text:
Timeline of Microbiology
American Society for Microbiology: https://www.asm.org/podcasts
At least 800 types of bacteria live in the human gut. The collective genome of these organisms contains 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself.
3.77Bil BC Scientists in 2017 reported that microfossils of tiny tubular structures in ancient Canadian rocks dated to this time and were believed to be microbes.
2Bil BC A bacterium became symbiotic with the cell from which animals and plants developed. Chromosomes from this bacterium's mitochondria later carried 37 genes in the human body.
220Mil BC Bacteria and single-celled animals and plants from this period became encased in tree resin on the northern edge of the Tethys Ocean. Scientists in 2006 studied the organisms in amber of this time from a town in the Italian Dolomites. Ciliates and amoeba in the amber appeared identical to modern examples.
50,000BC In 2017 scientists in Mexico discovered microbial life trapped in crystals in caves in Naica that dated to about this time.
10000BC The 1st known outbreaks of smallpox occurred about this time among agricultural settlements in northeastern Africa.
8000BC In 1958 anthropologist Frank Livingstone proposed that Plasmodium falciprum, the deadliest of 4or 5 parasites that cause human malaria, hopped from chimps to humans about this time and human hunter-gatherers began settling on farms.
2800BC In 2015 scientists reported DNA evidence of the plague dating to about this time. It was however a different strain than the one that caused later pandemics.
1350BCE The 1st recorded smallpox epidemic took place during an Egyptian-Hittite war. Hittite warriors caught the disease from Egyptian prisoners. The king and heir were fatally infected and the empire fell apart.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)(NW, 10/14/02, p.46)
430BC-410BC A mysterious disease killed one-third of the Athenian population. Thucydides, who was stricken but recovered, described the plague in Athens (likely an outbreak of typhus fever) in Book 2 of his History of the Peloponnesian War.
(NH, 6/97, p.11)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
412BC Greek physician Hippocrates described the "Cough of Perinthus." The most notorious episode related to infectious diseases in the Corpus Hippocraticum is the epidemic 'Cough of Perinthus', a winter epidemic of an upper respiratory tract infection and its consequences, extensively narrated in the seventh chapter of the sixth book of Epidemics.
(http://tinyurl.com/y74fpqoa)(Econ 5/27/17, p.75)
212BC A suspected influenza epidemic struck during Rome's siege of Syracuse.
(Econ 5/27/17, p.75)
180CE A smallpox epidemic hit Rome and killed 3.5 to 7 million people including Emp. Marcus Aurelius. It was dubbed the Plague of Antonine.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.46)
249-262 The Plague of Cyprian, later thought to be a hemorrhagic fever, emptied many Roman cities and coincided with a sharp and permanent decline in economic activity.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Cyprian)(Econ, 3/14/20, p.62)
541-542 The Plague of Justinian swirled around the Mediterranean and recurred over the next two centuries. It killed as many as 40 million people and weakened the Byzantine Empire. "The bodies of the sick were covered with black pustules... the symptoms of immediate death," wrote Procopius, historian of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. At its peak in Constantinople, he reported, the plague killed 10,000 people a day.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian)(NG, 5/88, p.678)
910 Rhazes, an Arab physician, wrote the 1st account of smallpox and proposed the earliest theory of immunity.
1017 In China a hermit introduced the prime minister to "variolation," an inoculation using germs from smallpox survivors.
1347 Oct, Sailors from Genoa arrived in Messina, Sicily. Plague had broken out earlier among the troops of the Kipchak Khan, who was besieging the Black Sea port of Kaffa. He catapulted dead bodies over the city walls. When Italian trading vessels in the harbor returned to Genoa, the carried the plague to Europe. The plague, an infectious fever caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, appears in several varieties: bubonic (which involves swelling of the lymph glands), pneumonic (which involves the lungs) and septicemia (which involves severe infection in the bloodstream).
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.31)(HNQ, 1/20/01)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B4)
1347-1350 The Black Death: A Genoese trading post in the Crimea was besieged by an army of Kipchaks from Hungary and Mongols from the East. The latter brought with them a new form of plague, Yersinia pestis. Infected dead bodies were catapulted into the Genoese town. One Genoese ship managed to escape and brought the disease to Messina, Sicily. The disease quickly became an epidemic. It moved over the next few years to northern Italy, North Africa, France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, the Low countries, England, Scandinavia and the Baltic. There were lesser outbreaks in many cities for the next twenty years. An estimated 25 million died in Europe and economic depression followed. In 2005 John Kelly authored "The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time."
(NG, 5/88, p.678)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B1)(SFC, 10/13/11, p.A6)
1348 The Black Plague struck England and wiped out a third of the population.
1348 The Black Plague struck the Mediterranean Basin.
(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.F3)
1348 Accused of being a cause of the plague, the Jews in France were dragged from their houses and burned. Pogroms occurred throughout Europe. When the plague subsided, few Jews were left in Germany or the Low Countries.
(NG, 5/88, p.681)
1348 Plague arrived at Montpellier, France, in the spring and killed an estimated two-thirds of the 50,000 inhabitants.
1348 The population of Siena, Italy, dropped from 97,000 to 45,000 in a few months due to the Black Plague. Bernardo Tolomei, nearly blind founder of the Benedictine Congregation of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto in the 1340s, died along with 82 of his monks after leaving the safety of his monastery to tend to plague victims in Siena. In 2009 the Vatican declared him a saint.
(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B1)(AP, 4/26/09)
1439 Jul 16, Kissing was banned in England in order to stop germs from spreading.
1519 Mar 13, The Spaniards under Cortez landed at Veracruz. Cortez landed in Mexico with 10 stallions, 5 mares and a foal. Smallpox was carried to America in the party of Hernando Cortes.
(SFEC,11/9/97, p.T5)(SFC, 9/2/96, p.A3)(HN, 3/13/98)(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1534 The King of Siam died of smallpox.
1553 Bavaria outlawed summer-made beer because wintertime brews had outstripped them in quality. In 2011 a yeast from Patagonia, Saccharomyces eubayanus, was identified as being 99.5% identical to the non-ale half of the lager yeast genome. It was believed that over time Saccharomyces eubayanus and Saccharomyces cerevisiae hybridized to form Saccharomyces pastorianus, used by lager brewers today.
1555-1558 England suffered outbreaks of dysentery, typhus and Influenza all over the country.
(http://www.mongenes.org.uk/epidemics_in_bri.html)
1563 Jan 1, A great plague in London began about this time. From the 1st January to end of December, 17,404 people died of the plague.
1576 An epidemic of plague Venice. In 2006 a well-preserved skeleton was found on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave. Experts said the remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws indicated that she was believed to be a vampire.
1604 Agustino Salumbrino, a Jesuit monk, left Rome for Peru, where he studied native plants for their healing powers, especially the bark of the cinchona tree used by the Incas to treat shivering. By 1630 quinine entered the literature as a treatment. In 2003 Fiammetta Rocco authored "The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World."
(WUD, 1994, p.1245)(SFEC,10/26/97, BR p.8)(WSJ, 8/26/03, p.D5)
1616-1619 An epidemic, possibly viral hepatitis from contact with Europeans, ravaged the Wampanoag confederacy in Massachusetts. This helped to make possible the Pilgrim settlement in 1620.
1623 The 1st case of smallpox in Russia was reported.
1665 In London at least 68,000 people died of the plague this year. In 1722 Daniel Defoe published his novel "A Journal of the Plague Year." The novel posed as a historical document covering the London plague. The Lord Mayor of London exterminated all the city's cats and dogs, which allowed the rats, the real transmitters of the disease, to increase exponentially.
(NG, 5/88, p.684)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)(WSJ, 10/21/06, p.P8)
1720 May 25, "Le Grand St. Antoine" reached Marseille, plague killed 80,000.
1721 Apr 26, The smallpox vaccination was 1st administrated. Lady Mary Wortley Montegu had returned to England following a stay in Turkey with her ambassador husband. She had learned of a procedure to inoculate against smallpox and began a campaign to have the procedure established.
1721 Jun 26, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston gave the 1st smallpox inoculation in Boston. The epidemic had arrived by ship from Barbados.
1721 Jul 21, Doctors in Boston raised objections to a new practice of using live smallpox to inoculate patients against the disease. A smallpox epidemic had recently broken out in Boston and Cotton Mather (58), following some study, encouraged the inoculation technique to prevent death from the disease.
1721 Oct 6, Deaths from smallpox in Boston reached 203 with 2,757 people infected.
1722 Cotton Mather authored "An Account of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small-Pox…" This followed work in support of inoculation trials in Boston.
(WSJ, 11/22/08, p.W11)
1723 Aug 26, Anton van Leeuwenhoek (b.1632), Dutch biologist, inventor (microscope), died in Delft, Netherlands. [some sources say Aug 30]
(http://es.rice.edu/ES/humsoc/Galileo/Catalog/Files/leewnhok.html)
1730 Smallpox returned to Boston, but by this time inoculation was recognized as a viable means of preventing death from the disease.
1749 May 17, Edward Jenner, physician, discoverer of vaccination, was born.
1753 Smallpox hit North America and a 38% infection rate was recorded in Boston. Benjamin Franklin lobbied for variolation.
1763 British forces, under orders from Sir Jeffrey Amherst, distributed smallpox-infected blankets among American Indians in the 1st known case of its use as a biological weapon.
1775 Dec 9, Lord Dunmore (1730-1809), governor of Virginia, lost decisively at the American Revolution Battle of Great Bridge. Following that defeat, Dunmore loaded his troops, and many Virginia Loyalists, onto British ships. Smallpox spread in the confined quarters, and some 500 of the 800 members of his Ethiopian Regiment died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray,_4th_Earl_of_Dunmore)(Econ, 8/10/13, p.26)
1789 Smallpox was introduced to Australia and caused devastation among the aborigines.
1793 There was a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. About 5,000 people were killed. Stephen Girard risked his life and fortune in stopping the epidemic.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.6)(Econ, 5/14/16, p.52)
1796 May 14, English physician Edward Jenner administered the first vaccination against smallpox to his gardener's son, James Phipps (8). A single blister rose up on the spot, but James later demonstrated immunity to smallpox. Jenner actually used vaccinia, a close viral relation to smallpox [see July 21, 1721].
(Econ, 11/22/03, p.77)(AP, 5/14/08)
1796 The US government passed its first quarantine law during a yellow fever epidemic.
1800 Jul 8, Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse gave the 1st cowpox vaccination to his son to prevent smallpox. [see May 14, 1796]
1806 In San Francisco an epidemic of measles and flu killed 343 of the 850 native people at the Dolores Street mission.
1806 Napoleon ordered that all French citizens be vaccinated against smallpox.
1813 Mar 15, John Snow (d.1858), obstetrician, was born in York, England. He worked on the epidemiology of cholera.
(ON, 5/05, p.8)(www.johnsnowsociety.org/johnsnow/facts.html)
1821 A cholera outbreak in Saudi Arabia killed an estimated 20,000 pilgrims.
1824 Jan 26, Edward Jenner, discoverer of vaccination, died.
1824 US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said quarantines restricting movement from endangered areas were withing "the acknowledged powers of state3s to provide for the health of the citizens".
1827-1828 An epidemic hit the missions of northern California. Researchers later believed it was measles.
1828 Feb, Alta California Gov. Jose Echeandia arrested 8 men and imprisoned them in San Diego for entering the area without passports or permission. James Ohio Pattie (~1803-~1833) was among those arrested. Pattie was released in December after agreeing to vaccinate people on the coast following an outbreak of smallpox in northern California.
1830 Sep 9, In Russia a cholera epidemic, entering the country from Asia, forced the lockdown of Nizhny Novgorod province. Alexander Pushkin wrote his short story "The Undertaker".
1831 A cholera epidemic broke out in London.
1832 Feb 6, There was an appearance of cholera at Edinburgh, Scotland.
1832 Feb, A cholera epidemic ended in Great Britain. Some 800 people died of the disease in London. Dr. John Snow eventually traced the London epidemic to a water pump on Broad Street. [see 1849] In 2006 Steven Johnson authored "The Ghost Map," a history of London's cholera outbreak.
(www.mernick.co.uk/thhol/1832chol.html)(WSJ, 10/21/06, p.P8)
1832 Aug, In Pennsylvania 57 Irish immigrants died of cholera after traveling there to build a railroad. In 2009 their bones were found at a woodsy site known as Duffy's Cut, named after Philip Duffy, who hired the immigrants from Donegal, Tyrone and Derry to help build the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. In 2010 evidence indicated that at least some of the men's remains showed signs of violence.
1837 A smallpox epidemic hit northern California and decimated the North Bay Indians. It was later believed to have originated at Fort Ross.
1840 The word "tuberculosis" first appeared in print about this time.
(WP, 1951, p.5)
1841-1912 Gerard H. Hansen, Norwegian physician. He discovered the leprosy-causing Mycobacterium leprae (aka Hansen's disease).
(WUD, 1994, p.644)
1843 Dec 11, Robert Koch (d.1910), German physician, bacteriologist, and medical researcher, was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
(http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1905/koch-bio.html)
1848 A new cholera epidemic struck in London.
1849 Sep, In San Francisco the Happy Valley area, located between First and Third and Mission and Harrison, was hit this fall by dysentery due to bad water.
{SF, USA, Microbiology}
1849 John Snow (1813-1858), English obstetrician, authored his 39-page pamphlet "On the Mode of Communication of Cholera." He presented evidence that the disease was spread through contaminated water.
1853 A smallpox epidemic hit Hawaii and 5-6000 people died.
1853 Yellow Fever broke out New Orleans. Some 9,000 people were killed.
1854 Mar 14, Paul Ehrlich, German bacteriologist, was born. He later received the Nobel Prize for medicine.
1854 Italian anatomist Fillipo Pacini discovered the cholera bacillus, but did not prove that it caused cholera. His work remained obscure and was not translated to English.
1854 Cholera broke out in London again. Dr. John Snow traced it to cesspool near a public water pump on Broad Street.
1855 Yellow Fever broke out in Norfolk, Va., after a steamship carrying mosquitoes in its cisterns docked from the West Indies.
1855 A third pandemic of bubonic plague broke out in China. It killed 12 million people and eventually spread to every continent of the world.
(NG, 5/88, p.682)(SFC, 9/20/14, p.C1)
1857 May 13, Ronald Ross, bacteriologist, was born.
1858 Jun 16, Dr. John Snow (b.1813), English obstetrician, died of a stroke. He is considered the father of epidemiology for his efforts in documenting the spread of cholera in London epidemics.
1860 In France the Yonne Department had almost 99,000 acres of grapevines for wine. Diseases such as oidium and phylloxera destroyed the Chablis vines in the late 19th century and the Carmenére grape was wiped out in France. In 1994 the Carmenére grape was found to be thriving in Chile.
(SFC, 7/16/97, Z1 p.4)(WSJ, 12/28/01, p.A17)
1864 Phylloxera was 1st noted on grapevines in Roquemaure, France. It ravaged the vineyards there for nearly 20 years. In 1872 it reached Austria and Portugal. In 1875 it appeared in Australia and in 1886 in South Africa. In 1987 George Ordish authored "The Great Wine Blight." In 2004 Christy Campbell authored "Phylloxera: How Wine was Saved for the World." In 2011 George Gale authored "Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine."
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.E3)(Econ, 7/23/11, p.81)
1865 Sep 1, Joseph Lister performed his 1st antiseptic surgery.
1865 In Saudi Arabia a cholera outbreak killed 15,000 pilgrims and then spread worldwide.
1866 Jul 21, A cholera-epidemic killed hundreds in London.
1867 There was a yellow-fever epidemic in the US.
(SSFC, 2/25/01, BR p.5)
1870 Aug 17, Frederick Russell, developed 1st successful typhoid fever vaccine, was born.
1876 The gladiolus rust, Uromyces trasversalis, was discovered in South Africa. Some 90 years later it turned up in the Mediterranean region then spread to Europe, South America, and Australia. In 2006 it was detected in the US.
(SSFC, 8/9/09, p.L2)
1877 Arthur Downes and Thomas P. Blunt of Shrewsbury proved the bactericidal action of light. Blunt was offered a British knighthood for his achievements in research, but humbly declined. His partner in research, Arthur Downes, accepted the title.
(http://members.shaw.ca/TPBLUNT/)
1878 Jul 12, A Yellow Fever epidemic began in New Orleans. It killed 4,500.
1879 Aug 30, John Bell Hood (b.1831), former confederate general, died of yellow fever in a New Orleans epidemic.
(AH, 10/02, p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_Hood)
1881 Aug 6, Alexander Fleming (d.1955), Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin (1928), was born. He won the Nobel Prize in 1954. Fleming first observed the antibiotic properties of the mold that makes penicillin, but it was Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey who developed it into a useful treatment.
(AHD, 1971, p.501)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming)
1882 Mar 24, German scientist Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discovered the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.
1884 Robert Koch, German microbiologist, rediscovered, isolated and cultured the cholera bacillus, Vibrio cholerae. Italian anatomist Fillipo Pacini discovered the bacillus in 1854, but did not prove that it caused cholera.
1885 Mar, In Loganville, Pa., Dr. George E. Holtzapple (22) saved Fred Gable (16), who was suffering from pneumonia, by supplying the boy with pure oxygen. Oxygen therapy became the only effective treatment for pneumonia until antibiotics became available in the 1940s.
1887 Feb 21, The 1st US bacteriology laboratory opened in Brooklyn.
1889 May, A flu epidemic was reported in Bukhara, Russian Empire. By November the epidemic had reached Saint Petersburg. The 1889-1890 flu pandemic, better known as the "Asiatic flu" or "Russian flu", killed about 1 million people worldwide. It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century. Virologists in 2002 attempted to gather viral tissue from frozen grave sites in Siberia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_flu_pandemic)(SFCM, 2/17/02, p.27)
1890 The tuberculin skin test (TST or Mantoux) was developed.
1891 Mar 15, Joseph Bazalgette (b.1819), English civil engineer, died. He built interceptor sewers along the banks of the Thames and ended cholera outbreaks in London.
(Econ, 12/15/12, p.78)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bazalgette)
1892 Mar 3, 1st cattle tuberculosis test in US was made at Villa Nova, PA.
1892 Aug 30, The Moravia, a passenger ship arriving from Germany, brought cholera to the United States.
1894 The plague in China reached its port cities and began to circle the globe. In Hong Kong it killed some 10,000 people. Dr Alexander Yersin, a French bacteriologist sent to Hong Kong by the Institute Pasteur, found in the buboes of the plague victims "a swarm of microbes, all similar in appearance...short bacilli with rounded ends."
1895 Sep 28, Louis Pasteur (b.1822), French chemist (Pasteurization), died at 72. In 1995 Gerald Geison (d.2001) authored "The Private Science of Louis Pasteur.
1895 Prof. Emile Pierre van Ermengem of Belgium identified the bacterium Bacillus botulinus.
(NW, 5/13/02, p.54)
1897 Albert Ruskin Cook (1870-1951), British born medical missionary in Uganda, became the first person to describe buruli ulcers. The disease is primarily an infection of subcutaneous fat, resulting in a focus of necrotic (dead) fat containing myriads of the mycobacteria in characteristic spherules formed within the dead fat cells. Skin ulceration is a secondary event.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buruli_ulcer)
1898 Jun 2, Dr. Paul-Louis Simond discovered the connections between rats, fleas and humans in the transmittance of the Plague in Bombay, India.
1899 Mar 6, Aspirin was patented following Felix Hoffman's discoveries about the properties of acetylsalicylic acid.
1899 Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles, a zoologist from Hartford, Connecticut, identified "progressive pernicious anemia," seen in the southern United States, as caused by A. duodenale. He also identified the other important hookworm species: Necator americanus. Stiles had studied medical zoology in Europe in the late 19th century and learned about hookworms while helping with animal autopsies and studies. From 1909 to 1914, doctors, public health officials, and northern businessmen worked to destroy what they called the "germ of laziness." They believed such a germ caused many of the South's problems, poverty, a sickly population, and economic underdevelopment. But the germ these people were attacking wasn't a germ at all. It was a worm, the hookworm.
(www.isradiology.org/tropical_deseases/tmcr/chapter12/intro.htm)(SSFC, 9/26/10, DB p.50)
1900 Jan 2, The cargo steamship Australia arrived in San Francisco at the end of a voyage from Hawaii. Plague was known to have already hit Honolulu and rats aboard the ship carried the disease. Wong Chut King became the city's first victim when he was found dead at the Globe Hotel at Jackson and DuPont (later Grant Ave.). A short term rope quarantine was created around the 6-by-2 block area of Chinatown.
1900 Jan 19, In Australia Arthur Paine (33), a delivery man whose daily work brought him into contact with Sidney's Central Wharf, died of Bubonic plague. A population of black rats had been likely introduced to Australia on the first fleet of ships carrying white settlers.
(http://tinyurl.com/3bkr6ll)
1900 May 30, It was reported that 9 deaths in San Francisco's Chinatown were caused by Bubonic plague, the Yersinia pestis bacterium, and that 159 policemen had set up a quarantine. In 2003 Marilyn Chase authored "The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco."
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W2)(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.M2)(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.D10)
1900 Jun 26, A commission that included Dr. Walter Reed began the fight against the deadly disease yellow fever. Walter Reed (1851-1902), U.S. Army doctor, went to Cuba and verified that yellow fever was caused by a mosquito.
(HN, 9/13/98)(WSJ, 10/22/99, p.B1)(AP, 6/26/97)
1901 Feb 20, Rene Dubos, French-US microbiologist who developed the first commercial antibiotic, was born in France. He authored "Health & Disease."
