Tag: UKHSA

First outbreak of highly infectious polio has just been detected in UK, Health officials declare national incident

Ricky Scaparo – June 22, 2022

Polio is spreading in the UK for the first time in decades, officials claim. Health bosses urged Brits to check their children’s jabs are up to date after picking up signs of the virus being passed between individuals.

According to TheSun, Experts have detected the same bug in London sewage samples since April – a clear signal of a community outbreak. No cases have yet been confirmed in the UK and the UKHSA said samples were found in East and North London. These chiefs say ‘suggests it is likely there has been some spread between closely-linked individuals’. Because of this, they said these cases could be shedding the virus strain in their feces.

Investigations are currently ongoing and there have not yet been any cases of paralysis reported. Medics today said that the emergence of polio in the UK reminds us that it has not yet been eradicated. The last case of polio being contracted in Britain was in 1984 and the country was declared polio-free in 2003.

Before a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, epidemics would result in thousands of people being paralyzed annually and hundreds of deaths. UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) experts believe a traveler – likely from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Nigeria – shed the virus in their stools after being given the oral polio inoculation.

“Vaccine-derived poliovirus has the potential to spread, particularly in communities where vaccine uptake is lower. On rare occasions it can cause paralysis in people who are not fully vaccinated so if you or your child are not up to date with your polio vaccinations it’s important you contact your GP to catch up or, if unsure, check your red book.

“Most of the UK population will be protected from vaccination in childhood, but in some communities with low vaccine coverage, individuals may remain at risk.

“We are urgently investigating to better understand the extent of this transmission and the NHS has been asked to swiftly report any suspected cases to the UKHSA, though no cases have been reported or confirmed so far.”

According to Sky News, The virus presents a risk to anyone who has not been vaccinated, especially children and young adults. The national uptake of the childhood polio vaccine is high but in London, rates are much lower.

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From Transmission Conundrum to Timing Factor, Experts Puzzle Over Outbreak of Monkeypox

Svetlana Ekimenko – May 21, 2022

With symptoms commonly including fever, swollen lymph nodes and a rash with blisters, confirmed or suspected cases of monkeypox – a rare disease previously limited to Western and Central Africa – have been spreading across Europe this spring.

As cases of monkeypox, both confirmed and suspected, have been reported in the US, Canada and several European countries – such as the UK, Portugal, Spain, Sweden France and, most recently, Germany – the medical community is racking its brains to figure out how the outbreak started.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has decided to convene an emergency meeting of experts to discuss the outbreak, with a focus on transmission of the virus, its high prevalence in gays and bisexual men, as well as the situation with vaccines, The Daily Telegraph has reported.

The rare disease, a version of the smallpox virus that was eradicated in 1980 but is less transmissible, has previously been limited to Western and Central Africa.

On 7 May the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) was the first health authority in Europe to announce a case of monkeypox publicly. It was confirmed in a person who had recently flown into the country from Nigeria.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), virus transmission appeared to have occurred as a result of homosexual contacts between men, at least in the UK case.

Since then, 19 more cases have been confirmed in the UK bringing the total up to 220, although the source remains elusive, as the infections appear to have been “locally acquired”, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

https://sputniknews.com

Mystery hepatitis surge in children in the UK causing liver failure

Ricky Scaparo – April 15, 2022

Parents have been urged to be on the lookout for signs of hepatitis in kids after 74 cases were detected in the UK. The condition can, in serious cases, lead to liver failure and experts have not yet pinned down the reason for the mysterious outbreak.

Prof Graham Cooke, NIHR Research Professor of Infectious Diseases, Imperial College London explained that hepatitis is a broad term to describe inflammation of the liver.

He said that this could be down to a range of issues – such as a virus of exposure to a toxic substance, including alcohol and some medications. “Globally, the most important causes are viruses that have adapted to infect the liver. “Early tests appear to have excluded these as a cause in the hepatitis currently under investigation.

So far, there have been 60 cases in England and 11 in Scotland of unexplained hepatitis, or liver inflammation, since the start of the year, most of them in children who are 2 to 5 years old. Case numbers in Wales and Northern Ireland haven’t been released.

Although no child has died, a “small number” have needed a liver transplant, said the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on 8 April. This means they will have to take drugs that suppress the immune system for the rest of their lives, which will leave them at risk of infections.

Hepatitis is often associated with specific pathogens, such as the hepatitis C virus, but it can be triggered by many other things. There have previously been small clusters of cases caused by the hepatitis A virus, which can be spread by fecal contamination of food or water.

The hepatitis viruses A to E have all been ruled out in the current outbreak, though. Finding the cause will require carefully investigating every case to see if they have factors in common, says Graham Cooke, an infectious disease specialist at Imperial College London.

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UK reports first HUMAN case of deadly bird flu strain in SW England, Thousands of animals may be culled as ‘biggest ever’ outbreak sweeps country

Ricky Scaparo – January 6, 2022

The first human case of a deadly strain of bird flu in the UK has been detected in a person living in the South West of England as the country faces its largest-ever outbreak in animals, health officials have said.

According to Daily Mail, Britain’s ‘patient zero’ caught the H5N1 virus after ‘very close and regular contact with a large number of infected birds which they kept in and around their home, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

It is the first-ever human case of H5N1 — which kills up to half of the people it infects — recorded in the UK and fewer than 1,000 people have ever been diagnosed with the strain globally since it emerged in the late 1990s. According to the Guardian, Bird-to-human transmission of avian flu is very rare and has occurred only a small number of times in the UK previously.

The UKHSA said only a small number of contacts were involved, all of whom were professionals working as part of the incident management team. All contacts of the person, including those who visited the premises, had been traced and there was no evidence of onward spread of the infection to anyone else, it said.

The infected person is well and self-isolating, and the risk to the wider public from avian flu remains very low. Prof Isabel Oliver, the chief scientific officer at UKHSA, said: “Currently there is no evidence that this strain detected in the UK can spread from person to person, but we know that viruses evolve all the time and we continue to monitor the situation closely.

We have followed up on all of this individual’s contacts and have not identified any onward spread. SCMP warned that the UK Health Security Agency emphasized that “people should not touch sick or dead birds”.

England is in the grip of its largest outbreak ever of H5N1 virus, which causes most cases of bird flu. England has reported 63 cases confirmed since November, and at least a million birds have been culled, mostly at poultry farms, BBC News reported on Wednesday.

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