than 2,500 people with undiagnosed inflammatory diseases. In comparing the data, they found that 25 adult males had particular mutations in the UBA1 gene, which is believed to be the source of VEXAS.

“Instead of looking at clinical similarities, we were instead taking advantage of shared genomic similarities that could help us discover a completely new disease,” said Daniel Kastner, the scientific director of the Intramural Research Program at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

The NIH reported that the new disease “can be life-threatening,” as 40 percent of the VEXAS patients the researchers studied have died. The high death toll revealed “the devastating consequences of the severe condition,” the team stated.

Kastner told NBC News that patients with VEXAS become “really sick,” and “don’t respond to any treatments, from high doses of steroids to various chemotherapies.”

https://www.rt.com

Mongolia warns of bubonic plague outbreak as SEVENTEEN provinces bordering Russia are deemed at risk

Jonny Tickle – July 17, 2020

While the spread of Covid-19 is starting to slow down in Russia, the world’s largest country may have another outbreak on its doorstep.

An expert in Mongolia has warned that the bubonic plague may spread throughout the country on Russia’s border.

Bandikhuu Amgalanbayar, the deputy director of Mongolia’s National Center for the Study of Zoonotic Infections, has warned that over a hundred districts in 17 of the 21 provinces are at risk of a bubonic plague outbreak. Russia and Mongolia share an almost 3,500km border.

The potential of an outbreak first came to light on July 3, when Mongolian media reported that a man and a woman from Mongolia’s western Khovd region were suspected of having contracted the disease after eating raw marmot meat.

Less than two weeks later, on July 16, Mongolian doctors announced another suspected case of the plague, when a 16-year-old had a high temperature after eating marmot meat. Just days before, a 15-year-old died from the disease before getting to the hospital.

https://www.rt.com

Historical Epidemic Making a Scary Comeback Due to a Bacterial ‘Clone’

Ricky Scaparo – October 10, 2020

(ETH) – A deadly pathogen called scarlet fever was once the leading cause of death for children across the western world and was nearly eradicated thanks to 20th-century medicine but new outbreaks of it have surfaced in the UK and North East Asia over recent years suggesting we’ve still got a long way to go

The reason we are experiencing a resurgence of this deadly pathogen still remains a mystery. However, a new study has reportedly uncovered clues in the genome of one of the bacterial strains responsible, showing just how complex the family tree of infectious diseases can be.

According to the report from Science Alert, The species behind the illness is group A strep, or Streptococcus pyogenes; which is a ball-shaped microbe that can churn out toxic compounds called superantigens, that are capable of wreaking havoc inside the body. Especially in children. Results of this in the body can cause mild symptoms such as a bad rash and be as severe as causing a toxic shock that causes organs to fail.

With the invention of antibiotics, outbreaks could easily be managed before they got out of hand. By the 1940s, the disease was well on the way out but this looks to be changing. “After 2011, the global reach of the pandemic became evident with reports of a second outbreak in the UK,

beginning in 2014, and we’ve now discovered outbreak isolates here in Australia,” says the University of Queensland molecular biologist Stephan Brouwer. “This global re-emergence of scarlet fever has caused a more than five-fold increase in disease rate and more than 600,000 cases around the world.”

https://endtimeheadlines.org

Texas residents warned of tap water tainted with brain-eating microbe

Guardian – September 26, 2020

Texas officials have warned residents of some communities near Houston to stop using tap water because it might be tainted with a deadly brain-eating microbe.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality warned the Brazosport Water Authority late on Friday of the potential contamination of its water supply by Naegleria fowleri.

The commission issued an advisory warning people not to use tap water for any reason except to flush toilets in Lake Jackson, Freeport, Angleton, Brazoria, Richwood, Oyster Creek, Clute and Rosenberg.

Those communities are home to about 120,000 people. Also affected are the Dow Chemical works in Freeport, which has 4,200 employees, and the Clemens and Wayne Scott state prison units, which have 2,345 inmates and 655 employees.

The Brazosport Water Authority’s water source is the Brazos river.

Naegleria fowleri is a microscopic amoeba commonly found in warm freshwater and soil, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose, from where it travels to the brain and can cause a rare and debilitating disease called primary amebic meningoencephalitis.

The infection is usually fatal and typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places such as lakes and rivers. In very rare instances, Naegleria infections may also occur when contaminated water from other sources, such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pool water or heated and contaminated tap water, enters the nose.

https://www.theguardian.com