1901 Aug 27, In Havana, Cuba, U.S. Army physician James Carroll allowed an infected mosquito to feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of yellow fever. Days later, Carroll developed a severe case of yellow fever, helping his colleague, Army Walter Reed, prove that mosquitoes can transmit the sometimes deadly disease.
(MC, 8/27/02)(ON, 10/01, p.8)
1902 Ronald Ross (1857-1932), an English physician, won the Nobel Prize for his work on malaria. His story is part of the 1997 novel "The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery" by Amitav Ghosh. In 2003 Fiammetta Rocco authored "The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World."
1903 Dr. Rupert Blue reported that the bubonic plague epidemic had been confined to the 24 blocks of San Francisco's Chinatown and that the district was now plague-free and plague-proof. Blue had replaced Joseph Kinyoun as the federal official charged with fighting the epidemic.
(ON, 1/00, p.6)(SFC, 9/20/14, p.C2)
1903 Walter Sutton, American cytologist, suggested that the Mendelian elements of heredity lay on the chromosomes.
(NH, 6/01, p.32)
1904 May 29, Robert Knox, bacteriologist, was born.
1905 San Francisco's bubonic plague appeared to be eradicated following the killing of tens of thousands of rats and the fumigation of Chinatown. The death toll reached 113.
1905 The US Supreme Court upheld a Massachusetts' requirement for all adults in Cambridge to be vaccinated for smallpox.
1905 Nettie Stevens, geneticist, showed that sex was associated with the X chromosome.
1906 Aug 26, Albert Bruce Sabin, U.S. virologist, born in Poland. In 1955, he developed an oral vaccine against polio.
1907 May 27, Bubonic Plague broke out again in San Francisco.
(HN, 5/27/98)(SFC, 9/20/14, p.C2)
1907 Sep, By this time some 55 new cases of bubonic plague were identified in San Francisco and the issue became a national concern.
1908 Jan, Dr. Rupert Blue held a mass meeting and called on the citizens of SF to support his war against bubonic plague. Gov. James Norris Gillet had warned that the city faced a general quarantine. In the following rat campaign an estimated 2 million rats were killed.
(ON, 1/00, p.6,7)
1908 San Francisco managed to eradicate its 2nd bubonic plague epidemic. By this year some 2 million rats were killed and 190 people left dead in the two epidemics that had spread over eight years.
1909 May 19, San Francisco Mayor Edward Taylor wrote a letter to Pres. Taft testifying to the valuable aid of the federal government in the city's recent campaign against bubonic plague.
1909 Konstantin S. Merezhovsky, biologist, argued that the chloroplasts in plant cells evolved from symbionts of foreign origin and coined the term "symbiogenesis" to describe the merger of different kinds of life forms into new species.
1909 Carlos Chagas (1879-1934), a Brazilian doctor, described how a fatal infection, that became known as Chagas disease, was transmitted as a single cell parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, carried by insects that typically bite their sleeping victims on the face. In 1921 Chagas won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. In 2010 scientists at UC San Francisco reported the development of a protease inhibitor, K777, which appeared to kill the parasite.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Chagas)(Econ, 4/11/09, p.36)(SSFC, 2/14/10, p.A20)
1910 Feb 19, Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) was released from 4 years of quarantine on New York's North Brother Island. She was a carrier of Salmonella typhi, the bacterium that causes typhus, but showed no symptoms herself. In 1914 she caused a typhus outbreak in the Sloane Maternity Hospital. She was again arrested and returned to North Brother Island where she died Nov 11, 1938.
(ON, 7/01, p.12)(Econ, 4/11/20, p.62)
1910 May 27, Robert Koch (b.1843), German bacteriologist (TB, Cholera, Nobel), died.
1910 Jun 22, German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich announced a definitive cure for syphilis.
1910 Dec 18, The first dispensary for treating hookworm disease opened in Columbia, Mississippi.
(http://tinyurl.com/24cckey)
1912 Feb 10, Dr. Joseph Lister, founder of sterile technique in surgical practice, died at age 85. In 1917 Sir Rickman John Godlee authored "Lord Lister."
1912 The steamship Acme became known as the "Typhoid Ship" after 30 cases of typhoid were contracted on trips from Humboldt Bay to San Francisco. Crew member "H.O." was later identified as a carrier of typhus and was isolated in the Marine Hospital. In 1917 H.O. was reported to still being a carrier and a menace to public health.
1913 The US Virus Serum Toxin Act gave the USDA authority to ensure that veterinary diagnostic kits are safe and accurate and to decide where cattle can be tested and for what.
(WSJ, 3/904, p.A8)(SFC, 4/10/04, p.A3)
1913 New York state passed "the eight foot sheet law" to ensure that the upper sheet in a hotel was of sufficient length to cover the face so "that the inhalation by the occupant of bacteria &c, may be prevented."
(WSJ, 10/4/08, p.W8)
1913 Bela Schick devised the "Schick test," which had a dramatic effect on the incidence of diphtheria. The skin test determined a patient's susceptibility to diphtheria. Mass surveys followed by immunization of Schick-positive children with inactive toxin resulted in a drastic decrease in the incidence of the disease.
1915 Sep 19, Elizabeth Stern, Canadian pathologist, was born. She first published a case report linking a specific virus to a specific cancer.
1915 British bacteriologist Frederick Twort, superintendent of the Brown Institution of London, discovered a small agent that infected and killed bacteria. The agent came to be known as a microphage, a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage)
1916 Anton Dilger (1884-1918), an American educated as a surgeon in Germany, set up a basement laboratory in Washington DC for cultivating anthrax bacteria and Pseudomonas mallei to infect horses and cattle destined to supply Allied armies. German saboteurs disseminated the bacteria. Dilger later moved to Mexico to help goad Mexico into attacking the US. He died of the Spanish flu in Madrid. In 2007 Robert Koenig authored "The Fourth Horseman: One Man's Mission to Wage the Great War in America."
1918 Mar, The flu epidemic began at Fort Riley, Kansas, where 48 men died. It was carried by recruits to Europe where it mutated and returned with a vengeance. [see May, 1918] The Spanish flu was later found to have been caused by a genetic fusion of pig and human viruses. In 1997 Dr. Johan Hultin recovered tissue in Brevig Mission, Alaska, with frozen virus and submitted it for gene sequencing.
(WSJ, 2/9/98, p.A16)(HNPD, 7/21/98)(SFC, 2/26/01, p.A9)(WSJ, 9/7/01, p.A1)(SFCM, 2/17/02, p.8)
1918 Sep 23, In San Francisco Edward Wagner of Eddy Street reportedly brought the flu by train from Chicago. Within the next three weeks there more than 500 cases and nearly 50 deqths in the city.
1918 Sep 28, A flu epidemic began in San Francisco.
1918 Sep 28, In Pennsylvania a parade to sell war bonds resulted in an epidemic of the "Spanish flu" that caused mass death in Philadelphia.
(https://tinyurl.com/yycfvbfj)
1918 Oct 17, Anton Dilger (B.1884), an American saboteur educated as a surgeon in Germany, died of Spanish flu in Spain. [see 1916] In 2007 Robert Koenig authored "The Fourth Horseman: One Man's Mission to Wage the Great War in America."
1918 Oct 24, San Francisco reported 1407 new cases of influenza and 82 deaths for the day. The Board of Supervisors passed an emergency ordnance requiring all persons to wear gauze masks on the streets or where two or more people are together until the danger is past.
(SSFC, 10/21/18, DB p.46)(SFC, 4/13/20, p.B2)
1918 Oct 25, In San Francisco 94 people perished from the Spanish flu.
1918 Oct 29, The San Francisco flu epidemic reached its highest one day mortality toll with 103 deaths.
1918 Oct-1918 Nov, Some 2,021 people in SF died of the flu. San Franciscans wore protective face masks during the [Spanish] flu epidemic of this year. Researchers in 1997 attempted to isolate the virus from victims buried in the Arctic and Alaska.
(SFC, 12/24/96, p.E3)(NPR, 9/29/97)(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W5)
1918 Nov 2, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that 175 people have been arested for not wearing masks or not wearing them properly during the in fluenza pandemic. Most pleaded ignorance and paid a $5 fine.
(SSFC, 5/10/20, p.C2)
1918 Nov 21, San Franciscans removed their face masks and celebrated the end of its Spanish flu pandemic, however the disease soon flared up again.
1918 The Spanish flu raged through San Quentin prison Marin County, Ca., infecting 500 of its 1,900 inmates in just two months.
1918 The Spanish flu wiped out 6% of India's population. The pandemic is believed to have killed up to 12-17 million people in the country, the most among all countries.
(Econ, 3/28/20, p.8)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic_in_India)
1918-1919 The Influenza Pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide. It has been cited as one of the most devastating epidemics in history, its toll surpassing the number of people killed in WWI and the Black Death Plague outbreak of 1347 to 1351. More than 28% of Americans were infected with influenza and 600,000 died, suffocating as their lungs filled with fluid. As the numbers of patients soared, medical personnel and facilities were overwhelmed and emergency tent hospitals, such as the one seen above, were established in many cities. At the height of the epidemic, the death rate was so high that a nationwide shortage of gravediggers and caskets resulted. While the terrifying epidemic continued into 1919, the number of deaths began to decline in November 1918, as the number of susceptible people dwindled.
1919 Jan 11, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted 15-1 to revive the citywide mask order after some 600 new cases of the Spanish flu were reported in a single day. The law was rescinded in February and by the fall the epidemic was over.
(SFC, 9/12/15, p.C2)(SFC, 4/13/20, p.B2)
1919 Jan 15, San Francisco public health officials reported 510 new influenza cases and 50 deaths.
1919 Jan 16, San Francisco reinstated a mask law after some 600 new cases of the flu were reported in a single day. The law was rescinded in February and by the fall the epidemic was over.
1919 Feb 1, In San Francisco Dr. William Hassler lifted a public mask order that had been re-instated to fight the influenza pandemic.
1919 Feb 28, In San Francisco a 2nd burst of the Spanish flu raised the number of dead in the city to 3,213 with deaths still being counted.
1919 Mar 19, A typhoid epidemic raged in Petrograd, Russia, killing 200 daily.
1920-1929 Medical studies in 2014 confirmed that the common ancestor of HIV-1 group M virus originated in Kinshasa about this time.
1921 The Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine was first used against tuberculosis. It was developed by Albert Calmette, a French physician and bacteriologist, and his assistant and later colleague, Camille Guérin, a veterinarian. In 2020 trials were conducted to test its efficacy on COVID-19.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCG_vaccine)(https://tinyurl.com/scsfs5a)
1922 Nov 15, It was announced that Dr. Alexis Carrel discovered white corpuscles.
1925 Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) built a mansion to house his collection of French impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in Merion, Pennsylvania. The collection grew to some 2,500 objects and their setup and access was highly restricted by Dr. Barnes' trust indenture. Barnes had made his fortune with a pediatric antibiotic called Argyrol. By 2000 his foundation was broke. In 2003 John Anderson authored ""Art Held Hostage," an account of the Barnes collection.
(WSJ, 11/28/95, p.A-12)(WSJ, 7/18/03, p.W18)
1925 In debates over the Geneva Protocol opponents touted poison gas as a "decisive offensive weapon." A ban on chemical and biological weapons was signed by most nations, but not the US until much later. The Geneva Convention outlawed the use of biological warfare, but did not prohibit nations from continuing the production of biological agents.
(SFC,11/12/97, p.C2)(NH, 10/98, p.18)(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1928 Sep 3, Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) discovered, by accident, that the mold penicillin has an antibiotic effect. It wasn't until 1941 that it was tested on humans with promising results.
(V.D.-H.K.p.354)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming)(AP, 8/3/19)
1930 A computer study in 2000 suggested that the AIDS virus was introduced to the human population from chimp and monkey variants about this time.
(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 1/15/01, p.A11)
1930 Minoru Shirota, a Japanese researcher, discovered Lactobacillus casei shirota.
(Econ Sp, 12/13/03, p.11)
1932 Apr 28, A yellow fever vaccine for humans was announced.
1932 Aug 18, Luc Montagnier, virologist, was born. He discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
1934 Hans Zinsser, Harvard bacteriologist, wrote "Rats, Lice and History," a biography of the virus behind typhoid fever.
(NH, 9/98, p.9)(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
1935 The vollum strain of anthrax was 1st isolated from a cow in Oxfordshire, U.K. This was the strain later used on Gruinard Island tests. Hundreds of Bacillus anthracis strains exist. Other common strains named were Ames, Sterne and Michigan. The Ames strain was named after a sick cow in Ames, Iowa.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A8)(WSJ, 11/8/01, p.A1)
1937 The West Nile virus was 1st identified in the West Nile District of Uganda. It was able to cause fatal encephalitis in humans.
1940 Japanese warplanes dropped plague-infected fleas over southwest China. In 2001 Chinese doctors testified in a Tokyo trial and said at least 109 people died as a result. In 2002 a symposium of historians reported that the Japanese killed at least 440,000 Chinese in the 1930s and 1940s by dropping disease carrying fleas and cholera-coated flies from planes.
(WSJ, 1/25/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/22/07, p.B12)
1941 Jul 4, Howard Florey & Norman Heatley met for 1st time, 11 days later they successfully recreated penicillin.
1941 Jul 15, Florey and Heatley presented freeze dried mold cultures (Penicillin).
1941 George Beadle, geneticist, and Edward Tatum, chemist, identified genetic mutations that disabled specific steps in the synthesis of a complex molecule. They thus showed that a gene was a thing on a chromosome that specified an enzyme.
1941 Prof. William Reeves (1916-2004) and William M. Hammon isolated the 2 viruses that caused western equine and St. Louis encephalitis and proved that they were carried by a mosquito named Culex tarsalis.
1942 Jul, Dr. Paul Fildes led a British test of anthrax in a bomb on Gruinard Island in northwest Scotland. The island became contaminated from tests and Britain acquired it for £500. Cleanup was undertaken in 1986 and the island was returned to its original owners in 1990.
(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A23)(Econ, 5/8/04, p.78)
1942 Sep, More than 400 villagers died of bubonic plague in China's eastern Zhejiang province after Japanese warplanes of medical Unit 731 dropped germ bombs. Unit 731 was stationed on the outskirts of Harbin, China, until the Soviet Union entered the war. The unit deposited typhus into the water supply flowing into Manchuria. In 2000 Yoshio Shinozuka testified to seeing men infected with the plague and then being dissected while still alive. Harbin had 26 affiliates across China and its germ bombs (anthrax, cholera, typhus and bubonic plague) killed an estimated 270,000 people. Biological warfare activities of Unit 731 were unknown to most Japanese citizens until 1981, when author Seiichi Morimura exposed its dark history in a book, "The Devil's Gluttony".
(SFEC, 12/8/96, p.C8)(SFC, 8/30/97, p.A12)(SFC, 8/15/98, p.A12)(SFC, 12/22/00, p.D6)(SFC, 6/12/01, p.A8)(AP, 8/27/02)
1942 Dec 10, George W. Merck, former president of Merck Pharmaceutical and head of the War Research Service, requested the Chemical Warfare Service to develop a biological warfare program.
1942 Dec, Dr. Ira Baldwin (1896-1999), plant bacteriologist at the Univ. of Wisconsin, was selected to head US biological warfare.
1943 Oct 9, Alexander Fleming reported in Lancet the 1st successful treatment of streptococcal meningitis with intramuscular and intrathecal (directly into the spinal fluid) injections of the just-purified penicillin.
1943-1965 Members of the Special Operations Division from Maryland's Fort Detrick biological weapons program conducted over 200 tests during this period on the effectiveness of aerially dispersed pathogens. At least 4 men died during the years of the project. Some 658,039 animals were killed, including sheep, ferrets, cats, pigs, white mice and guinea pigs.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)(AH, 6/03, p.46)
1943-1986 Building E5625, the "Pilot Plant," at the US Army Aberdeen Proving Ground was built and used for experiments and production of agents in chemical and biological warfare. In 1977 public knowledge of the pathogen experiments caused citizen outrage.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A11)
1944 Apr 27, Dr. H. Corwin Hinshaw (d.2000) first treated 4 tuberculosis-infected guinea pigs with the newly developed streptomycin antibiotic. The animals were cured. Hinshaw was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1952 but the prize went to Dr. Selman a. Waksman of Rutgers, who discovered streptomycin.
(SFC, 1/11/01, p.C16)
1945 Sir Alexander Fleming was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his co-discovery of penicillin along with Ernst B. Chain (b.1908), German chemist, bacteriologist, and Dr. Howard Florey, who found Fleming's paper in 1938 and began clinical trials.
(WUD, 1994, p.542)(SFC, 1/19/04, p.B4)
1946-1948 US scientific researchers infected hundreds of Guatemalan mental patients with sexually transmitted diseases. The researchers were trying to determine whether the antibiotic penicillin could prevent syphilis infection, not just cure it. The practice only came to light in 2010 thanks to the work of an academic researcher. On Oct 1, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a formal apology to Guatemala, and to Guatemalan residents of the United States. A 2011 report said 2,082 people were infected with syphilis, gonorrhea or chancroid. Previous studies had said about 1,300 people were exposed, including soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients.
(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39456324/ns/health-sexual_health/)(AP, 12/7/11)
1947 The 1st penicillin resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus were reported.
(NG, 11/04, p.21)
1947 The Zika virus was first isolated from a monkey in the Zika forest of Uganda.
1949 There was a cholera outbreak in Philadelphia, Pa.
1949 Lillian Barber died in Texas in the last reported US case of smallpox.
1950 Aug 12, Luis Maria Guerrero (b.1874), bacteriologist, pediatrician, and helminthologist, died of diabetes. Guerrero, a professor in Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Santo Tomas and later as head of that department, was also an uncontested authority in Tropical Medicine.
(http://tinyurl.com/yy8kadqn)
1950 Sep, A secret US Army and Navy experiment spread Serratia marcescens bacteria, because of its red pigment, and Bacillus globigii, because of its formed spores similar to anthrax, off the coast of San Francisco Bay from a mine laying ship for 6 days. The bacteria was thought to be harmless, but the germs sent 11 people to hospitals and killed one person. Edward J. Nevin, from a heart infection. In 1977 Senate subcommittee hearings the Army revealed that it had staged the mock biological attack.
(SFC, 2/21/98, p.A15)(WSJ, 10/22/01, p.A1)(AH, 6/03, p.49)
1950 By this time chestnut trees were little more than a memory in most parts of North America. The fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, which causes chestnut blight, had arrived in infected saplings from Asia in the late 19th century and began decimating the estimated 4 billion trees.
1950-1959 Panama disease in the 1950s obliterated the Gros Michel variety of bananas. By the 1960s it was close to extinction. It was replaced by the Cavendish variety. Most edible bananas do not have seeds and are sprouted from shoots of original trees that date back 10,000 years.
(SFC, 4/5/04, p.D5)(Econ, 3/1/14, p.62)
1951-1969 In Austria 230 people, including some children at a state run orphanage, were subjects of an experiment in which they were injected with the parasite which causes malaria as part of research for a cure against syphilis, long after penicillin was available.
1951 Dr. Esther Lederberg (1922-2006) of the Univ. of Wisconsin discovered the lambda phage, a virus that infects other bacteria with the ability to transfer genes among them.
1952 The WHO began tracking influenza in member countries.
1953 Mar 26, Dr. Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh announced that a vaccine against polio had been successfully tested in a small group of adults and children. By April 1955, the vaccine had undergone further testing and gained federal approval for public use. Salk's polio vaccine was so successful that by 1961 the incidence of polio had decreased by 95 percent. Dr. Joseph Melnick (d.2001 at 86) was among the first to have discovered that the polio virus belonged to the larger enterovirus group and were chiefly transmitted by fecal contamination.
(HNPD, 3/26/99)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.C2)
1953 Nov 11, The Polio virus was identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1953 Helenor Foerster (d.1998 at 103) was named "Woman of the Year for Science" by the Women's National Press Club. She co-authored the "Atlas and Textbook of Ophthalmic Pathology," and discovered that toxoplasma was the cause of a widely spread eye disease that led to blindness.
1954 Feb 23, The first mass inoculation of children against polio with the Salk vaccine began in Pittsburgh. Jonas Salk created the Salk vaccine against polio. It used a killed virus to induce immunization. Poliomyelitis is a viral attack of the central nervous system and can cause paralysis and death by asphyxiation. [see Apr 26] In 2005 David M. Oshinsky authored "Polio: An American Story – The Crusade That Mobilized the Nation Against the 20th Century's Most Feared Disease."
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.A10)(HN, 2/23/98)(AP, 2/23/98)(Econ, 6/18/05, p.79)
1954 Apr 26, Nationwide test of Salk anti-polio vaccine began. [see Feb 23]
1954 Jun 7, The 1st microbiology laboratory was dedicated in New Brunswick, NJ.
1954 Thomas Peebles collected blood from students sick with measles and used it to isolate the measles virus. In 1963 a vaccine against measles, crafted by John Enders, became available.
1955 Mar 11, Alexander Fleming (73), English bacteriologist (penicillin), died.
1955 Apr 12, The Salk Vaccine was declared safe and effective. Salk vaccine shots for polio began to be given out to school kids. The March of Dimes accomplished its mission within 20 years. Research led by Dr. Jonas Salk and supported by funds (those marching little dimes) raised annually by thousands of volunteers, resulted in the announcement that the Salk polio vaccine was "safe, potent and effective." The foundation also supported the research that led to the Sabin oral vaccine, another safe, effective polio preventative discovered by Dr. Albert B. Sabin. Following the victory over infantile paralysis, the March of Dimes turned its attention to conquering the largest killer and crippler of children: the mental and physical problems that are present at birth. Some 100 million people were given the vaccine during the 1950s and 1960s which was later found to be contaminated with the SV40 simian virus, a possible carcinogen.
(AP, 4/12/97)(440 Int'l, 1/3/99)(SSFC, 7/15/01, p.A16,17)
1955 Apr 25, The 1st cases of polio in children who received a vaccine were reported. It was later found that 2 batches of vaccine made by Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley, Ca., contained live polio virus.
1956 Apr 12, Henrique da Rocha-Lima (b.1879), Brazilian scientist, died. Working in Germany, he with Stanislaus von Prowazek (1875-1915) discovered Rickettsia prowazekii, the pathogen of endemic typhus, which he named after the German zoologist.
(www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/3185.html)
1957 A flu pandemic began in China and killed 1-4 million people. It caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957. The Asian flu broke out in Guizhou, China, and over the next two years killed at least 1 million people worldwide. This H2N2 influenza virus continued to circulate until 1968, when it transformed via antigenic shift into influenza A virus subtype H3N2, the cause of the 1968 influenza pandemic.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%9358_influenza_pandemic)(SFC, 4/13/05, p.A5)(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)
1957 Dr. Hilary Koprowski of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia developed an oral polio vaccine and tested it in Africa (Congo). The Wister polio vaccine was given to some 300,000 people in the Belgian Congo from 1957-1960. A later theory held that reuse of needles during the immunization program caused AIDS via "serial passage" that transformed the SIV virus into HIV. In 1999 Edward Hooper authored "The River," a detailed hypothesis for the origin of AIDS in Africa. Hooper suspected that the Wister polio vaccine, produced from monkey kidney cells, contained SIV virus. In 2000 a computerized study indicated that the AIDS virus was introduced to humans about 1930.
(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A19)(SFC, 1/15/01, p.A11)(SFC, 4/13/05, p.A5)(www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/pandemics.htm)
1958 Dr. Samuel L. Katz of Duke Univ. co-developed the Edmonston B vaccine against measles.
1958 The rapid development of penicillin-resistance by staphylococci led to the compound 05865 (later known as vancomycin) being fast-tracked for approval by the FDA. It became the best weapon against bacteria that were no longer vulnerable to other drugs. In 1988 bacteria resistant to vancomycin began to be detected.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancomycin)(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.C1,4)
1958 Monkeypox was first described in Denmark when several monkey imports developed lesions. The disease emerged in the Congo in 1970 with sporadic outbreaks over the years, primarily in Central and West Africa. Ten percent of those infected can die, and there is evidence of person-to-person transmission.
1958 David Carr, a British printer and former sailor for the Royal Navy, was struck with mysterious symptoms and died a year later. In 1990 his cells tested positive for AIDS. He had returned to England in 1957 before Wister polio vaccine was administered in the Belgian Congo. In 1995 it was reported that his tissue samples had been contaminated.
(SSFC, 1/14/01, p.A14,15)
1958 China's Mao Zedong wrote a poem titled "Farewell to the god of plague" to celebrate the country's victory over snail fever. Snail fever remained a major health risk for more than 50 million Chinese, with approximately 1 million people and several hundred thousand livestock infected as of 2010.
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2863366/)(Econ., 6/13/20, p.31)
1959 Researchers in 1998 found the HIV virus of AIDS in a blood specimen from a Bantu man who died in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo, later Kinshasa, Congo. This became the oldest known case and researchers believed that incidents could go back to the 1940s. Blood specimen ZR59 from the Belgian Congo of this time, was found in 1998 to be positive for the AIDS HIV virus.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.A5)(www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/165/2/)
1959 Colistin became available to treat infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, a category including the food-poisoning germs E-coli and Salmonella, as well as Acinetobacter which can cause pneumonia or serious blood and wound infections. It was abandoned for human use in the 1980s due to high kidney toxicity, but continued to be widely used in livestock farming, especially in China. In 2015 a gene, dubbed mcr-1, resistant to the antibiotic was identified in China.
1959 The Usutu virus, a life threat to birds, was 1st observed in South African mosquitoes. By 2004 it had spread to Europe and ravaged the blackbird population.
1960 The new antibiotic methicillin was introduced. In 1961 strains of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to Methicillin (MRSA) were first reported.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A4)(www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX026108.html)
1960 In Nepal malaria was eradicated. Illiterate tribes on the Terai plains were displaced by higher-caste hordes streaming down from the hills and became serfs in their own land.
1961 Strains of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to Methicillin (MRSA) were first reported. The antibiotic methicillin had only become available in 1960.
(Econ, 11/5/05, p.87)(www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX026108.html)
1962-1973 In 2001 the Pentagon began to publicly release details on the existence of Project SHAD and its umbrella program, Project 112, which involved distribution of nonlethal bacteria and occasionally real chemical or biological weapons. In 2008 the US Defense Department said 6,440 service members took part in 50 tests under Project 112 during this period, including open-air tests above a half-dozen US states. Defense officials essentially closed the books on Project 112 in 2003.
1963 A vaccine for measles became available. In the previous decade some 450,000 cases were reported in the US with about 450 deaths per year. The vaccine, based on a measles virus isolated by Thomas Peebles, was crafted by John Enders.
1964-1968 The Pentagon reported on May 23, 2002, that the Defense Dept. sprayed live nerve and biological agents over Navy ships in 6 six tests between 1964-1968. The Project shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD) experiments included the use of sarin and VX nerve gases and the staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB).
1965 Paul De Kruif authored Microbe Hunters.
1965 Chinese military researchers isolated artemisinin, a compound based on sweet wormwood, and found to be very effective against malaria.
(SFC, 5/10/04, p.A5)(Econ, 11/20/04, p.81)
1966 Dec, In China an outbreak of meningitis led to the beginning of a CIA program, one of the first in "disease intelligence," a boutique field of espionage and analysis that aims to uncover the signs before and consequences after a pandemic.
(Good Morning America, 6/20/20)
1966 In 2007 researchers said HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa, and then came to the United States in about 1969. The researchers think an unknown single infected Haitian immigrant arrived in a large city like Miami or New York, and the virus circulated for years, first in the US population and then to other nations.
1967 Jan 14, NY Times reported that the US Army was conducting secret germ warfare experiments.
(www.economicexpert.com/a/1967.htm)
1967 In Marburg, Germany, a disease believed to be caused from African monkeys infected 31 people in a laboratory. The virus came to be called the Marburg virus. Seven people died in Germany and Yugoslavia from the virus. It was traced to infected vervet monkeys from Uganda cut up for polio research.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.D2)(Econ, 8/18/07, p.40)
1968 Mar 11, San Francisco health authorities announced that evidence of bubonic plague was discovered in an autopsy on a dead rat found in the Marina District. The city had not experienced any human deaths from bubonic plague since 1909 and the last animal death from bubonic plague was reported in 1941.
1968 The Hong Kong flu pandemic broke out and killed some 34,000 Americans. Over the next two years the pandemic killed an estimated one million people all over the world. It was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus, descended from H2N2 through antigenic shift. Each year an average of 20,000 Americans die of the flu.
(WSJ, 1/14/98, p.A18)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_flu)
1968 In Venezuela researchers, Napoleon Chagnon and James V. Neel, reportedly inoculated thousands of Yanomami Indians with a measles vaccine. Chagnon published "Yanomamö: The Fierce People," a summation of his 30 years in the Amazon forest. In 2000 the controversial book "Darkness in El Dorado" Patrick Tierney blamed the researchers for a major epidemic that killed hundreds of Indians. At least 30 Indians died from a measles epidemic that hit Yanomani villages at least one year before researchers administered the Edmonston B vaccine [see 1967].
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A4)(SFC, 11/16/00, p.A19)(NH, Jul, p.28)(WSJ, 2/23/08, p.W8)
1969 Nov 25, Pres. Nixon announced an unconditional renunciation of biological weapons.
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/9yy6bc)
1969 Benjamin Volcani (1915-1999), Palestine-born microbiologist, was the fist to show that silicon is essential for DNA synthesis in diatoms. He was also the first to find microorganisms in the Dead Sea in 1936.
(SFC, 2/12/99, p.D4)(www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/volcani.html)
1969 In Egypt the construction on the Aswan High Dam, which expanded irrigation, had led to an increase in bilharzia infection. In this year the government began to channel its bilharzia interventions into more comprehensive and organized control programs and projects. During the 1970's and 1980s a campaign of multiple drug injections to combat the parasitic disease led to a massive spread of hepatitis c.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.54)(http://tinyurl.com/wuwmx)
1971 The 1st vaccine against meningitis was developed.
1971 Managua, Nicaragua, was struck by a polio epidemic.
(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.F4)
1971 A Soviet field test of weaponized smallpox caused an outbreak that killed 2 young children and a woman at the port of Aralsk in the Kazak Republic. This was not made public until 2002.
1971 The US ended routine vaccination against smallpox.
(SSFC, 9/2/07, p.A5)
1972 Jul 25, US health officials conceded that blacks were used as guinea pigs in the 40 year Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Macon County, Ala. By this time 28 participants had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, at least 40 wives had been infected and 19 children had contracted the disease at birth [see 1932].
(SC, 7/25/02)(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A27)
1973 Jeff Schell (1935-2003), Belgian microbiologist, succeeded in altering the genetic structure of the Agrobacterium. He deleted the genes that governed tumor production.
1974 A US moratorium on genetic research ended. It had been feared that such research would lead to dangerous breeds of microbes.
1974 In Brazil a meningitis outbreak killed 4,000 people in a few weeks. 90 million people were soon inoculated by a new vaccine created by the French Merieux laboratory.
1975 Smallpox was eradicated in India and Bangladesh.
1976 Feb, Swine flu broke out at a US Army base in New Jersey. Pres. Ford announced a National Swine Flu Immunization Program a month after the virus was identified. In 1982 Richard E. Neustadt and Harvey V. Fineberg authored "The Epidemic That Never Was."
1976 Jul 21, "Legionnaire's Disease" struck in Philadelphia, Pa. 29 people died from the disease. The disease was first identified after an outbreak at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia. It was identified as Legionella pneumophila and found to infest water systems in general and the hotel ventilation system in this case.
(OGA, 11/24/98)(SFC, 4/13/96, p.A-17)
1976 Jul 27, Air Force veteran Ray Brennan became the first person to die of so-called "Legionnaire's Disease" following an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
1976 Sep, Scientists in Antwerp received specimens from a fatally ill nun in Yambuku, Zaire (later CongoDRC), and soon realized they were dealing with a deadly and unknown virus. The Ebola virus was named after a river there. The virus starts with flu-like symptoms but can stop blood from clotting causing patients to bleed. An outbreak of the Ebola virus killed 280 people, most of whom were infected by reused syringes and needles. It was later believed that fruit bats served as a host for the virus.
(SFC, 10/27/98, p.A5)(SFC, 1/8/02, p.A6)(Econ, 7/26/14, p.36)(Econ, 10/18/14, p.11)
1976 Dec 16, The US government halted its swine flu vaccination program following reports of paralysis apparently linked to the vaccine.
1976 William H. McNeill authored "Plagues and Peoples," a history of human society with microscopic agents of disease as the main protagonists.
(WSJ, 9/9/06, p.P8)
1976 Whooping cough, caused by Bordatella pertussis, reached an all-time low of 1,010 in the US following universal childhood vaccination programs.
1977 Mar 8, The U.S. Army announced that they had conducted 239 open-air tests of germ warfare.
1977 Dr. Elizabeth Williams of Fort Collins classified the endemic chronic wasting disease of local deer as a spongiform disease. It was found to be infectious 2 years later and then spread across to 8 states and Canada. Research later suggested that it could infect people.
1977 The viral disease smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The last case of smallpox, spread by variola virus, was reported in Somalia. Int'l. immunization ceased by 1978 in most countries. In 1997 the related Monkey virus broke out in Zaire.
(SFC, 4/1/97, p.A12)(WSJ, 10/19/01, p.A9)
1978 Jan 18, Center for Disease Control (CDC) isolated the cause of Legionnaire's disease.
1978 Feb 9, In Tanzania cholera broke out and killed 300 people.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)
1978 Nov 7, By this date the CDC had confirmed 496 sporadic cases associated with outbreaks of Legionnaire's disease in the US.
(http://tinyurl.com/35af6s)
1978 The world's last know case of smallpox was caused by a leak from a British laboratory.
1979 Mar 30, Anthrax spores leaked from a secret germ-warfare plant and spread over Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Russia. Over the course of 2 months at least 105 people died of anthrax poisoning. [see Apr 2] Reports did not emerge until October.
(WSJ, 10/11/01, p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_Anthrax_leak)
1979 Apr 2, Anthrax was found to have leaked from the secret lab of Compound 19 in Sverdlovsk (later renamed Yekaterinburg) in the Ural Mountains. It caused a local epidemic that killed at least 64/66 people. Pres. Yeltsin acknowledged the leak in 1992 and allowed a team of researchers to investigate the site. In 2000 Jeanne Guillemin authored "Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak." [see Mar 30]
(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A14)(SFEC, 8/13/00, BR p.7)(WSJ, 9/18/01, p.B1)
1979 Dr. J. Robert Warren first observed an apparent bacterium in the lower part of stomach biopsies. In 1982 Dr. Barry Marshall managed to grow the slow-growing Helicobacter pylori bacterium in a culture. In 2005 the Australian researchers won a Nobel Prize for their work.
1979 AIDS was diagnosed for the first time. When the first cases of AIDS erupted in 1979 the most important sign was the occurrence of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), the so-called "gay cancer" appearing on the bodies of some homosexuals dying of the disease.
(V.D.-H.K.p.354)(www.konformist.com/1999/aids/cantwell2.htm)
1979 A global commission certified that smallpox had been eradicated, and this certification was officially accepted by the 33rd World Health Assembly on May 8, 1980.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm79sp.html)
1980 May 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that smallpox had been eradicated from the wild.
1980 The US Supreme Court ruled that "live human-made microorganism is patentable matter." This led to a rush by Genentech, Biogen and others to commercialize biotechnology.
1980 A global campaign was begun to eradicate guinea worm, aka dracunculiasis, a disabling parasitic disease existing in only 4 African countries.
1981 Jun 5, The US Federal Centers for Disease Control published the first report of a mysterious outbreak of a sometimes fatal pneumonia among gay men. Dr. Michael Gottlieb of UCLA and Dr. Joel Weisman (1943-2009) reported 5 cases of a rare pneumonia among gay men in LA. The disease was initially called gay related immune deficiency (GRID). The syndrome was named Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 1982. Within 10 years the disease killed 110,000 Americans. People infected with HIV came to be defined as having AIDS when their immune system became so weak that they got one of 26 specific illnesses including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, pneumonia, brain infections and some other cancers.
(SFC, 7/21/00, p.B2)(AP, 6/5/02)(SSFC, 6/4/06, p.A1)(Econ, 6/3/06, p.24)(SFC, 7/24/09, p.D5)
1981 Aug 28, The US national Centers for Disease Control, noting a high incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis in homosexual men, announced a medical task force had been formed to find out why. It was later determined the increased number of illnesses was caused by AIDS.
1981 Merck set up the first human trial of ivermectin for river blindness in Senegal. The drug had been developed for parasitic infections in animals. The trial showed the drug was safe in humans and highly effective at killing the disease vector in its larval state. In 1987 Merck began giving away the drug in an effort to eliminate the disease.
1982 Mar 24, On the one-hundredth anniversary of a presentation on TB by Dr. Robert Koch, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (IUATLD) proposed that March 24 be proclaimed an official World TB Day. In 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) joined with the IUATLD and a wide range of other concerned organizations to increase the impact of World TB Day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tuberculosis_Day)
1982 Marc Lappe (1942-2004), toxics expert, authored "Germs That Won't Die: Medical Consequences of the Misuse of Antibiotics."
1982 The bacteria E. coli O157:H7, a renegade strain of the normally harmless group, was first identified. People in Michigan and Oregon were sickened by the bacteria that caused bloody diarrhea and devastating kidney failure. The organism attacks the lining of the colon, exposing blood vessels and causing them to bleed. It is believed to reside normally in the stomachs of cattle. It kills an estimated 61 American each year.
(WSJ, 7/15/96, p.B1)(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A4)(SFC, 10/15/03, p.A25)
1982-1989 Marian Elliott Koshland (d.1997 at 76) held the UC Berkeley chair in the Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology. She had discovered variations in the amino acid composition of antibodies that explained how they recognized invading organisms or other foreign material.
1983 Bayer, a German drug maker, patented the active ingredient of the antibiotic Cipro.
1984 Feb 22, A 12-year-old Houston boy known publicly only as "David," died 15 days after being removed from the bubble for a bone-marrow transplant. He had spent most his life in a plastic bubble because he had no immunity to disease.
1984 Apr 22, The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said French researchers had discovered that a virus causes AIDS. Scientists identified a retrovirus named human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS.
(SSFC, 6/3/01, p.A20)(www.avert.org/his81_86.htm)
1984 Apr 23, US Health Secretary Margaret Heckler said the AIDS-virus was identified as the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. [see Apr 21]
(http://tinyurl.com/yuvyv6)
1984 Oct 25, The genetic organization of the Hepatitis B virus was published.
(www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=320225)
1984 In Oregon members of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult sprinkled Salmonella typhimurium bacteria in supermarkets, salad bars and restaurant coffee creamers near Portland. Over 750 people were sickened.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A9)(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.R1)
1984 Rabbit Calicivirus Disease was 1st discovered among rabbits in China. It appeared in the US for the 1st time in 2000.
1985 Nov, The US FDA approved imipenem, a penicillin-like drug.
(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/2px4jy)
1985 In California an outbreak of listeria was linked to soft cheese made from raw milk produced in Los Angeles. Of the 142 cases reported, 93 were in pregnant women or their children. There were 48 deaths, including 20 fetuses.
(www.notmilk.com/forum/463.html)
1985 Listeria monocytogenes became a major health concern during a contamination of Mexican-style cheese made by Jalisco Mexican Products. It causes listeriosis, which produces flu-like symptoms that can be deadly to fetuses, and patients with compromised immune systems.
1985 Researchers isolated SIV, the simian immunodeficiency virus.
1986 The US-based Carter Center organized a campaign to eradicate Dracunculiasis, a disease caused by an infection related to Guinea worms. In 2014 the number of infections was down to 148 people.
1986 Norman Fowler, Britain's Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, launched the "Don't Die of Ignorance" campaign to promote safe sex during the AIDS epidemic.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS:_Don%27t_Die_of_Ignorance)
1986 The first confirmed instance in which an animal fell ill with Mad Cow disease occurred in in the United Kingdom. Mad Cow Disease, aka bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was first confirmed.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy)(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.A1)
1986 The Univ. of Baghdad purchased anthrax along with other strains of bacteria that cause botulism and brucellosis from the American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Va.
(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.A6)
1986-2001 The life expectancy in Botswana dropped from 61 to 50 years due to the AIDS epidemic.
1987 Mar 20, The Food and Drug Administration approved the sale of AZT, a drug shown to prolong the lives of some AIDS patients. Jerome Horwitz of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine first synthesized AZT in 1964 under a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. It was developed by Burroughs-Welcome (later part of GlaxoSmithKline).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zidovudine)(WSJ, 1/30/96, p.A-16)(AP, 3/20/97)(Econ, 6/2/12, p.80)
1987 Oct, The US FDA approved Cipro, marketed by Bayer, as an antibiotic.
(www.prescriptionaccess.org/press/pressreleases?id=0014)(SSFC, 1/20/08, p.A10)
1987 Randy Shilts, a San Francisco-based writer, authored "The Band Played On," in which he chronicled the early days of AIDS. Shilts had learned in 1985 that he had AIDS, but only made it public in 1993.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Band_Played_On)(SSFC, 2/11/18, DB p.50)
1987 Some 13,000 people fell ill in Carrollton, Ga., from the cryptosporidium parasite in contaminated tap water.
1988 May 26, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that the 1st NYC cases of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever struck 4 people between May and July of 1987.
{NYC, Medical}
(http://tinyurl.com/nsejy)
1988 Dec 1, The first World Aids Day was held. Dr. Jonathan Mann, Director of the Global Program on AIDS (later known as UNAIDS) had approved a concept put forward by James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter in 1987, and agreed with the recommendation that the first observance of World AIDS Day should be December 1, 1988.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_AIDS_Day)
1988 Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE) was first detected in Europe. The vancomycin antibiotic was developed in 1958.
(SFEC, 9/14/97, p.C1,4)
1989 The Group O AIDS virus was identified in West Africa. It had marked genetic differences from the more common Group M strains that were responsible for a worldwide pandemic.
1989 The Hepatitis C virus was first isolated. It causes an infection of the liver that is usually lifelong and incurable. Scientists in 1999 found evidence of the virus in frozen blood samples from 1948.
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.A4)(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A3)
1989 Merck Corp. announced the discovery of the 3-dimensional structure of the enzyme protease. It was seen as a promising target for attacking the virus that causes AIDS.
1989 There was an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus among 450 primates in Reston, Va.
(FB, 9/12/96, Neighbors p.1)
1990 Apr, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult sent three trucks into central Tokyo to spray poisonous botulin mists. The convoy then attacked US bases at Yokohama and Yokosuka. The botulin did not work and the cult turned to use anthrax.
1990 The amoeba Balamuthia mandrillaris was first discovered in a mandrill baboon. In 2001 it was reported to have destroyed the brain of a 3-year-old girl in the SF Bay area.
1990 The SARII group of bacteria was first identified. This group constituted about a third of the single-celled organisms in the ocean.
1992 May 1, It was reported in the WSJ that a new study indicated that peptic ulcers were caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori.
1993 Jan 7, In San Francisco the number of people dying from AIDS passed 10,000.
(SSFC, 1/7/18, DB p.53)
1993 Mar, Drinking water in Milwaukee became contaminated with the cryptosporidium bacterium and more than 100 people died and some 400,000 got sick.
(SFC, 6/26/96, p.A6)(SFC, 6/24/98, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A11)
1993 Jun, In Japan the Aum Shinri Kyo cult pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and created a cloud that would settle on victims, but it didn't work.
1993 Jul, The Aum Shinri Kyo cult again pumped a slurry of liquid anthrax into a sprayer and shot it near the Imperial Palace and around central Tokyo without success.
1993 In Sweden 97,008 people died this year from the seasonal influenza.
(Reuters, 5/18/20)
1994 Sep, India's eastern port city of Surat, Gujarat state, was hit with pneumonic plague. 52 people lost their lives. From August to October 693 suspected cases and 56 deaths were reported from the five affected Indian states as well as the federal district of New Delhi.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_plague_epidemic_in_Surat)(Econ, 12/5/15, p.40)
1994 Laurie Garrett authored "The Coming Plague".
1994 Sudden oak disease was first reported in California. The specific pathogen responsible was identified in 2000 as the fungus-like Phytophthora ramorum microbe. Experts believed that it arrived in the state via the nursery trade. By 2008 it was the world's most quarantined plant pathogen.
1994 The Hendra virus was first discovered and named for the Australian suburb where it was found in an outbreak that killed a horse trainer and 13 horses. It causes flulike symptoms that can lead to pneumonia or encephalitis. It is believed to originate in fruit bats in Australia and mainly infects horses.
1995 Mar 17, The federal government approved the nation's first chicken pox vaccine, Varivax by Merck & Co.
1995 May 9, Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, was placed under quarantine after an outbreak of the Ebola virus.
1995 Jul, The Ebola virus killed 244 people in Kikwit, Zaire.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A11)
1995 Protease inhibitors, a cocktail drug therapy for AIDS, were first introduced. AIDS became the leading cause of death among Americans aged 25-44. Hoffman-La Roche, a Swiss drug firm, launched the first protease inhibitor.
(SSFC, 6/3/01, p.A21)(Econ, 6/2/12, p.80)
1995-2004 The amoeba called Naegleria fowleri killed 23 people in the United States during this period. In 2007 health officials noticed a spike with six cases, three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s. the killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
1996 May 9, Bacterial meningitis has infected more than 100,000 people in West Africa over the last 3 months and more than 10,000 have died. The epidemic has been most intense in the region just south of the Sahara known as the Sahel. The 1996 epidemic resulted in some 20,000 deaths. The "meningitis belt" swept from Senegal to Ethiopia about every 10 years.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.C-5)(WSJ, 3/17/03, p.B4)
1996 Jun 27, A report from the World Health Organization said that South Africa has the worst tuberculosis problem in the world and that drug-resistant forms (XDR-TB) of the disease were spreading rapidly.
(SFC, 6/27/96, p.A12)(Econ, 2/24/07, p.58)
1996 Aug 8, Food poisoning due to E. coli bacteria in the city of Sakai, Japan, was attributed to radish sprouts.
(WSJ, 7/8/96,p.A1)
1996 Aug 21, Today's issue of Science reported the 1,738 gene sequence of the organism Methanococcus jannaschii that oceanographers in 1982 found in an undersea volcanic vent and later classified as Archaea, distinct from Prokarya and Eukarya.
1996 Congress tightened rules on the distribution of pathogens following a frightening record by the American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Va., of selling dangerous germs.
1996 Scientists discovered bacteria living in a tank of nuclear waste. The bacteria, later called extremophiles, had adapted to 15 times the dose that would kill a human being.
1996 The first evidence arrived that combination antiretroviral therapy (ART), a cocktail of HIV-suppressing drugs, could radically change the course of AIDS.
1997 May 9, In Hong Kong a 3-year-old boy became ill with the flu. He died May 21 and the flu was identified as subtype H5N1, a bird flu.
1997 May 13, In Burundi an outbreak of Typhus was reported. Some 20,000 cases in 3 northwest provinces were reported by March, mostly in Hutu regroupment camps set up by the Tutsi-led military.
1997 Aug 5, It was reported that a Yale Univ. research team led by Sidney Altman discovered a way to turn off genes that make bacteria resistant to antibiotic drugs. Human testing was thought to be 5 years away.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A3)(WSJ, 8/5/97, p.A1)
1997 Aug 6, It was reported that scientists had created the genetic blueprint for Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium responsible for stomach ulcers.
1997 Aug 21, A hamburger recall was extended to cover some 25 million pounds. The Hudson Foods Inc., of Rogers, Ark., closed its Nebraska beef-processing facility under a "non-negotiable" recommendation by Agricultural Sec. Dan Glickman due to E. coli poisonings in Colorado.
(SFC, 8/22/97, p.A3)(AP, 8/21/98)
1997 Nov 22, From Venezuela it was reported that 18,000 people were infected in an epidemic of dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) and that 34 had died this year. Heavy rains allowed Aedes aegypti, the mosquito which carries anyone of 4 dengue viruses, to breed in water containers left out in the open. In 2006 over 500,000 cases of dengue were reported in Latin America including 14,000 cases of DHF.
(SFC,11/22/97, p.A9)(Econ, 4/21/07, p.42)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.46)
1997 Dec 26, It was reported that the US Centers for Disease Control had begun work on a "Bird Flu" vaccine in response to the 9 confirmed cases and 4 deaths in Hong Kong.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.D1)
1997 Dec 29, In Hong Kong the government planned to start killing over 1.4 million chickens to combat the new strain of avian flu. Four people had already died of the illness.
1997 Dec, In north-eastern Kenya large numbers of cattle, goats and sheep began dying in the Garissa district. A month later people began dying as the Rift Valley Fever infected some 90,000 people. Hundreds died in 5 countries.
1997 A British team discovered that pig viruses can infect human cells.
1997 In Malaysia a virus struck the village of Nipah and killed 105 people, most of whom were involved in the hog-farming industry. Some 1.2 million hogs were destroyed and the Nipah virus epidemic ran its course over 7 months. The epidemic was later related to burning rain forests and bats seeking new food sources that passed the virus to pigs that passed it to humans. Most animals recovered but it was lethal to 40% of humans.
(SFC, 9/28/99, p.A9)(SFC, 5/29/00, p.A4)(WSJ, 6/19/03, p.A1)
1998 Feb 19, In Henderson federal officials arrested Larry Wayne Harris and William Job Leavitt for possession of suspected anthrax bacterium. Harris had earlier published the 131-page book: "Bacteriological Warfare: A Major Threat to North America." The substance turned out to be a harmless veterinary vaccine. Harris was later given an additional 6 months probation.
(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A1,8)(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.A11)(SFC, 3/25/98, p.A3)
1998 Mar 10, U.S. Air Force and Navy personnel in the Persian Gulf received vaccinations against anthrax. In 2004 a federal judge ordered a halt to anthrax vaccinations and ruled that the FDA had violated its own rules by approving the vaccine in 2003.
(AP, 3/10/99)(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A4)
1998 Mar 19, A new product was approved by the FDA to reduce salmonella in chickens. Preempt or CF-3 was a mixture of beneficial microbes that would be sprayed onto newly hatched chicks, and then ingested by the chicks to prevent salmonella growth.
1998 Mar, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said sexual diseases such as chlamydia were epidemic in the US and launched a campaign to raise public awareness. 4 million new cases a year were being reported.
1998 May 29, I t was reported that a salmonella strain impervious to 5 antibiotics was rampant in Britain. Chickens were reported sold in Minnesota that were contaminated with campylobacter resistant to a powerful antibiotic. The high use of antibiotics by farmers was adding to the problem of an increasing number of drug-resistant germs.
1998 May 15, Oysters from Tomales Bay, Ca., were removed from market shelves due to an unknown agent causing illness. the symptoms were similar to the Norwalk virus that caused illnesses around New Orleans during the winter of 1996-1997, that was traced to human sewage.
1998 Jun 4, In Taiwan it was reported that an airborne virus had killed 26 children in the last 6 weeks. Another 132 were hospitalized and as many as 9,000 were infected. Efforts to fight the disease were being centralized.
1998 Jun 10, It was reported that scientists had decoded the DNA sequence for Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
1998 Jun 23, In Chicago some 4,500 got sick from an outbreak of E. coli possibly due to contaminated potato salad at Iwan's Deli in Orland Park.
1998 Jun 23, In Georgia a virulent E. coli, O157:H7, sickened at least 6 children after playing in a Marietta water park.
1998 Jul 29-30, In Australia giardia and cryptosporidium were found throughout the water supply of Sydney. PM John Howard called the crises an international embarrassment.
1998 Oct 23, Researchers reported the complete genetic sequence of the bacteria chlamydia trachomatis.
1998 Oct 28, The life expectancy in Botswana was reported to have dropped from 61 in 1993 to 47 due to the AIDS epidemic.
1998 Oct 29, An Oscar Mayer meat packing plant in Michigan sliced and packaged products that later killed 9 people and caused 3 stillbirths due to listeria contamination.
1998 Dec 17, The CDC reported a food-poisoning outbreak due to the listeria bacteria that killed 4 people and sickened 35. Hot dogs and cold cuts were suspected.
1998 Dec 22, The Bil Mar meat packing plant in Michigan recalled 35 million pounds of hot dogs and lunch meats following the deaths of 16 people due to the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. In Jan. another 30 million pounds were recalled from the Thorn Apple Valley plant in Arkansas.
1998 The Roll Back Malaria Partnership was founded by WHO, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank, in an effort to provide a coordinated global response to the disease.
(Econ, 10/22/11, p.102)(www.rollbackmalaria.org/rbmmandate.html)
1998 In Uganda plant breeder William Wagoira found stem rust on his crops. The fungal wheat rust (Puccinia graminis) had not been seen since the Green Revolution. By 2010 the fungus had spread as far as Iran and South Africa and scientists feared further spread.
1998 The World Health Organization (WHO) and America's Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published "Infection Control for Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers in the African Health Care Centers." It became the bible on stopping transmission in poorer countries.
(Econ., 3/7/15, TQ p.7)
1999 Feb 15, Scientists announced that a new vaccine against malaria would be tested in monkeys.
1999 Mar 26, In Uganda it was reported that wheat stem-rust fungus had appeared on a crop. The fungus killed nearly half the world's crop before the green revolution of the 1950s. The black rust disease was named Ug99 and by 2007 had jumped to Yemen. In 2008 it was confirmed in Iran. In 2008 Cornell Univ. received a $26.8 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help combat the new strains of rust disease.
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/3/08, p.A16)
1999 Sep 9, In NYC it was reported that 3 people had died from mosquito-borne St. Louis encephalitis in the last few weeks. The virus was later identified as the West Nile Virus, never before reported in the Western Hemisphere. 3 years later the virus reached California.
(SFC, 9/10/99, p.A3)(SFC, 9/28/99, p.A9)(Econ, 8/2/08, p.34)
1999 Sep 30, It was reported that the Western oak beetle, P. pubipennis, and the oak ambrosia beetle, M. scutellare, were decimating black, tan and coast live oak trees across northern California. Sudden Oak Death was later attributed to a fungus of the genus Phytophthora. The pathogen was later reported to be related to a fungus that was destroying Port Orford cedars in the Pacific Northwest.
(SFC, 9/30/99, p.A21,26)(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A17)(SFC, 8/1/00, p.A13)(SFC, 9/23/00, p.A1)
1999 Nov 27, It was reported that at least 26 people had died recently in Phrae province, Thailand, from leptospirosis, a disease transmitted by rat urine. Farmers not wearing boots and gloves in their fields were vulnerable.
1999 Jared Diamond authored "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies."
(www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552)
1999 The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative was founded with money from the from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
(Econ, 10/22/11, p.102)(www.malariavaccine.org/about-overview.php)
1999 The Japanese bubble snail was first identified in the San Francisco Bay. It carried a parasite, a microscopic flatworm, that caused swimmer's itch, i.e. cercarial dermatitis.
(SFC, 9/30/10, p.A12)(www.cdc.gov/eid/content/16/9/1357.htm)
1999 In NYC crows began dying in unusual numbers. The culprit was identified as West Nile Virus, its first appearance in the Western hemisphere.
(Economist, 9/1/12, p.34)
1999 Hepatitis C virus was believed to have infected some 170 million people worldwide.
1999 Researchers began introducing phorid species in Texas in 1999. As many as 23 phorid species with pathogens attack fire ants to keep their population and movements under control. Fire ants cost the Texas economy about $1 billion annually by damaging circuit breakers and other electrical equipment.
(http://tinyurl.com/ob57v2)
1999 The fungus Cryptococcus gattii, normally found in Australia and other tropical zones, was discovered on Vancouver Island, Canada. By 2007 at least 8 people had died from infection and another 163 sickened.
2000 Mar, Health Canada quarantined the country's sperm banks after a woman contracted chlamydia from a donor sample.
2000 Jun 9, It was reported that some 5 dozen intravenous drug users in Scotland, Ireland and England had died since April from a mysterious illness not yet identified. The culprit was later identified as Clostridium novyi Type A.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.D3)(SFC, 6/15/00, p.A19)
2000 Jul 28, The US FDA approved Cipro for inhalational anthrax.
(www.lewrockwell.com/orig/sardi8.html)
2000 Aug 3, It was reported that scientists had developed the genetic blueprint of the cholera bacterium.
2000 Aug 31, It was reported that malaria researchers had identified the mechanism by which the parasite feeds on blood cells.
2000 Aug, 78 4-man teams in the Eco-Challenge Sabah encountered flooded rivers over a 2-week race in Malaysian Borneo. A number later found themselves infected with leptospirosis.
2000 Sep 19, Researchers reported for the 1st time that a new vaccine was effective against staph infections.
2000 Oct 14, In Uganda it was reported that at least 30 people had died in recent weeks of a hemorrhagic fever possibly caused by the Ebola or Marburg virus.
2000 Oct 22, Death from the Ebola fever climbed to 54 In Uganda as health officials continued a village by village search for people with contact to the virus.
2000 Oct 26, The US FDA planned to ban 2 fluoroquinolone antibiotics used by poultry farmers due to fears that humans might become infected with germs that resist treatment.
2000 Nov 12, Uganda confirmed a new case of Ebola in Masindi, the 3rd district to confirm the deadly virus.
2000 Dec 5, Uganda Dr. Matthew Lokwiya, who diagnosed the Ebola outbreak 2 months earlier, died from the disease.
2000 Dec 8, The Uganda victims with Ebola reached 400 including 160 dead.
2000 Wyeth introduced Prevnar, a vaccine to protect children against 7 strains of bacteria that can cause ear infections, pneumonia and meningitis. In 2007 researchers found a strain of bacteria that can cause ear infections, serotype 19A, that was resistance to all antibiotics approved for children.
2001 Jan 20, Dr. Charles Merieux, virologist and founder of the Merieux Laboratory, died at age 94 in Lyon, France. He helped produce the Salk vaccine cultivated in minced monkey kidney tissue. He also produced a vaccine against a meningitis strain that killed 4,000 people in Brazil in 1974.
2001 Feb 19, In Britain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was found in 27 pigs at a slaughterhouse in Essex. The last outbreak was in 1981. The outbreak was 1st identified in pigs at Heddon-on-the-Wall.
(SFC, 2/21/01, p.A12)(SFC, 3/31/01, p.D8)
2001 Feb 25, In Northumberland, England, over 800 pigs were destroyed and burned due to foot-and-mouth disease. New cases appeared at a cattle and sheep ranch in the southwest.
2001 Feb 26, In Britain new cases of hoof-and-mouth disease brought to 12 the number of farms or slaughterhouses infected. The slaughter of pigs, cows and sheep rose to some 7,000.
2001 Feb 28, Officials in Northern Ireland confirmed hoof-and-mouth disease in sheep imported from England. 8 more cases were confirmed in England and Wales.
2001 Mar 3, The foot-and-mouth scare made its way from Britain to mainland Europe with the discovery of blisters on the snouts of three pigs in northern Belgium, sparking drastic measures.
2001 Mar 5, France banned exports of animals at risk for hoof-and-mouth disease.
2001 Mar 6, The EU ordered all livestock markets closed for 2 weeks to contain foot-and-mouth disease.
2001 Mar 11, In England 25 new cases of hoof-and-mouth disease were reported with outbreaks in Scotland, Wales, Devonshire and Kent.
2001 Mar 13, France announced its first case of foot-and-mouth disease, prompting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to suspend imports of livestock and fresh meat from the European Union.
2001 Mar 14, Inspectors tightened U.S. defenses against foot-and-mouth disease a day after a case was confirmed in France.
2001 Mar 15, Britain announced plans to slaughter up to 100,000 more animals due to possible contacts with foot-and-mouth disease virus.
2001 Mar 17, Colombia suspended meat and livestock imports from Argentina for 60 days due to fears of foot-and-mouth disease. Only Israel and Russia still imported Argentine meat.
2001 Mar 20, Britain reported 46 new confirmed cases of foot-and-mouth disease, the largest daily number to date.
2001 Mar 22, In Ireland a case of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed in County Louth, on the border with Northern Ireland. 40,000 cattle were destroyed.
(SFC, 3/23/01, p.D5)(WSJ, 3/23/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 23, In Britain Prime Minister Blair ordered the creation of 2-square-mile killing zones around every farm infected with hoof-and-mouth disease as the number of daily cases escalated.
2001 Apr 8, It was reported that foot-and-mouth disease was endemic in Asia and that 3,282 cases were confirmed in Hong Kong over the past year.
2001 May 6, It was reported that 1 in every 1000 Russians has tuberculosis.
2001 May 21, Joerg C. Tiller of MIT said a new polymer, called hexyl-PVP, could be used as a surface coating and was able to kill common disease-causing organisms.
2001 May 29, Epidural cortisone shots at the Sierra SurgiCenter in Walnut Creek, Ca., caused 2 deaths from contamination that led to meningitis. A batch of betamethasone steroid was contaminated with serratia bacteria.
(SFC, 6/8/01, p.A1)(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A1)
2001 Aug 21, Zimbabwe halted beef exports as foot-and-mouth disease broke out in the latest series of farm expropriations where militants released quarantined cattle.
2001 Sep 18, Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., and later tested positive for anthrax, were sent to the New York Post and NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw.
2001 Sep 28, Dr. Kenneth M. Berry of Pittsburgh filed a patent application for a system responsive to bioterrorism attacks. In 2004 the FBI probed him in relation to investigations on letters containing anthrax.
2001 Oct 5, Bob Stevens (63), photo editor for the Sun tabloid, died of anthrax. Anthrax spores were later found on his computer keyboard in Lantana. This was the 1st of a series of cases in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Washington. In 2011 his widow settled a $2.5 million lawsuit against the US government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2001_anthrax_attacks)(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D7)(AP, 10/5/02)(SFC, 10/31/11, p.A5)(SFC, 11/30/11, p.A13)
2001 Oct 8, A 2nd case of anthrax was reported in Ernesto Blanco (73), a co-worker of the man who died Oct 5 in Florida.
2001 Oct 9, Letters postmarked in Trenton, N.J., were sent to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy; the letters later tested positive for anthrax.
2001 Oct 9, The 2 anthrax cases in Florida were reported to probably have been caused by an intentional release of the deadly bacteria.
2001 Oct 10, In Florida a 3rd case of anthrax was identified in a 35-year-old woman who worked in the same office as Robert Stevens. The strain was reported to match one from Iowa in the 1950s commonly used by lab researchers.
(SFC, 10/11/01, p.A4,5)
2001 Oct 12, NBC announced that an assistant to anchorman Tom Brokaw had contracted the skin form of anthrax after opening a "threatening" letter to her boss that contained a suspicious powder.
2001 Oct 13, Anthrax was confirmed in 3 US states. In Florida 5 more employees tested positive; in Nevada a letter sent to a Microsoft office tested positive; and in NYC a letter sent to NBC News tested positive.
2001 Oct 15, Anthrax in a letter to a Reno Microsoft office was reported to be from Malaysia. 2 anthrax-tainted letters were reported to have been mailed from Trenton, New Jersey and 2 postal employees there showed symptoms. Anthrax spores were in a letter deliver to a Senate office. Officials announced that a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had tested positive for anthrax, and that the infant son of an ABC News producer in New York had developed skin anthrax.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A16)(AP, 10/15/02)
2001 Oct 16, A wing of the US Senate building was closed following confirmation that a letter to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., carried anthrax. It was later found that the anthrax contained the additive bentonite to enhance suspension in air. 12 Senate offices were closed as hundreds of staffers underwent anthrax tests.
(SFC, 10/17/01, p.A1)(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/26/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/16/02)
2001 Oct 17, Federal officials reported that the anthrax strains in New York and Florida appeared to be identical. The House and 6 congressional office buildings were closed for tests after over 30 Senate staff members tested positive for exposure to spores.
(SFC, 10/18/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/18/01, p.A1)
2001 Oct 18, CBS News announced that an employee in Dan Rather's office had tested positive for skin anthrax.
2001 Oct 18, Two new cases of anthrax were reported in New Jersey.
2001 Oct 18, The FBI and Postal Service announced a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest of anthrax mailings.
2001 Oct 19, The FBI identified the Trenton, NJ, mailbox from which the anthrax letters were sent to NYC and Washington. Two more people were reported to be infected bringing the total to 8.
2001 Oct 20, Traces of anthrax were found in a US House of Representatives mail room. This became the 3rd Capital Hill building infected.
(SSFC, 10/21/01, p.A3)(AP, 10/20/02)
2001 Oct 21, Thomas L. Morris Jr. (55), a DC postal worker diagnosed with the deadly inhalation form of anthrax, died. Officials began testing thousands of postal employees.
(SFC, 10/23/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/24/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/22/06)
2001 Oct 22, A second Washington DC postal worker, Joseph P. Curseen (47), died of inhalation anthrax.
2001 Oct 23, President Bush announced he had authorized money for improved post office security following the deaths of two postal workers from inhalation anthrax.
2001 Oct 23, Traces of anthrax were found at an off-site facility that handled mail for the White House.
2001 Oct 24, The US government arranged to buy 100 million Cipro tablets from Bayer for 95 cents each. The tablets were for anthrax. US Postmaster General John Potter told Americans "There are no guaranties that mail is safe." He warned people to wash their hands after handling mail.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.D1)(SSFC, 9/10/06, p.E4)
2001 Oct 25, A State Dept. mail worker in Virginia was diagnosed with the inhalational form of anthrax.
2001 Oct 26, Anthrax was found in the offices of 3 lawmakers in the Longworth House Office building on Capital Hill. The Supreme Court was shut down to test for anthrax spores.
2001 Oct 27, In Washington, the search for deadly anthrax widened to thousands of businesses and 30 mail distribution centers.
2001 Oct 28, The CDC reported a 13th case of anthrax in a New Jersey postal worker. Spores were found at the mail center in Landover, Md.
2001 Oct 29, A hospital worker in NY and a woman who handled mail in New Jersey were found to have anthrax. Since Oct 4 a total of 37 people have tested positive for exposure and 15 have contracted the disease.
2001 Oct 31, The US Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, received a letter that was later confirmed to contain anthrax.
2001 Oct 31, Kathy Nguyen (61), a NYC hospital worker, died of anthrax. She was the 4th person to perish in a spreading wave of bioterrorism. The source of infection remained a mystery.
(SFC, 11/1/01, p.A1)(AP, 10/31/02)
2001 Nov 1, Anthrax spores were found in 4 mailrooms in Rockville, Md., a postal facility in Kansas City, 3 new locations in a Manhattan processing center and a 6th postal facility in Florida.
2001 Nov 2, A 17th case of anthrax was reported in a NY Post employee.
2001 Nov 4, It was reported that the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur cited bin Laden as possibly possessing an arsenal of biochemical weapons. US intelligence sources were cited that bin Laden purchased laboratories from the former Yugoslavia, Ebola virus from former Soviet stockpiles, botulism from the Czech Republic, anthrax from North Korea and the assistance of chemists and biologists from the Ukraine.
(SSFC, 11/4/01, p.A25)
2001 Nov 5, Baxter said its dialysis filters appear to have played a role in the deaths of 53 patients in Texas, Nebraska, and 6 countries in Europe, south America and Asia.
2001 Nov 10, Traces of anthrax were reported in offices of the Hart and Longworth government buildings in Washington DC.
2001 Nov 11, A Pakistani newspaper (Ausaf) published the second part of an interview in which Osama bin Laden was quoted as saying he had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks in the United States, and declared he would never allow himself to be captured.
2001 Nov 11-2001 Nov 16, In St. Cloud, Minn., three healthy men died following knee surgeries from infections of Clostridium sordellii.
2001 Nov 13, An anthrax tainted letter was received by a pediatrician in Santiago. It was postmarked from Switzerland and marked for return to Florida. It was actually mailed from NY through a NY-based subsidiary of the Swiss Post office. The letter was later believed to have been contaminated in a lab.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.A4)(SFC, 11/24/01, p.A9)(WSJ, 11/28/01, p.A4)(WSJ, 11/29/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 15, Investigators in Florida said anthrax was found throughout the 68,000-square-foot America Media building in Boca Raton, where the 1st case was identified.
2001 Nov 16, An anthrax laced letter was found in quarantined congressional mail addressed to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.). It was found to contain billions of spores, enough to kill 100,000 people.
(SFC, 11/17/01, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/21/01, p.A8)(SFC, 11/26/01, p.A5)
2001 Nov 21, Ottilie W. Lundgren (94) of Oxford, Conn., died of inhalational anthrax in a case that baffled investigators.
(SFC, 11/21/01, p.A10)(AP, 11/21/02)
2001 Dec 2, An outbreak of Ebola virus hit Gabon with the 1st death in Ekata, about 5 miles from the Congo border. Within weeks at least 15 people died. The virus spread to Congo and movement in the area was restricted.
2001 Dec 5, The FBI arrested escaped fugitive Clayton Lee Waagner in St. Louis. Waagner was suspected of mailing as many as 550 anthrax hoax letters to abortion clinics. He was also wanted for bank robbery and other offenses. In 2002 Waagner was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(SFC, 12/6/01, p.A13)(WSJ, 12/6/01, p.A1)(SFC, 1/26/02, p.A10)
2001 Dec 6, Anthrax tainted mail turned up at a sorting site outside the Federal building in Washington DC. It had been received Dec 5.
2001 Dec 16, It was reported that all the anthrax spores mailed to Capital Hill were identical to stocks from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. (USAMRIID), maintained since 1980.
2001 Dec 17, The Bush administration announced that the anthrax attacks most likely originated from a domestic source.
2001 Dec 18, It was reported that malaria scientists have engineered mice that produce vaccine in their milk.
2001 The metapneumovirus was discovered by researchers in Rotterdam. The calculated that every child catches the virus by age 5.
2002 Jan 22, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established as a Swiss Foundation.
(www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/publications/)
2002 Feb 14, It was reported that scientists at NIH had developed the 1st vaccine effective against staph bacteria.
2002 Feb 23, It was reported that 5 people were confirmed with plague in Himachal Pradesh, India.
2002 Feb, Dr Wakefield and Professor O'Leary published a paper in the journal Molecular Pathology which suggested a possible link between the measles virus and bowel disease in children with developmental disorders. The study set out to investigate whether children with developmental disorders such as autism and a bowel disorder also had the measles virus in their gut. It found traces of the virus in the guts of 75 children out of 91 with bowel disease, but in only five out of 70 healthy children. The researchers theorized that the virus may act as a trigger, leading to problems with the immune system. Dr Wakefield said most of the children in the study had had MMR, though a few had had the single vaccine. He and his colleague emphasized that it would be wrong to jump to any hasty conclusions about MMR causing either bowel disease or developmental disorders such as autism. In 2010 Dr. Wakefield was banned from practicing medicine in Britain.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1808956.stm)(SFC, 5/25/10, p.A2)
2002 Feb, A team from the Royal Free Hospital - where Dr Wakefield carried out his initial research - published a study on the British Medical Journal website saying there is no link between MMR and autism. The team looked at almost 500 children with autism born between 1979 and 1998. It found the proportion of children with developmental regression (autism) or bowel disorders did not change significantly over that time.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1808956.stm)
2002 Feb, The W135 strain of meningitis from the Middle East was identified for the 1st time in Africa in Burkina Faso and by Sep some 12,000 people were infected with 1,500 deaths.
2002 Mar 5, It was reported that Cipro resistant gonorrhea had turned up on the West Coast of the US.
2002 Apr 18, Researchers in Pittsburgh reported a strain of Group A streptococci resistant to erythromycin (the macrolide class of antibiotics).
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A4)(WSJ, 4/18/02, p.A1)
2002 May 6, It was reported that German researchers had found a new class of ultra-tiny microbes: a nano-size hyperthermophilic archeon, tinier than mycoplasma but larger than viruses.
2002 May 7, It was reported that strain of Gonorrhea resistant to antibiotics had reached the mainland US after migrating from Hawaii and Asia.
2002 Jun 15, In the Republic of Congo it was reported that 5 people had died from an outbreak of ebola, the 2nd outbreak in the region this year.
2002 Jul 11, US scientists financed by the Pentagon announced that they had synthesized a virus from scratch for the 1st time. They built a polio virus relying only on genetic sequence information publicly available.
2002 Aug 2, In Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster declared a state of emergency after West Nile virus killed 4 residents and infected another 58.
2002 Aug 11, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, a bioweapons expert under scrutiny for anthrax-laced letters, fiercely denied any involvement and said he had cooperated with the investigation. He was eventually exonerated and given a $5.8 million settlement from the US government after years of their harassing him. Investigators on June 27, 2008, announced that the anthrax attacks had been carried out by another government scientist, Bruce Edwards Ivins, whom they concluded had acted alone.
(AP, 8/11/03)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hatfill)
2002 Aug 22, Researchers reported a new enzyme to treat victims of an anthrax attack and to help detect the spores.
2002 Sep 14, In Congo DRC it was reported that some 1,200 people had died from a cholera epidemic and that another 18,000 were infected.
2002 Oct 15, It was reported that duct tape is effective in removing warts when worn over the wart for a number of days.
2002 Oct 15, A listeria outbreak blamed for at east 7 deaths in the northeast was traced to a Wampler Foods plant in Franconia, Pa.
2002 Oct 21, Scientists reported a new immunoassay for mad cow disease that takes about a year for results.
2002 Oct 24, It was reported that over 8,000 backyard poultry had been killed in southern California to stop the spread of Exotic Newcastle disease. The deadly avian infection last surfaced in California the 1970s when some 12 million birds were destroyed.
(SFC, 10/24/02, p.G2)(SFC, 10/26/02, p.A3)
2002 Nov 19, It was reported that the Holland America cruise ship Amsterdam was in its 4th week of battling the Norwalk gastrointestinal virus.
2002 Nov 21, Intensive cleaning began aboard the cruise ship Disney Magic after over 100 passengers fell sick from an unknown stomach virus.
2002 Nov 21, Merck published a study of vaccine that prevents cervical cancers caused by human papilloma virus (HPV) that could be available by 2006.
(WSJ, 11/21/02, p.A1)(SFC, 11/21/02, p.A1)
2002 The SARS-COV virus jumped from a horseshoe bat to a person (possibly by way of some intermediary). From 2002-2003 the outbreak killed 774 people worldwide.
(Econ, 3/14/20, p.15)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.10)
2002 Vancomycin resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus emerged.
2002 In Japan 9 people died from E. coli bacteria poisoning after eating a marinated chicken and vegetable dish at a hospital and its annex, a nursing home for the aged, in the provincial city of Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo.
2003 Jan 24, The Bush administration's smallpox vaccine program was launched in Connecticut with 4 doctors getting shots.
2003 Feb 9, In China Xinhua's first SARS report was issued for leaders' eyes only. By this time there were already some 300 cases and 5 deaths dating back to November 2002.
2003 Mar 19, Doctors in Hong Kong reportedly identified the deadly pneumonia virus as belonging to the paramyxoviridae family. The severe acute respiratory illness (SARS) had killed at least 11 people and left hundreds ill. The outbreak is believed to have began in southern China in November. Later reports held that it could be a coronavirus, part of a group that cause the common cold. Many people treated with corticosteroids later developed an irreversible bone disease called avascular necrosis. By July 12, 2003, SARS killed 812 people worldwide.
(SFC, 3/15/03, p.A8)(SFC, 1/19/02, p.A4)(WSJ, 4/3/03, p.B1)(WSJ, 12/23/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 22, Scientists believe they have found the virus responsible for the mystery SARS virus and announced a test to diagnose it.
2003 Mar 23, A Maryland nurse died 5 days after being vaccinated for smallpox.
2003 Mar 27, It was reported that the SARS disease had killed 50 people and infected some 1,300 in 13 countries.
2003 Mar 29, Italian Dr. Carlo Urbani (46), a WHO expert on communicable diseases, died of SARS in Thailand, where he was being treated after becoming infected while working in Vietnam. Urbani was the 1st doctor to identify SARS.
(AP, 3/29/03)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 31, Hong Kong authorities quarantined more than 200 other residents in an apartment block in an effort to contain the SARS virus.
2003 Apr 4, It was reported that Oxford Univ. scientists had developed a new test for TB that looked for the activation of T-cells.
2003 Apr 4, Chinese experts in hard-hit Guangdong province told the scientists they have found a rare form of airborne chlamydia in some of their SARS patients, raising the possibility that more than one germ may be involved. Other Chinese cases suggest the disease might be passed by touching something tainted by a sick person's mucous or saliva.
2003 Apr 17, A Dutch veterinarian (57) died from avian influenza 2 days after working on a farm where animals were infected with the bird flu. He was believed to be the 1st victim of the current epidemic.
2003 Apr 26, It was reported that a methillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) had begun infecting healthy people through skin contact.
(SFC, 4/26/03, B8)
2003 Apr 29, California biologists reported that some 92 southern sea otters had died since the beginning of the year between Point Conception and Half Moon Bay. A cat parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, was cited as one factor weakening the animals.
(SFC, 4/30/03, A1)(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A1)
2003 May 4, New lab studies reported that the SARS virus can survive outside an infected body for hours to days.
2003 May 21, Taiwan reported 35 new cases of SARS for a total of 418 with 52 deaths.
2003 May 23, Researchers from China and Hong Kong identified a coronavirus in 3 wild mammals, palm civets, a raccoon dog and a ferret badger, sold in the live-animal food markets of South China.
2003 Jun 13, Wisconsin state officials reported that probable 18 cases of monkeypox all came from one prairie dog.
2003 Jun 20, In China Guangdong health officials reported 211 encephalitis cases with 18 children killed. 100,000 children were vaccinated as a precaution.
2003 Jul 5, The WHO removed Taiwan from its list of SARS-infected areas and declared a provisional victory over the epidemic, which had killed 812 people over 5 continents. The economic losses from SARS was later estimated at about $200 billion. SARS was later classified as one of a number of zoonoses, i.e. diseases that come from animals. The epidemic in Taiwan had left 73 people dead.
(SSFC, 7/6/03, p.A3)(Econ, 11/19/05, p.84)(Econ, 3/28/20, p.35)
2003 Jul 7, The CDC confirmed the year's 1st case of West Nile Virus, which killed 284 in the US in 2002.
2003 Aug 7, Scientists reported a new vaccine that was successful against the Ebola virus in monkeys.
2003 Sep 8, Singapore health officials confirmed that a local patient has tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, the 1st new case of the disease in over 5 months.
2003 Sep 29, In Japan a 23-month-old bull tested positive for new strain of mad cow disease. A quarantine of 604 cows followed to prevent the spread of the disease.
2003 Oct 24, Nigerian health workers began an emergency drive to immunize some 15 million children against polio. Some 192 cases were currently active.
2003 Nov 3, Spanish authorities closed the border with the British colony of Gibraltar before the arrival of a virus-stricken cruise ship carrying some 2,000 passengers. More than 400 passengers on the ship fell ill with a norovirus after the ship left Southampton, England, for a Mediterranean voyage on Oct. 20.
2003 Nov 14, In Pittsburgh, Pa., a 3rd person died from an outbreak of hepatitis A that infected over 500 people. They all had recently eaten at a Chi-Chi's Mexican mall restaurant.
2003 Dec 4, In Kisumu, Kenya, Tommy Thompson, US Sec. of Health and Human Services, dedicated a new $6.4 million field laboratory to be operated by the CDC. It was the largest of its kind in Africa. The local TB and malaria rates were among the highest in the world.
2003 Dec 17, The fifth outbreak in two years of the deadly Ebola virus in the Republic of Congo has so far killed 29 people.
2003 Dec 27, China announced its first suspected SARS case since July.
2003 The ViroChip, invented by Dr. Joseph DeRisi (33) of UC San Francisco, gained attention when it spotted the virus that causes the epidemic form of pneumonia called SARS.
2003 Myanmar reported 42% of the world's official malaria deaths. WHO statistics were not very accurate as half of Africa's countries did not submit any data.
2003 In Sudan a study indicated that AIDS had infected about 1.6% of the population. By 2009 the number was estimated to be approaching 3%.
2003 Life expectancy in Zimbabwe fell to 43 due to the AIDS epidemic.
2004 Jan 5, China confirmed its first SARS case since an outbreak of the disease was contained in July and authorities ordered the emergency slaughter of some 10,000 civet cats and related species after tests linked a virus found in the animals to the patient.
2004 Jan 5, Norman Heatley (92), a scientist whose pioneering work on penicillin production helped save countless lives, died in Oxford, England. It was Heatley and his Oxford University colleagues who produced enough for the first clinical tests on humans.
(AP, 1/17/04)(SFC, 1/19/04, p.B4)
2004 Jan 21, Hong Kong officials reported that Avian influenza was detected near 2 chicken farms. 5 people in Vietnam had already died from the recent outbreak.
2004 Jan 26, Pakistan joined the list of countries affected by the bird flu disease that has sparked mass chicken culls across the region.
2004 Jan 26, A 6-year-old Thai boy became Asia's seventh confirmed bird flu fatality.
2004 Jan 27, Global health officials listed 6 countries with confirmed cases of H5N1 avian flu. These included Cambodia, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
2004 Feb 1, China reported 5 more cases of the avian influenza virus.
2004 Feb 10, NYC said nearly 4% of men age 40-49 in the city have AIDS or are infected with HIV.
2004 Feb 14, It was reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had donated $82.9 million to the Areas Global TB Vaccine Foundation for the development of a tuberculosis vaccine.
2004 Feb 20, In Texas a strain of avian flu was reported in Gonzales County. Further checks revealed that it was highly pathogenic, but posed little risk to humans.
2004 Feb 26, It was reported that scientists had identified a protein, TRIM5-alpha, that shields rhesus monkeys from the AIDS virus.
2004 Mar 24, World TB Day. TB killed and estimated 2-3 million people per year.
2004 May 24, The WHO confirmed an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus has killed four people in south Sudan.
2004 Jul 8, It was reported that a strain of syphilis has proved resistant to azithromycin.
2004 Aug 21, In Ohio health officials said cases of gastrointestinal illness had risen to 510 from people in the Put-in-Bay resort area.
2004 Sep 8, In Thailand a young man died from bird flu and increased fears of an avian influenza pandemic. Asian deaths from bird flu for the year totaled 28.
2004 Sep 17, Officials in Singapore reported that a soil-borne bacterial infection called melioidosis has killed 24 people there this year, making it more deadly than SARS or bird flu. The illness, also known as Whitmore's Disease, is listed by the U.S. government as a potential biological weapon but Singapore government officials said there was no sign it had been spread intentionally.
2004 Sep 27, In Thailand officials announced that a case of avian-flu was possibly caused by human-to-human transmission.
2004 Oct 5, Britain pulled the license of a Liverpool factory responsible for manufacturing half of Chiron Corp.'s US flu vaccine supply due to contamination by the bacteria serratia.
(SFC, 10/6/04, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/7/04, p.B6)
2004 Oct 19, A Thailand tiger zoo housing hundreds of the big cats was shut down as bird flu tests confirmed 23 tigers had died of the virus since Oct 14, and another 30 had fallen ill. They caught the flu from feeding on chicken carcasses.
(AFP, 10/20/04)(Econ, 4/16/05, p.36)
2004 Oct 27, Nigeria's state-owned news agency reported that an outbreak of measles in a remote Nigerian village had killed a dozen people. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 500,000 deaths from measles every year.
2004 Nov 9, It was reported that repeated injections of paromomycin, a low cost antibiotic, could cure the parasitic disease black fever, also known as visceral leishmaniasis.
2004 Nov 18, US Army doctors said some 100 soldiers wounded in the Mideast and Afghanistan had come down with rare, treatment resistant blood infections.
2004 Dec 20, SF officials warned that the sexually transmitted disease lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) had begun to turn up locally. The disease was a form of chlamydia and required a 3-week course of antibiotics for cure.
2004 Black band coral disease was first identified. It rose to outbreak levels in 2012 and in 2015 was found in reefs off the coast of Hawaii.
2004 Gilead Sciences of California launched Truvada, a once-a-day, one-pill combination of two drugs to treat AIDS.
(Econ, 6/2/12, p.80)(http://www.gilead.com/pdf/truvada_pi.pdf)
2005 Jan 5, It was reported that PolyMedix, a research firm in Philadelphia, was targeting bacteria with synthetic molecules that prevented the development of resistance.
(WSJ, 1/5/05, p.B2A)
2005 Jan 25, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $750 million over 10 years to support the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
2005 Feb 10, Saudi Arabia confirmed a 2nd case of polio from 2004 and feared pilgrims to Mecca might spread the disease.
2005 Feb 11, Health officials in NYC issued a nationwide alert over a new AIDS HIV strain that is immune to just about all antiretroviral drugs.
2005 Mar 21, It was reported that measles in Nigeria had killed 529 people this year.
2005 Mar 22, Officials from the ministry of health and the World Health Organization (WHO) said a deadly haemorrhagic fever that has claimed the lives of 96 people, mainly children, in Angola's northern Uige province has been identified as the rare Marburg virus.
(www.meritcare.com/news/world/viewarticle.asp?id=18843)
2005 Apr 8, Angola's death toll from the Marburg virus, which has no effective treatment, rose to 181 with no signs of abating. Doctors without Borders urged the government to close the regional hospital at Uige to help contain the spread. Suspected cases have been identified in 7 provinces.
(SFC, 4/9/05, p.A8)(SSFC, 4/10/05, p.A5)
2005 Apr 11, Maurice Hilleman (85), US pioneer vaccine research scientist, died of cancer in New Jersey. He helped develop vaccines for mumps, measles, chicken pox and other childhood scourges.
2005 Apr 14, It was reported that the bird flu virus was found in some 70% of a random sample of ducks and geese in Vietnam's southern Mekong Delta, and in 21% of sampled chickens.
2005 Apr 16, It was reported that Laszlo Kish and Maria King of Texas A&M had devised a new technique for identifying small quantities of bacteria in minutes using a combination of virology ad microelectronics.
2005 May 4, In China 178 birds were found dead at Bird Island in Qinghai province in a lake that served as a major area for research on migratory water fowl. They were killed by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu virus. The number of dead birds was later raised to 1,500 with bar-headed geese among the most dead.
(WSJ, 5/23/05, p.A11)(SFC, 7/7/05, p.A5)
2005 May 4, Chinese authorities confined residents in Yanqing, 50 miles north of Beijing, to their homes following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle. Numerous farms were put under quarantine.
2005 May 13, Indonesia reported that researchers had found a strain of bird flu in pigs on Java, and feared the virus could spread to humans.
2005 May 21, China ordered emergency measures to prevent an outbreak of avian flu after investigators said migratory birds found dead in a western province this month were killed by the virus.
2005 May 26, China's Xinhua news agency reported that China has developed vaccines that block the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu among birds and mammals.
2005 May 30, Indonesia's first polio outbreak in a decade widened with two new cases reported, as the government kicked off a massive eradication campaign that aims to vaccinate 6.4 million children in one day.
2005 Jun 6, Scientists reported success with monkeys in using vaccines to fend off the Ebola and Marburg viruses.
2005 Jun 11, US officials said a cow had tested positive for mad cow disease in November, opening the door to possible changes in testing procedures in the US beef industry. The cow was later identified as being calved in Texas in 1993.
(AP, 6/11/05)(WSJ, 6/30/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 15, Indonesia reported its 1st human case of bird flu.
2005 Jun 15, Vietnam reported 6 new cases of bird flu in the past week.
2005 Jun 20, In Vietnam officials said 2 more people from northern Vietnam have been sickened with bird flu, and thousands of chickens have dropped dead in the south.
2005 Jun 21, US researchers said a common virus that is harmless to people can destroy cancerous cells in the body and might be developed into a new cancer therapy. The adeno-associated virus type 2, or AAV-2, infects an estimated 80 percent of the population.
2005 Jun 21, Austria's Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat announced a cow in an alpine farm Austria has been found to be infected with mad cow disease.
2005 Jun 25, Taiwan reimposed a ban on imports of American beef after the US confirmed its second case of mad cow disease.
2005 Jun 30, A Cambodia doctor reported that 2 infants have died in Cambodia from influenza, part of an outbreak that has hospitalized more than 1,000 children. He said the illness appears to be a form of human flu, not the avian influenza.
2005 Jun, NYC doctors reported outbreaks of imipenem resistant Klebsiella.
2005 Jul 5, It was reported that French and South African researchers had found that circumcision reduces the risk of AIDS by 70%.
2005 Jul 26, Chinese health officials reported that over the last 4 weeks an unidentified illness has killed 19 farmers and sickened 80 in southwestern China after they butchered sick pigs or sheep. The pigs in question were infected with streptococcus bacteria, a common pathogen in humans and domestic animals.
2005 Jul 30, The death toll in China from a mysterious pig-borne disease continued to rise, with several more cities affected. Sichuan province in southwestern China has launched a campaign to educate poor, illiterate farmers not to slaughter sick pigs or eat their meat after an outbreak of swine flu hit about 100 villages and killed at least 34 people.
(Reuters, AFP, 7/30/05)
2005 Jul 30, A Russia newspaper reported that a strain of bird flu harmful to humans has been found in an outbreak of the disease in Siberia.
2005 Nov 15, Data was published indicating that Mosquitrix by GlaxoSmithKline of Belgium, an experimental vaccine against malaria given to children in Mozambique in 2003, cut clinical cases by 35%.
2005 Nov 19, It was reported that the Nipah virus, naturally found in bats, had moved to Malaysian pigs. It killed about 40% of the 265 people it had infected.
2005 The President's Malaria Initiative was founded under George Bush as a five-year, $1.2 billion expansion of US Government resources to reduce the intolerable burden of malaria and help relieve poverty on the African continent.
(Econ, 7/14/12, p.42)(http://www.pmi.gov/about/index.html)
2005 The vaccine Menactra, to prevent meningococcal meningitis, was licensed in the US. It was manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, a unit of Sanofi-Aventis.
2005 There was a measles outbreak among school children in Indiana. In 2006 the CDC attributed it to home-schooled children whose parents avoided vaccinations out of safety concern. The outbreak was later traced to a 17-year-old girl who had traveled to Romania without getting vaccinated.
(WSJ, 8/3/06, p.A1)(SFC, 12/22/06, p.A18)
2006 May 12, US Federal authorities said the number of confirmed cases of a rare fungal eye infection that can cause blindness has climbed to 122, most of them contact-lens wearers who reported using Bausch & Lomb Inc.'s newest lens cleaner. In Oct, 2007, Bausch & Lomb was acquired by private equity firm Warburg Pincus for $3.67 billion. Chief Executive Ronald Zarrella said the deal would allow the company "to pursue the growth path we were on ... without a lot of outside distraction." Zarrella retired in 2008. As of 2009 away from the glare of public scrutiny, the optical products company quietly settled nearly 600 fungal-infection lawsuits with dozens more individual claims yet to be resolved. The cost so far: Upward of $250 million.
(AP, 5/12/06)(AP, 6/1/09)
2006 May 25, Researchers confirmed that the human AIDS virus originated in a corner of Cameroon in wild chimpanzees. The first known human to be infected with HIV was a man from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1959.
2006 Sep 7, Medical experts said a killer strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis has been found in at least 28 hospitals across South Africa and that it jeopardized efforts to deal with AIDS.
2006 Sep 14, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $68.2 million to fight parasitic diseases that included leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis and hookworm. The new money will support efficacy trials in India and Africa.
2006 Sep 14, US federal health officials said an outbreak a deadly strain of E. coli (0157:H7) had left at least one person dead in Wisconsin over 100 others sick and warned consumers not to eat bagged fresh spinach. The outbreak in 8 states soon extended to 25. 2 more deaths were suspected and the number sickened rose to 173. Most of the spinach crop at this time of the year comes from California. A special effort was under way in the Salinas Valley of California, a major leafy-vegetable growing region, to look for any possible source of contamination there. The outbreak was traced to California's Natural Selection Foods, which recalled all suspect products. This was the same deadly strain that in 1982 had sickened at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan who ate McDonald's burgers. A surveillance system setup after a 1993 outbreak at the Jack-in-the-Box fast food chain helped single out spinach as the likely source of this outbreak.
(AP, 9/14/06)(WSJ, 9/18/06, p.A1)(SFC, 9/23/06, p.A9)(WSJ, 9/25/06, p.A4)
2006 Sep 28, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that travelers to parts of Africa and Asia are returning with a new mosquito-borne virus. Some people returning to Europe, the US, Canada, Martinique and French Guyana reported cases of Chikungunya fever (CHIKV). The virus first emerged in Tanzania in 1953.
(Reuters 9/28/06)
2006 Oct 31, Scientists reported that the Fujian-strain of H5N1 avian influenza has become dominant in southern China.
2006 Nov 21, The UN said an estimated 4.3 million people were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in the last 12 months. The UNAIDS report estimated that the total number of people infected with HIV stood between 34-47 million.
(http://tinyurl.com/tajka)(Econ, 11/25/06, p.84)
2006 Dec 7, Researchers said the Ebola virus may have killed more than 5,000 gorillas in West Africa (Congo-Gabon), enough to send them into extinction if people continue to hunt them.
(Reuters, 12/7/06)
2006 Dec 16, Indian health officials said nearly 30 children have died this month of mosquito-borne encephalitis in northern India, taking the toll since July to 401.
2006 Dec 27, A 26-year-old Egyptian man died of bird flu, the third member of his extended family to die of the virus.
2006 In California an epidemic of valley fever, clinically known as coccidioidomycosis, resulted in over 5,500 cases and 33 deaths. The cases included 514 among inmates at Pleasant Valley State Prison. The disease was endemic in the southwest US and was triggered by spores rising from disturbed soil.
2006 Gilead Sciences of California launched Atripla, a once-a-day, one-pill combination of Truvada and another drug to treat AIDS.
(Econ, 6/2/12, p.80)(http://www.atripla.com/)
2006 The WHO estimated that malaria infected up to 500 million people per year. Malaria killed nearly one million people worldwide this year with children under five and African countries bearing the brunt, according to a 2008 WHO report. Later in 2008 WHO halved its estimate of world-wide malaria cases to 247 million.
(Econ, 2/4/06, p.71)(AFP, 9/18/08)(WSJ, 9/19/08, p.A1)
2006 Dr. Jiao Nianzhi of China's Xiamen Univ. developed a technique called time series observation based infra red epifluorescence microscopy (TIREM). He used it accurately measure creatures in the ocean called aerobic anoxygenic photoheterotrophic bacteria (AAPB). Results showed that these organisms constitute 7% of the oceans' microbes.
2007 Jan 7, A senior Kenyan health official said about 75 people have died of Rift Valley fever (hemorrhagic fever) during the past three weeks and another 183 are infected with it. The last outbreak of the disease in East Africa was between 1997-1998, when 478 people died in Somalia and Kenya. Currently there was no human vaccine.
(AP, 1/8/07)(WSJ, 1/9/06, p.A1)
2007 Feb 15, Government scientists struggled to pinpoint the source of the first US salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter. Nearly 300 people in 39 states have fallen ill since August, and federal health investigators said they strongly suspect Peter Pan peanut butter and certain batches of Wal-Mart's Great Value house brand, both manufactured by ConAgra Foods.
2007 Feb 15, Nadia Abdel Hafez, an Egyptian woman (37), died of bird flu in a Cairo hospital and a boy, 5, became the 22nd Egyptian to test positive for the deadly disease.
2007 Apr 7, It was reported that injections of Mycobacterium vaccae into mice caused their immune systems to produce serotonin. This neurotransmitter, when low in humans, was known to be related to depression.
2007 Apr 25, UCSF biochemist Joe DeRisi said he found genes of the single-celled, spore producing parasite Nosema ceranae in dead bees. Researchers in Spain had recently shown that the parasite is capable of wiping out a beehive.
2007 May 7, Hong Kong newspapers reported that an unidentified animal illness has spread in two southern Chinese cities, infecting at least 1,300 pigs and killing more than 300. The diseased pigs began dying in Gaoyao and Yunfu in Guangdong province following Chinese New Year celebrations in February. The illness was soon identified as a strain of blue ear disease. Blue ear disease, also called porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, was first identified in the United States in 1987. The disease this year killed an estimated 45 million pigs in China.
(AP, 5/8/07)(SFC, 5/8/07, p.A17)(AP, 5/10/07)(Econ, 12/20/14, p.68)
2007 May 29, Andrew Speaker (31), a lawyer from Atlanta with a rare and dangerous form of tuberculosis, ignored doctors' advice and took two trans-Atlantic flights, leading to the first US government-ordered quarantine since 1963. Italian officials said they were tracing the movements of Speaker, who honeymooned in Rome for two days despite being told to turn himself in to health authorities.
(AP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)(Reuters, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 7, It was reported that UCSF researchers had identified a new species of bacteria, Bartonella rochalimae, in an American tourist who was sickened after spending 3 weeks trekking in Peru. It was named after Henrique da Rocha-Lima, a Brazilian scientist who decades ago identified the bacterium that causes typhus.
2007 Jul 14, A miner (29) died in western Uganda from the deadly Marburg virus, first discovered in 1967.
2007 Jul 24, Jolee Mohr (36) died in Chicago just weeks after beginning an experimental gene therapy treatment from Targeted Genetics to ease the pain the rheumatoid arthritis in her knee. Doctors later suspected an infection of Histoplasma capsulatum.
(SSFC, 9/16/07, p.A21)(SFC, 9/18/07, p.A4)
2007 Aug 7, Scientists reported that a widespread die-off of frogs, toads and salamanders is primarily due to the chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. Global climate change was believed to encourage the spread of the fungus.
2007 Aug 7, The US FDA approved a new drug to help patients with AIDS. Pfizer's Selzentry is the first anti-AIDS drug that blocks the CCR5 receptor, often used by the HIV virus to enter white blood cells.
2007 Aug 16, It was reported that a highly infectious swine virus, blue pork disease, had spread to 25 of China's 33 provinces, prompting pork shortages and an 85% increase in pork prices over the last year.
2007 Aug 20, In China Jia Youling, chief veterinary officer, said that the Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), aka as blue-ear pig disease, head been brought under control. He said 257,000 pigs in 26 provinces had been infected. 68,000 had died from the disease and 175,000 were destroyed.
2007 Aug, In Italy over a hundred people became ill in Castiglione di Cervia, near Ravenna, with a disease that was later identified as chikungunya, a tropical disease spread by the tiger mosquito. This was the first such outbreak in modern Europe.
2007 Sep 1, The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed five human bird flu cases in Vietnam, four of them fatal. The four, including two women, died between June 21 and August 3 while a fifth person, a 29-year-old man, had recovered.
(Reuters, 9/1/07)
2007 Sep 6, Scientists reported that the Israeli acute paralysis virus, first identified in the Middle East in 2004, is associated with the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which was wreaking havoc on commercial bees in the US.
(SFC, 9/7/07, p.A8)(Econ, 9/8/07, p.83)
2007 Sep 14, In Martinique health officials declared a dengue epidemic following the report of over 1,000 suspected cases in the last month.
2007 Sep 18, It was reported that cranberry juice combats a wide range of bacteria, including those that cause stomach ulcers, gum disease and food-borne illnesses as well as urinary tract infections. Recent research suggested that astringent compounds, called proanthocyanidins, in the berry may work to prevent infection-causing bacteria from adhering to cells in the urinary tract.
2007 Sep 25, The World Health Organization said 8 more cases of Ebola have been identified in Congo, raising to 17 the number of people confirmed to have contracted the deadly illness.
2007 Sep 28, Britain's deputy chief veterinarian said bluetongue disease is circulating in Britain after being reported in a cow at the weekend in southern England.
2007 Sep 28, Japan suspended poultry imports from Canada after the H7N3 strain of avian influenza was found on a Saskatchewan chicken farm.
2007 Sep 29, The Topps Meat Co. expanded its recall of frozen hamburger patties to include 21.7 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria that sickened more than a dozen people in eight US states.
2007 Sep 30, So far this year, according to the Pan American Health Organization, 630,356 dengue cases have been reported in the Americas, most in Brazil, Venezuela, or Colombia, with 12,147 cases of hemorrhagic fever and 183 deaths. The Dominican Republic has reported 25 deaths, while Puerto Rico claimed 5,592 suspected cases and three deaths.
(AP, 9/30/07)\
2007 Oct 11, A World Health Organization official said 69 children in northern Nigeria contracted polio following vaccination against the disease. Peter Eriki indicated that around 10 percent of the Nigerian population has dodged the vaccination campaign.
(AFP, 10/12/07)
2007 Nov 13, Britain's government said an outbreak of bird flu in eastern England is the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease. A two-mile protection zone and a six-mile surveillance zone were created around the infected farm in Suffolk.
2007 Nov 20, Researchers said they have decoded the gene map of a strain of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis and that their work has identified mutations that may help develop better treatments.
2007 Nov 29, In Uganda a senior Ministry of Health official said an Ebola outbreak has killed at least 16 people out of 51 confirmed cases. The first case was reported Nov. 10 in Bundibugyo district, 210 miles west of the capital, Kampala. Uganda last had an outbreak of Ebola in October 2000, when 173 people died. A new form of the Ebola virus was detected in the outbreak. The death toll soon climbed to 21, including 8 doctors and health workers.
(AP, 11/29/07)(AP, 11/30/07)(Reuters, 12/1/07)(SFC, 12/8/07, p.B6)
2007 Dec 7, The World Health Organization confirmed that the father of a Chinese man who died of bird flu has been infected with the virus that causes the disease, saying it could not rule out the possibility of human-to-human infection.
2007 Dec 15, Pakistan's Health Ministry issuing a statement saying six people had initially tested positive for the virus last month, while the WHO said eight had been reported. International health experts were dispatched to Pakistan to help investigate the cause of South Asia's first outbreak of bird flu in people and determine if the virus could have been transmitted through human contact.
2007 Dec 12-2007 Dec 14, In South Africa 49 patients, all with multidrug resistant (MDR) and extremely drug resistant (XDR) TB, escaped through holes they had cut through the perimeter fences of Jose Pearson Hospital in Port Elizabeth.
(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317354,00.html)
2007 Connecticut student Cara Munn (15) contracted tic-borne encephalitis during a trip to China set up by the private Hotchkiss boarding school in Salisbury. She suffered brain damage and was later won a $41.5 million verdict against the school. In 2018 a federal appeals court upheld the verdict.
2007 In New York state it was discovered that bats were dying a disease called white-nose syndrome, a fungal diseases. In 2011 the fungus Geomyces destructans was identified as the cause. The fungus responsible was later identified as Pseudogymnoascus destructans.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.36)(SFC, 10/28/11, p.A18)(SSFC, 7/7/19, p.C10)
2007 Malaysia's Prince Naquiyuddin Jaafar founded the EntoGenex biotech company. It took a pre-existing protein called the Trypsin Modulating Oostatic Factor (TMOF) and by 2012 developed it into what he called a fatal "diet pill" for mosquitoes. The firm combined the TMOF with bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) bacteria, which eats holes in the guts of larvae but is non-toxic to people. He hoped it could potentially become a weapon in the even larger fight against malaria, which kills an estimated 650,000 people per year.
2008 Jan 2, Becton, Dickinson and Co said it received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for a test to identify the presence of two deadly healthcare-associated infections: Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
2008 Jan 24, Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute of Rockville, Md., reported that they have built from scratch a synthetic chromosome containing all the genetic material needed to produce the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, the tiniest bacteria ever found.
(SFC, 1/25/08, p.A1)(Econ, 1/26/08, p.76)
2008 Jan 26, It was reported that some 15,000 birds had died over the last month around Utah's Great Salt Lake due to avian cholera, caused by the bacterium Pasteurella multocida. The disease was introduced into the wild during the 1940s from US domestic poultry.
2008 Feb 14, Brazil flew 50,000 doses of yellow fever vaccine to Paraguay following an outbreak there, the first in 34 years.
2008 Feb 23, It was reported that Dr. Nathan Wolfe, a virologist at UCLA, was pushing for the creation of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, a planet-wide network to forecast epidemics before they happen.
2008 Feb 27, The WHO confirmed the first urban cases of yellow fever in Latin America in 60 years.
2008 Mar 11, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 26% of US teen girls are infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease. The rate was highest among blacks.
2008 Mar 20, Brazilian officials said an outbreak of dengue in Rio de Janeiro state has killed at least 47 people this year.
2008 Mar 24, The WHO said polio transmission has been stopped in Somalia.
2008 Mar 28, South Africa launched a four million dollar program to track down tuberculosis patients who have defaulted treatment, leading to resistant strains of the illness.
2008 Apr 4, A South Korean official said quarantine workers have destroyed more than 100,000 chickens following the first outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu in the country in more than a year.
2008 May 4, China's Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert after the enterovirus 71 virus, or EV-71, which causes hand, foot and mouth disease, infected more than 4,500 children in central Anhui province. The outbreak was centered around Fuyang city, where 22 deaths have occurred.
2008 May 5, In China, state media said a deadly viral outbreak that preys on children has appeared in Beijing, and the number of infections in China has grown to more than 8,000. Enterovirus 71 was blamed and went on to kill at least 43 people with over 24,000 sickened.
(AP, 5/5/08)(SFC, 5/24/08, p.A8)
2008 May 7, China's state media said the number of infections of hand, foot and mouth disease has grown to more than 15,000 with 28 deaths.
2008 May 22, Bangladesh reported its first confirmed case of human bird flu, but said the 16-month-old victim had now recovered from the virus.
2008 Jun 3, The Good Friends, a Seoul-based humanitarian group, said that a highly contagious disease has sparked a health alert with an estimated five or six children dying every day since April 27 in North Korea's city of Hoeryong. A doctor said hand-foot-mouth disease could be spreading from China, where it has killed several dozen children.
2008 Jun 7, In Hong Kong a routine inspection found chickens infected with H5N1 bird flu in a poultry market. Authorities slaughtered 2,700 birds and banned live poultry imports from China.
2008 Jun 11, Hong Kong officials found bird-flu virus at three more food markets and ordered the slaughter of some 3,500 birds at retail outlets.
2008 Jun 12, US health officials said there were some 228 reported cases in 23 states of people falling ill from salmonella-tainted tomatoes. The 1st patient had become sick on April 10.
(WSJ, 6/12/08, p.A1)(SFC, 6/13/08, p.A2)(WSJ, 7/10/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 18, US food safety officials said 383 people in 30 states have fallen ill in a Salmonella outbreak linked to certain types of tomatoes.
2008 Jun 20, The widening Salmonella outbreak sickened more than 550 people. US food safety inspectors planned trips to Florida and Mexico this weekend to examine tomato farms and distribution chains, hoping to pinpoint the source of the outbreak.
2008 Jun 26, US government officials confirmed 756 illnesses from salmonella tainted tomatoes.
2008 Jun 27, The US CDC said at least 810 Americans have been sickened by the strain Salmonella Saintpaul in tomatoes. The source of the tomatoes was made difficult due to the process of repacking tomatoes at distribution centers. As the number sickened reached nearly 1000 CDC officials began to look at other possibilities for the outbreak, including cilantro and jalapeno and Serrano peppers.
(SFC, 6/28/08, p.B1)(WSJ, 7/5/08, p.A1)
2008 Jun 27, Settlement documents were filed for Steven Hatfill, a former Fort Detrick, Md., Army scientist. He had been named in 2002 as a person of interest in the 2001 anthrax attacks. He will receive $5.8 million to settle his lawsuit against the Justice Department. Hatfill claimed the Justice Department violated his privacy rights by speaking with reporters about the case.
(AP, 6/28/08)(SFC, 6/28/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 29, US researchers reported that a drug called lodamin, developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment, may be broadly effective against a range of cancers.
2008 Jul 11, In the Netherlands health authorities announced a Dutch woman, infected during a holiday to Uganda by the contagious Marburg virus, had died overnight. The Marburg virus is similar to Ebola and causes heavy bleeding. About 100 people who may have had contact with the woman were under surveillance.
2008 Jul 17, The US government lifted a salmonella warning on tomatoes, but still warned caution on fresh jalapeno and serrano peppers.
2008 Jul 29, US Army scientist Bruce E. Ivins died of an apparent overdoes of Tylenol at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against Ivins in connection with anthrax mailings that killed five people. Ivins, who was developing a vaccine against the deadly toxin, committed suicide. On Feb 19, 2010, the FBI formally closed his case concluding that Ivins acted alone in the 2001 anthrax mailings.
(AP, 8/1/08)(AP, 2/20/10)(SFC, 2/16/11, p.A6)
2008 Aug 2, The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said that due to new tracking methods 40% more people are infected by the HIV virus than was previously believed.
2008 Sep 9, Morocco said it would start vaccinating all livestock after the outbreak of Peste des Petits Ruminants, a deadly viral disease, ahead of the Eid festival when millions of animals are sacrificed.
2008 Sep 9, Togo's Health Ministry said an outbreak of bird flu has been confirmed for the first time since last year.
2008 Sep 11, Zimbabwe's health minister said a cholera outbreak in a Harare suburb has killed at least 11 people.
2008 Sep 13, The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced Stanley Falkow (74), Stanford microbiologist, was the winner of a $300,000 Lasker award for Special Achievement in medical Science. His work helped to explain how pathogens cause human diseases.
2008 Sep 25, Iraq's Health Ministry reported that a total of 327 cholera cases had been confirmed in central and southern Iraq since an outbreak of the disease last month.
2008 Sep, In China hepatitis C infections were discovered after a patient who had received a transfusion during an operation in Pingtang tested positive for the disease. In 2009 police detained the director of the hospital, where at least 64 people were infected with the potentially deadly liver disease after receiving transfusions from blood collected illegally.
2008 Oct 1, Berhe Gebreegziabher, the head of Ethiopia's animal health in the agriculture ministry, said an outbreak of African horse sickness has killed more than 2,000 horses, mules and donkeys in Ethiopia since March.
(AFP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 7, Zambia's ambassador said Zambia and the World Health Organization (WHO) have joined the hunt for a mystery illness that has killed four people in South Africa. A South Africa, health official said the mystery disease may be Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.
(AFP, 10/7/08)(Reuters, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 14, Chinese state media reported that a ginseng injection contaminated by bacteria caused the deaths of three people using the medicine to treat thrombosis and heart disease.
2008 Nov 5, In Mozambique a medical officer said at least 50 people have died of cholera and more than 100 have been taken to hospital since the disease broke out last week in northern Manica province.
2008 Nov 9, Doctors struggled to contain an outbreak of cholera in a sprawling refugee camp near Congo's eastern provincial capital of Goma, as new fighting ignited fears that infected patients could scatter and launch an epidemic.
2008 Nov 12, Indonesian health officials said test results from two laboratories in the capital came back positive confirming that a girl (15) died of bird flu last week.
2008 Nov 19, Philippine health officials said at least two people have died and more than 1,500 are in hospital following a suspected outbreak of cholera in the southern Philippines.
2008 Nov 20, The US ambassador to Harare, James McGee, said that a total of 294 people have been confirmed dead from cholera in Zimbabwe, amid some 1,200 cases of the water-borne disease.
2008 Nov 28, Zimbabwe's opposition said it has agreed on a draft constitutional amendment to allow the formation of a power-sharing government, but obstacles still remain to setting it up. The UN warned that cholera has killed 389 people in Zimbabwe to date and that the disease is also spreading into neighbouring Botswana and South Africa.
(AFP, 11/28/08)(Reuters, 11/28/08)
2008 Nov 30, Zimbabwe's health minister insisted that the country's crumbling medical system was taking all necessary measures to combat a cholera epidemic, even as more than 1,000 new cases were reported.
2008 Dec 2, Zimbabwe slipped deeper into crisis as the death toll from a cholera epidemic neared 500 and members of President Robert Mugabe's armed forces were accused of taking part in a looting spree.
2008 Dec 9, Hong Kong health authorities said more than 80,000 chickens will be slaughtered after bird flu was found on a poultry farm, the first outbreak at a farm here in nearly six years.
2008 Dec 11, Hong Kong's government confirmed that the deadly H5N1 virus was found at a poultry farm, the first outbreak on a farm here in nearly six years.
2008 Dec 11, President Robert Mugabe declared that Zimbabwe's cholera crisis was over, even as the UN raised the death toll from the epidemic to 783.
2008 Dec 16, Chinese agricultural officials ordered the slaughter of some 377,000 chickens after finding the H5N1 bird flu virus in two areas of Jiangsu province.
2008 Dec 23, Bangladeshi authorities said a new outbreak of bird flu had been detected at a village in the north of the country as they struggled to contain the disease.
2008 Dec 30, Congo's health minister said An Ebola virus outbreak has killed 11 people in western Congo. Caritas, a Catholic charity, reported that over 400 people have been killed in northeaster Congo since Christmas day.
(AP, 12/30/08)(SFC, 12/31/08, p.A3)
2009 Jan 5, A Chinese woman (19) died from bird flu in a Beijing hospital, but the World Health Organization said the case did not appear to signal a new public health threat.
2009 Jan 6, The WHO said at least 1,732 people have died in Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic and the number of cases diagnosed has risen to 34,306.
2009 Jan 7, US health officials said an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning has made 388 people sick across 42 states, sending 18 percent of them to the hospital.
2009 Jan 12, Minnesota officials said lab tests had confirmed salmonella bacteria in a five pound container of King Nut brand peanut butter. King Nut of Solon, Ohio, had recalled the product on January 10. At least 6 people had been killed and over 470 sickened nationwide in 43 states.
(WSJ, 1/13/09, p.A2)(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A12)
2009 Jan 13, The WHO said Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has killed more than 2,000 people and almost 40,000 have contracted the normally preventable disease in Africa's worst outbreak in nearly a decade.
2009 Jan 14, South Africa's health ministry said the death toll from a cholera outbreak has risen to 15, with more than 2,100 cases registered in a spillover from Zimbabwe's epidemic. The UN said the death toll from Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak has risen to 2,106.
2009 Jan 16, Kellogg Co. of Battle Creek, Mich., recalled 16 products containing peanut butter due to possible salmonella contamination as federal officials confirmed contamination at a Georgia facility that ships peanut products to 85 food companies. On Jan 21 federal health authorities confirmed that peanut butter and paste made by a Virginia company were the sole sources of the outbreak. The Blakely, Ga., facility was owned by Peanut Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va. In 2013 four former executives of Peanut Corp. were indicted for the outbreak that left 9 people dead and hundreds sickened.
(SFC, 1/17/09, p.A2)(WSJ, 1/22/09, p.A4)(SFC, 2/22/13, p.A11)
2009 Jan 20, In central China a 16-year-old boy infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus died, the country's third fatality from the disease this month.
2009 Jan 21, Indonesia's Health Ministry said 2 people have died of bird flu, apparently after contact with sick chickens, raising the country's death toll to 115.
2009 Jan 24, Mariana Bridi (20), Brazilian model, died from complications related to a generalized infection caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The bacteria is known to be resistant to multiple kinds of antibiotics. The infection reduced the flow of oxygen to her limbs, causing her feet to be amputated last week and her hands this week.
2009 Jan 24, China announced the death of a 31-year-old woman from bird flu, its fourth human victim this year, sparking fears of an outbreak during the country's main festive season.
2009 Jan 26, China's state media reported that an 18-year-old man has died from bird flu in southern China, the fifth human death from the virus in the country this year.
2009 Jan 28, Peanut Corp. expanded its recall to all peanut products produced at its Blakely, Ga., plant since Jan 1, 2007, due to a salmonella outbreak.
2009 Feb 25, Kenya announced its first polio infection in 20 years, after a 4-year-old girl was diagnosed with the disease along the country's remote border with Sudan.
2009 Feb 27, The UN Children's Fund said 53 million children are being targeted by a mass immunization drive against polio in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Some 844 polio cases were reported in the 8 countries in 2008, 95% of them in Nigeria.
2009 Mar 3, An official said 4 Indonesians have died of bird flu over the last 2 months, bringing the death toll in the country over the past several years to 119.
2009 Mar 5, In Zimbabwe PM Morgan Tsvangirai said more than 4,000 people have died in the cholera epidemic that has hit at least 85,000 people, warning the figures were likely an underestimate.
2009 Mar 24, Cepheid, a Sunnyvale, Ca., gene-based test developer, said it has devised a rapid, sensitive diagnostic test for tuberculosis and will make it available at reduced cost in developing countries. The new automated test gives results in 2 hours.
2009 Mar 24, The WHO's annual report on TB, presented in Rio, indicated that there were 1.37 million cases of people with both TB and HIV in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. About 700,000 people were infected with both in 2006.
2009 Mar 24, Indonesia's controversial Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said she wants to end vaccinating children against meningitis, mumps and some other diseases because she fears foreign drug companies are using the country as a testing ground.
2009 Mar 26, Chinese health officials said that hand, foot and mouth disease has sickened 41,000 people across the country and killed 18 children so far this year.
2009 Mar 12, In Germany a scientist accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice. Within 48 hours of the accident, the at-risk scientist, a woman (45) whose identity has not been revealed, was injected with an experimental vaccine from Canada. After 2 weeks the woman appeared to be healthy. At the time of the accident, she was wearing three layers of protective gloves, and though the needle stuck her, the plunger of the syringe was not pushed so it's not certain the virus entered her bloodstream.
2009 Mar 28, An Egyptian health ministry spokesman said a two-year-old girl has contracted bird flu, the 60th reported case since the first outbreak of the disease in the country in 2006.
2009 Mar 30, Argentina's health minister acknowledged that the country was in the middle of a dengue fever epidemic with nearly 8,000 people infected. Neighboring Bolivia had about 51,000 cases reported, while Brazil counted some 40,000 cases.
(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46371)(SSFC, 4/19/09, p.G3)
2009 Apr 7, In Texas Jon Dale Jones (46), a former Army hospital nurse, pleaded guilty to assault and theft. He was accused of infecting 15 patients with hepatitis C. Jones was arrested on federal charges in March of 2008 for using dirty needles to administer anesthesia, and accused of stealing painkillers for himself.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)(www.mahalo.com/Jon_Dale_Jones)
2009 Apr 8, The international Red Cross said a polio outbreak, that now affects 15 African countries, threatens efforts to eradicate the disease.
2009 Apr 17, In Norway a $225 million fund to provide low-price anti-malaria medicine around the world was launched in Oslo to fight a disease that kills 2,000 children a day.
2009 Apr 18, In Egypt the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported that an Egyptian woman has contracted bird flu in the second case in the country in as many days.
2009 Apr 23, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 7 people have been diagnosed with a new kind of swine flu in California and Texas.
2009 Apr 24, Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Cordova said private and public schools in Mexico city have been ordered to remain closed due to a flue epidemic. At least 20 people have died nationwide from the flu in the last three weeks.
2009 Apr 24, In Egypt a woman (33) died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the third death from the disease in Egypt this week.
2009 Apr 25, Mexico City suspended all public events for 10 days as officials tried to contain an outbreak of a deadly new swine flu. Tests showed 20 people have died of the swine flu, and 48 other deaths were probably due to the same strain.
2009 Apr 25, The World Health Organization called an emergency meeting of experts to consider declaring an international public health emergency over the swine flu outbreak believed to have killed dozens of people in Mexico and sickened at least seven in the US.
2009 Apr 26, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed that students at a city high school were infected with swine flu. About 100 students complained of flu-like symptoms at the school. Some students went to Cancun on a spring break trip two weeks ago. The flu has spread beyond Mexico's borders with confirmed cases in the US and suspected cases as far away as New Zealand.
2009 Apr 26, Canada reported its first confirmed cases of swine flu at opposite ends of the country, with two cases in the western province of British Columbia and four in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.
2009 Apr 27, US cases of the deadly new flu strain rose to 40. Governments around the world acted to stem a possible flu pandemic, as a virus that has killed 149 people in Mexico and spread to North America was confirmed to have reached Europe. Spain's Health Ministry confirmed the country's first case of swine flu and said another 20 people are suspected of having the disease.
(Reuters, 4/27/09)(AP, 4/27/09)(WSJ, 4/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Apr 28, World health officials raised a global alert to an unprecedented level as swine flu was blamed for more deaths in Mexico and the epidemic crossed new borders, with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific regions.
2009 Apr 29, The WHO raised its alert for swine flu from level 4 to level 5, its 2nd highest alert level. Austria and Germany confirmed cases of swine flu, becoming the third and fourth European countries hit by the disease. US health officials reported that a 23-month-old child in Texas has died from the disease. The World Health Organization called an emergency meeting to consider its pandemic alert level.
2009 Apr 30, The Iraqi government decided to kill three wild boars at the Baghdad Zoo amid worldwide fears of swine flu. No date was set for their killing. Two US Marines and a sailor were killed during combat operations in Anbar province.
(AP, 5/1/09)(SFC, 5/2/09, p.A2)
2009 Apr 30, Mexican health authorities said they confirmed 300 swine flu cases and 12 deaths due to the virus among a total of 679 people tested so far.
2009 May 1, US cases of the H1N1 flu rose to 155, based on federal and state tallies. State laboratory operators believe the number is higher because they are not testing all suspected cases. Mexico raised its confirmed swine flu death toll from 15 to 16, adding that the total number of confirmed cases of the virus had risen to 397. Worldwide, the total confirmed cases were 653, with the real number also believed to be much larger.
2009 May 2, Canadian health officials said a traveler has carried the new H1N1 virus from Mexico to Canada, infecting his family and a herd of swine.
2009 May 2, India's biggest drug maker Ranbaxy announced the recall of an antibiotic, on sale in the US, because of manufacturing problems, marking a new setback for the company. The Japanese-controlled company said it was voluntarily recalling all lots of nitrofurantoin capsules, an antibiotic used in the treatment of urinary tract infections.
2009 May 2, Mexico said it had no confirmed deaths from HINI swine flu overnight, even as its confirmed caseload grew to 443.
2009 May 3, Swine flu extended its reach through Europe and Latin America, with at least five countries reporting new cases. Health experts were investigating a case of the virus jumping from a person to pigs, trying to determine if the disease was reaching a new stage.
2009 May 3, Egyptian police fired tear gas and clashed with irate pig farmers, leaving 12 people injured as owners resisted the government's attempt to slaughter all the nation's pigs to guard against swine flu.
2009 May 4, Mexico's health secretary said most businesses will reopen May 6 nationwide, citing ebb in the swine flu outbreak. The World Health Organization chief warned that swine flu could return with a vengeance despite Pres. Felipe Calderon insisting his country has contained the epidemic.
(AP, 5/4/09)(AFP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 6, New H1N1 flu cases across Europe and a second US death kept health officials on alert despite signs Mexico's epidemic had passed its peak. Mexican health officials said that testing of backlogged cases has increased the confirmed swine flu death toll from 31 to 42, including three new deaths in the past two days.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 7, Argentina and Brazil confirmed five swine flu cases within their borders as the virus affects more nations in South America.
2009 May 7, In Mexico high schools and universities closed by the swine flu epidemic reopened as teachers and parents carefully checked returning students for flu symptoms. The death toll due to the HINI flu was raised to 44. Mexico City says all businesses can reopen including sports arenas, museums, bars.
2009 May 8, In Canada a provincial medical official said a woman from Alberta has died from the H1N1 flu virus, making her the first Canadian to die from the virus.
2009 May 9, Australia and Japan joined the ranks of affected countries with confirmed H1N1 swine flu. New Zealand, the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to confirm cases, reported two more for a total of seven.
2009 May 9, Costa Rica reported the first swine flu death outside North America and the US announced its third death from the virus, while Mexico delayed the reopening of primary schools in some states.
2009 May 14, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the number of confirmed cases of the new Influenza A (H1N1) flu has climbed to 6,497, including 65 deaths.
2009 May 15, In Egypt a three-year-old boy from north Egypt tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in the second such case in two days. This brought to 71 the number of bird flu infections in Egypt.
2009 May 16, Japan said 8 high school students had tested positive for swine flu amid fears the virus was spreading in at least two cities where scores of students said they felt ill.
2009 May 17, In NYC Mitchell Wiener, an assistant principal at a middle school, became the first death linked to the H1N1 flu virus.
2009 May 17, Chile confirmed its first two cases of swine flu in two women who arrived from the Dominican Republic.
2009 May 18, In Japan health officials said a wave of new confirmations sent the number of H1N1 flu cases soaring to more than 120, prompting the government to order the closure of schools and the cancellation of community events.
2009 May 18, In Egypt a 4-year-old girl died of bird flu, making her the country's 27th death from the virus since 2006.
2009 May 19, Inmates at a Mexico City prison rioted over restrictions on visits due to swine flu, as the country reported two more confirmed deaths, raising the toll to 74 nationwide.
2009 May 21, Japan's PM Taro Aso again urged the public to stay calm as a total of 292 swine flu cases were reported, including the third in greater Tokyo, the world's largest urban area.
2009 May 23, It was reported that millions of bats in at least 7 US states (Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia) have died from white-nose syndrome, a fungal diseases. In 2011 the fungus Geomyces destructans was identified as the cause. The fungus responsible was later identified as Pseudogymnoascus destructans.
2009 May 26, The Red Cross said the number of cholera cases in Zimbabwe is expected to cross the 100,000 mark in the coming days, warning that the epidemic was Africa's worst in 15 years.
2009 May 28, It was reported that scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus. The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died, but a fifth survived, perhaps helped by a medicine recommended by the scientists.
2009 May 23, Chikungunya, a mosquito-born virus endemic to tropical Africa and Asia, was reported to have arrived in Albania and Italy.
2009 Jun 1, Chilean plumber, Fernando Vera, died of swine flu, making him South America's first swine-flu death.
2009 Jun 6, It was reported that in South Africa HIV-AIDS continued to claim some 3,000 lives a week.
2009 Jun 9, South African health activist Thembi Ngubane (24) died of tuberculosis leaving behind a daughter (4). Her radio diaries of her struggle against the AIDS virus won her audiences and admiration around the world. Ngubane was 19 when she was given a tape recorder to make an audio diary about living with HIV in a country where nearly one third of young women are infected with the virus.
2009 Jun 11, The World Health Organization held an emergency swine flu meeting and declared the first flu pandemic in 41 years as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.
2009 Jun 12, Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said it has successfully produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of expectations.
2009 Jun 14, Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva urged the country not to panic about swine flu, after the number of cases grew nine-fold in four days and a cluster emerged in a key tourist hub. Health authorities reported that confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus soared to 150, compared with just 16 on June 10, including a number of foreigners.
2009 Jun 17, The number of Nebraska cattle herds quarantined because of bovine tuberculosis concerns jumped to 42 and Colorado and South Dakota were warned the disease may have already spread there.
2009 Jun 20, It was reported that that the H1N1 swine flu virus has spread to at least 76 countries and caused over 160 deaths, and that Brazilian researchers have identified a new strain of the virus.
(SFC, 6/20/09, p.D12)
2009 Jun 28, The US Agriculture Department said a Colorado meat company is expanding a recall of beef due to possible contamination by E.coli O157:H7 bacteria after an investigation found 18 illnesses may be linked to the meat.
2009 Jun 30, Authorities in Argentina's capital and Buenos Aires province declared health emergencies and extended school vacations as the nation's swine flu death toll surged to 35.
2009 Jul 5, It was reported that Libya suffering an outbreak of bubonic plague and that neighboring countries, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, were acting to prevent its spread across the borders.
2009 Jul 7, Canadian officials said they had identified yet another new flu virus, this one a mixture of human and swine influenzas, in two farm workers in Western Canada.
2009 Jul 10, A US plant scientists said late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms.
2009 Jul 10, Millions of Argentines stayed home from work, churches in Bolivia canceled Mass and Ecuador announced its first fatalities from swine flu, as the virus continued its spread during the South American winter season.
2009 Jul 12, Thailand's swine flu death toll rose to 18 as the government confirmed three more fatalities and opened a vaccine plant to prevent tens of thousands of infections across the country.
2009 Jul 20, In Australia Adelaide-based Vaxine began swine flu vaccine trials with 300 subjects. Melbourne's CSL had 240 people in its seven-month trial, which started Jul 22. The companies said their trials are the first tests of a swine flu vaccine on humans.
2009 Jul 21, The WHO said that deaths from the H1N1 swine flu virus have double in the past 3 weeks to over 700.
2009 Jul 23, Arab health ministers decided to ban children, the elderly and those with chronic medical conditions from attending the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia this year in effort to slow the spread of swine flu.
2009 Jul 30, Zimbabwe's health minister said a cholera epidemic has ended, after more than 4,200 deaths and 100,000 cases since last August, but warned new outbreaks remain a threat.
2009 Aug 1, China's Ziketan town in Qinghai province was put under collective quarantine when laboratory tests showed it had been struck by the highly virulent disease. 2 of its residents had recently died from pneumonic plague, which spreads through the air, making it easier to contract than bubonic plague, which requires that a person is bitten by an infected flea. Its fatality rate was up to 100% if left untreated, compared with 60% for bubonic plague.
2009 Aug 11, In Indonesia UNAIDS regional director Prasada Rao cited a new report saying more than 1.5 million women living with HIV in Asia were infected by their partners and 50 million more are at risk of infection. Rao spoke on the sidelines of the ninth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which is being held on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
2009 Aug 21, Chile's health ministry said it ordered a quarantine for two turkey farms outside the port city of Valparaiso after genetic tests confirmed sick birds were afflicted with the same swine flu virus circulating in humans.
2009 Sep 6, In Ecuador Lt. Col. John Merino, President Rafael Correa's chief of security, died of swine flu. Ecuador has reported 36 confirmed deaths from swine flu as of last week, along with 1,382 infected.
2009 Sep 13, The Afghan health ministry said it has so far recorded 673 cases of cholera countrywide in almost a third of the country's 34 provinces, including Kabul. No deaths have been reported. A British soldier was killed in an attack on a foot patrol in Helmand province. A 2nd NATO service member died in a bomb blast in the south.
(AFP, 9/13/09)(AP, 9/14/09)
2009 Sep 18, It was reported that some 20-50 thousands birds have died along the shore of Utah's Great Salt Lake so far this year from avian botulism.
2009 Sep 18, Australia approved a vaccine against swine flu and said it would start administering the medicine this month to its most at-risk citizens, including medical staff, pregnant women and the chronically ill. Regulators approved CSL Ltd.'s vaccine for people above age 10, but the Therapeutic Drug Administration was awaiting the results of more clinical trials before approving it for younger children.
2009 Sep 23, The 20-member African Leaders Malaria alliance began a campaign to stop malaria from killing an estimated 1 million people in Africa each year.
2009 Oct 1, A Nigerian official said 9 people died and several others were hospitalized this week following a cholera outbreak in northern Taraba State, bringing the death toll in the region to 97 over the last few weeks.
2009 Oct 8, Leaders of the Dominican Republic and Haiti agreed to cooperate in a campaign aimed at eradicating the last vestiges of malaria from the islands of the Caribbean by 2020.
2009 Oct 16, In northern Nigeria the toll in a cholera outbreak rose to 149 with 52 more deaths recorded. The disease was first reported on September 10 in Gwoza local government on the border with Cameroon from where it spread to six other districts.
2009 Oct 22, In the Philippines outbreaks of leptospirosis, spread by water contaminated with the urine of rats, dogs and other animals, have compounded the problems faced after back-to-back storms since late last month killed more than 900 people. The WHO said it will send an emergency team to help fight a bacterial disease outbreak that has killed at least 148 people and sickened nearly 2,000 in and around the flood-hit capital.
2009 Oct 23, The World Health Organization said nearly 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic.
2009 Oct 23, President Barack Obama signed a declaration making the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed treatment and protect noninfected patients.
2009 Oct, Researchers found that a bug named xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) occurred in 67% of patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The bug had already been implicated in prostate cancer, breast cancer and lymphoma.
2009 Nov 4, The US Dept. of Agriculture said pigs in a commercial herd in Indiana have tested positive for swine flu, making it the first time the virus has been found in such hogs.
2009 Nov 4, A Nigerian senior health official said a fresh cholera outbreak has killed 20 people and left 200 others infected in northern Adamawa State in the past week.
2009 Nov 4, The London-based indigenous rights group Survival International said Swine flu has appeared among the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela, one of the largest isolated indigenous groups in the Amazon. A local doctor and that the virus is suspected in seven deaths, including six infants.
2009 Nov 6, The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) warned that Southern Sudan is facing a "serious outbreak" of the deadly kala azar tropical disease. Kala azar, or visceral leishmaniasis, is a neglected tropical disease contracted by the bite of a sand fly, endemic in some parts of southern Sudan. Without treatment, almost all victims die within one to four months. If treatment is received on time, some 95% can recover.
2009 Nov 9, The Afghan Ministry of Public Health said that 710 of the 779 cases of H1N1 reported since early July have been among Afghan, US and Italian troops. The 11 people who have died from the virus were all Afghans, including one soldier.
2009 Nov 21, Saudi health officials announced the first deaths from swine flu of this year's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, as four pilgrims succumbed to the disease soon after arriving in Saudi Arabia.
2009 Nov 25, A Chinese health official said eight cases of swine flu mutation have been detected amid longstanding concerns among scientists that the virus could change into a more dangerous form.
2009 Nov 29, Saudi officials said 5 people died from swine flu during the hajj, a relatively small number considering the event is the largest annual gathering in the world and was seen as an ideal incubator for the virus.
2009 Nov 30, An Algerian health organization (AnisS) warned that thousands of its people are unknowingly infected with the AIDS virus and called for more testing and prevention efforts.
2009 Dec 1, In South Africa Pres. Zuma said on World AIDS Day that all HIV-positive babies will be treated and testing expanded, a dramatic and eagerly awaited shift in a country that has more people living with HIV than any other.
2009 Dec 4, Kenyan health officials said a cholera epidemic was sweeping across the country with 4,700 cases reported in the past month along with 119 deaths.
2009 Dec 10, The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that nearly 10,000 people have died from H1N1 influenza through Nov 14. Over 200,000 people were reported to have been hospitalized since the beginning of the pandemic 7 months earlier. 50 million America were estimated to have contacted the disease.
2009 Dec 14, The World Health Organization (WHO) said polio has re-emerged in several African countries where it had been eradicated, at the start of a conference on child immunization in Zimbabwe.
2009 Dec 18, South Korean trucks crossed into North Korea delivering enough doses of antiviral drugs for 500,000 North Koreans. An estimated 50 people in North Korea have died of swine flu since November. Han Su Chol, a North Korean health minister, expressed thanks.
2009 Dec 14, Dr. Walter Stamm (b.1945), a pioneer in the treatment of urinary tract infections, died in Seattle. He demonstrated that many cases of PID are caused by Chlamydia trachomatis and developed a test for the organism.
(SSFC, 12/27/09, p.C8)
2009 Chinese researchers announced that they had reduced schistosomiasis infection rates in 2 villages near Poyang lake by replacing water buffaloes, a parasite host, with tractors and improved sanitation. The parasitic worm Schistosoma japonicum, carried by tiny snails, caused schistosomiasis, which stood as the world's 2nd most prevalent disease.
2009 In the Netherlands 6 people died this year from Q-fever. Some 2,300 had become infected by Coxiella burnetti, the infectious bug responsible for the disease. The bug is released into the air during birthing or miscarriages by infected goats. 40,000 pregnant goats were slated to be destroyed in early 2010.
2010 Jan 18, US officials said on some 390 tons of ground beef produced by a California meat packer, some of it nearly two years ago, is being recalled for fear of potentially deadly E. coli bacterium tainting.
2010 Jan 28, US researchers reported the development of a prototype vaccine that protects monkeys and mice against the emerging chikungunya virus. The mosquito-borne virus first appeared on Reunion Island in 2005 and has spread to more than 18 countries. (SFC, 1/29/10, p.A13)
2010 Jan 30, In the Marshall Islands the government considered invoking special powers of quarantine as an outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis has been declared a public health emergency.
2010 Feb 12, The WHO said a cholera outbreak on Papua New Guinea has killed at least 40 people over the last several months.
2010 Feb 25, Mozambique's health minister, Leonardo Chavane, said 36 people have died this year from a cholera outbreak in the northern and central parts of the southern African country. he said the situation is worrying because new cases are being reported daily and are complicated by rumors that health staff are spreading cholera rather than fighting it.
2010 Feb 26, Health officials in Puerto Rico declared an epidemic of dengue fever. Health Secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez says 210 cases have been confirmed for January, more than triple the number in the same month of 2007.
2010 Mar 4, Brazil's National Health Surveillance Agency, Anvisa, ordered all 1,987 passengers and 765 crew to remain aboard the "Vision of the Seas" anchored at Buzios, while teams of doctors treat the 195 passengers suffering vomiting and diarrhea and determine the cause of their illness.
2010 Mar 13, Mozambique's health ministry spokesman said the country's cholera outbreak has now killed 42 people in the northern and central parts of the southern African country.
2010 Mar 19, Polish authorities said a herd of some 300 bison in southeastern Poland is at risk from tuberculosis after one recently died of the disease.
2010 Mar 22, US scientist Rita Colwell (76) won the $150,000 Stockholm Water Prize for her research on the prevention of cholera and other waterborne diseases.
2010 Apr 22, In Burkina Faso Health Minister Seydou Bouda said a strain of meningitis, called X, has killed 718 people out of 5,118 cases in the West African country since January.
2010 Apr 22, The UN World Health Organization and UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) asked for funds for vaccinations saying almost 200 children have died of measles in 16 African countries in the first three months of this year.
2010 Jun 3, In Geneva WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said swine flu is still a pandemic, even though the most activity appears to have passed. Last week WHO confirmed 18,114 deaths from swine flu worldwide since that start of the outbreak in April, 2009.
2010 Jun 18, The UN said a recent measles outbreak in eastern and southern Africa has killed more than 700 people, threatening to reverse gains made over several years to stem the disease.
2010 Jun 29, The government of Mexico lifted the alert for swine flu, officially ending the health emergency in the country where the illness first appeared 14 months ago.
2010 Jul 8, US federal researchers said that they have identified a pair of naturally occurring antibodies that are able to kill more than 90% of all strains of the AIDS virus.
2010 Jul 8, Dr. Thomas Peebles (b.1921), measles researcher, died at his home in Port Charlotte, Fla. His work in the 1950s enabled researchers to develop a vaccine against measles.
2010 Jul 29, Ugandan officials said an anthrax outbreak has killed 82 hippos in the last month and a half.
2010 Aug 11, Researchers reported that plastic surgery patients have carried a new class of superbugs resistant to almost all antibiotics from South Asia to Britain and they could spread worldwide. This so-called NDM-1 gene was first identified last year by Cardiff University's Timothy Walsh in two types of bacteria, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli, in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.
2010 Aug 12, In Nigeria a senior official said a cholera outbreak has killed 40 people while 115 others have been infected in northern Nigeria's Borno State in the past week.
2010 Aug 13, A Belgian man died from a drug-resistant "superbug" originating in South Asia, the first reported death from the bacteria. The superbug -- a bacterial gene called New Delhi metallo-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) -- was first identified last year in a Swedish patient admitted to hospital in India.
2010 Aug 16, Nigerian officials said a cholera outbreak has killed 87 people during the past month while 1,315 others have been infected.
2010 Aug 19, Nigeria's Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu said the death toll from a cholera outbreak in northern Nigerian has risen to 231 while 4,600 others have been infected.
2010 Aug 25, Nigerian health officials warned that the whole country is at risk in a cholera epidemic that has killed 352 people in only three-months time.
2010 Aug 28, Indian officials said at least 215 people, mostly children, have died in an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in an impoverished region of northern Indian and that the death toll is likely to soar.
2010 Sep 3, Chad health officials said an outbreak of cholera in the Central African nation has killed at least 41 people.
2010 Sep 5, Bangladesh issued a red alert over an outbreak of anthrax which has infected nearly 300 people and killed about 150 cattle in the north of the country in the past two weeks.
2010 Sep 6, UNICEF said that over 300 people have died in Cameroon from the country's worst outbreak of cholera in 20 years.
2010 Sep 7, A Health Ministry official said Japan has confirmed the nation's first case of a new gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical treatment in India.
2010 Sep 13, US health officials reported that an infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world.
2010 Sep 23, Zimbabwe state media said a measles outbreak has claimed the lives of 70 children over the past two weeks, mostly among families from apostolic sects that shun vaccinations.
2010 Sep 26, Chinese authorities said five people have been sickened with pneumonic plague in Tibet and that the deadly disease has killed one of them.
2010 Oct 1, Medicago, a Canadian company, broke ground at Durham, NC, on its first American facility. The company genetically manipulates tobacco plants to produce proteins used in making flu vaccines.
2010 Oct 6, Researchers reported in the journal PLoS ONE that samples collected from hives affected by the colony collapse disorder (CCD) indicated the presence of a virus as well as a fungus. The two pathogens were not found in bee colonies not affected by the syndrome.
2010 Oct 7, China says at least 38 people in the southern part of the country have been infected with a mosquito-borne virus that causes an illness similar to dengue fever. This was thought to be China's largest-ever outbreak of the chikungunya virus, which can cause fevers, joint pain, headaches and rashes.
2010 Oct 13, Malaysia criticized the WHO for failing to tackle the spread of dengue in the region, which saw 242,000 cases of the mosquito-borne disease in 2009 and 831 deaths so far this year.
2010 Oct 15, In Indonesia a rabies outbreak on the resort island of Bali has to date killed 100 people. Bali, an island of 3 million people and one of Asia's top tourist destinations, has been grappling with the outbreak for nearly two years.
2010 Oct 19, Nicaragua health officials reported 17 deaths and 600 suspected cases of leptospirosis in the past month. Most of the cases were in Leon and Chinandega.
(www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=123022)
2010 Oct 22, In Haiti aid groups rushed in medicine and other supplies to combat a suspected cholera outbreak. At least 135 people had already died in the rural Artibonite region, host to thousands of quake refugees. By 2016 more than 770,000 9,200 people were sickened by the disease and over 9,200 had died.
(AP, 10/22/10)(SFC, 3/4/16, p.A4)
2010 Oct 22, The UN Children's Fund said about 1,555 people have died of cholera in Nigeria this year, marking a likely peak in a three-year-old surge in the disease in the country.
2010 Oct 23, In Haiti 194 dead were confirmed dead in the poor Caribbean nation's worst health crisis since the Jan 12 quake. Authorities said more than 2,000 people were sick. Experts were investigating possible cases in Croix-des-Bouquet, a suburb of the capital, and radio reports said there were two dozen cases of diarrhea on Gonave island.
2010 Oct 24, In Haiti a cholera outbreak, that already left 250 people dead and more than 3,000 sickened, was at the doorstep of an enormous potential breeding ground: the squalid camps in Port-au-Prince where 1.3 million earthquake survivors live.
2010 Oct 26, UN officials counted 3,769 cases of cholera in Haiti and raised the death toll to 284.
2010 Oct 29, In Haiti the death toll from the cholera epidemic rose to 330, as medical teams desperately sought to contain the outbreak.
2010 Oct 29, Venezuelan health workers said an epidemic that may be malaria has killed dozens of people, decimating three villages of the Yanomami Indians, whose struggle for survival in a remote part of the Amazon rain forest has attracted worldwide support.
2010 Nov 8, Haiti health officials said the cholera epidemic has spread into the capital, imperiling nearly 3 million people living in Port-au-Prince, nearly half of them in unsanitary tent camps for the homeless from the Jan. 12 earthquake. The outbreak had already killed at least 544 people.
2010 Nov 9, The WHO said a polio outbreak in the Congo Republic affected 201 people and caused 104 deaths in the last two weeks. The government in Brazzaville has declared an emergency and announced plans to vaccinate the entire population.
2010 Nov 11, The WHO said a rare parasitic disease has killed 260 people in southern Sudan in the past year, a figure that is threatening to double in the coming months. Kala azar, or visceral leishmaniasis, is a rare tropical disease contracted by the bite of a sand fly.
2010 Nov 12, The UN asked for $164 million to fight the cholera outbreak in Haiti, as the death toll reached 724 with 10 of the deaths and 278 cases in the capital Port-au-Prince.
2010 Nov 15, Haiti's cholera toll rose above 900, including dozens of deaths in the teeming capital, as the epidemic showed no sign of abating just two weeks ahead of presidential elections. Anti-UN riots spread to several cities and towns, as protesters blaming a contingent of Nepalese peacekeepers for a deadly outbreak of cholera barricaded roads and exchanged gunfire with UN soldiers in clashes that lasted late into the night. Protests in Cap Haitien left at least 2 people dead.
(AFP, 11/15/10)(AP, 11/16/10)(AFP, 11/18/10)
2010 Nov 17, Haiti's health ministry said that 1,100 people have now died from cholera. In Cap-Haitien anti-UN riots disrupted international efforts to tackle a spreading cholera epidemic, increasing the risk of infection and death for tens of thousands of poor Haitians in the north.
2010 Nov 27, The British government said it is paying for more than 1,000 medical staff to work in Haiti as part of an aid package worth more than 5.6 million pounds to help combat a deadly cholera outbreak there.
2010 Dec 2, NASA researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon (33) reported that a strange bacterium, Halomonadaceae, found in California's Mono Lake, thrives on arsenic and redefines life as we know it. She said the bacterium does not merely eat arsenic, but incorporates the toxic element directly into its DNA. Her finding stirred much controversy. In 2012 scientists reported that the bacteria is just resistant to arsenic and actually dependent for life on phosphorous.
(Reuters, 12/2/10)(SFC, 5/28/11, p.C1)(SFC, 7/10/12, p.C3)
2010 Dec 3, The death toll in Haiti's cholera epidemic reached nearly 1,900 people since erupting less than two months ago. The Health Ministry said there have been more than 80,000 cases since it was first detected in late October. The Pan-American Health Organization projected it could sicken 400,000 people within a year.
2010 Dec 6, Haitian medical sources said fully 140 people have died of cholera in recent days in the southwest, a region that had been largely spared the epidemic. Officials raised the death toll to over 2,000 since the outbreak began in October.
(AFP, 12/6/10)(SFC, 12/7/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 7, An expert report submitted to the French foreign ministry said respected French epidemiologist Professor Renaud Piarroux conducted a study in Haiti last month and concluded the epidemic began with an imported strain of the disease that could be traced back to the Nepalese base.
2010 Dec 10, UNICEF said a polio outbreak in CongoDRC has caused over 200 deaths. Most of those affected were young men between the ages of 15 and 24.
2010 Dec 16, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement that it has banned poultry and poultry product imports from Manitoba, Canada, after an outbreak of low-pathogenic H5N2 bird flu there.
2010 Dec 27, An Egyptian Ministry of Health official said a resurgent H1N1 swine flu virus has infected 1,172 people in Egypt and killed 56 since October 8.
2010 The vaccine MenAfriVac was introduced into Africa to immunize3 people against meningitis A. An outbreak in 1996 had killed 25,000 people and sickened 250,000 in six months. By 2015 the caseload of the illness plummeted to zero in 16 countries that used the vaccine.
2011 Jan 1, In South Korea one of five wild ducks found dead this week was confirmed to have been infected with a lethal strain of the bird flu virus, its first outbreak in over two years.
2011 Feb 5, In India doctors in Gujarat reported two more cases of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, a tick-borne virus endemic to parts of Africa. 4 people in Gujarat had already died of the disease this year.
2011 Feb 7, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported that scientists in Britain have successfully tested a vaccine which could work against all known flu strains.
2011 Feb 12, A Cambodian mother died from bird flu after preparing and eating meat contaminated by the deadly H5N1 virus. Her 11-month-old son died on Feb 17. A 5-year-old girl died earlier this month in Phnom Penh, a case also linked to contact with sick poultry.
2011 Feb 17, Hong Kong's health authority said at least 12 people have died from swine flu in less than a month, after the latest death from the disease.
2011 Feb 20, It was reported that researchers have found a 225-percent increase in oral cancer cases in the United States from 1974 to 2007, mainly among white men. US scientists have said there is strong evidence linking oral sex to cancer, and urged more study of how human papillomaviruses may be to blame for a rise in oral cancer among white men.
2011 Feb 28, Indian police said they have arrested Sanjay Shah, the manager of a company that made intravenous fluids suspected of killing 13 pregnant women at Umaid Hospital in Jodhpur. The deaths occurred over a 13-day period from February 13.
2011 Mar 3, Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, said he has found conclusive evidence of alien life, fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) His findings were published today in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Scientists inside and outside NASA distanced themselves from Hoover saying he does not have expertise in astrobiology.
(http://tinyurl.com/4t485yy)(SFC, 3/8/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 3, Mexican agricultural officials say they have euthanized 114 peacocks, ostriches and other birds at a zoo due to an avian virus.
2011 Mar 4, The UN said its Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has sent a team of animal health experts to North Korea to help manage an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that could worsen a food crisis.
2011 Mar 7, Japan's health ministry halted the use of vaccines made by Pfizer Inc and Sanofi-Aventis SA that prevent meningitis and pneumonia following the recent deaths of four children. The deaths happened between March 2 and March 4.
2011 Mar 17, A Venezuelan government official said one person has died of swine flu and six others have been diagnosed with the virus.
2011 May 11, Canadian researchers reported an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph "superbug." Scientists detected drug-resistant staph bacteria in bedbugs from three hospital patients from St. Paul's Hospital located in a downtrodden Vancouver neighborhood.
2011 May 21, It was reported that a mutated form of equine herpes virus-1 has killed at least 7 horses and sickened another 37 in 8 states including 14 in California.
2011 May 23, Dominican Rep. Deputy Health Minister Jose Rodriguez said there have been 1,143 cases of cholera and 14 deaths since the outbreak began in November. The number of new cases reported today is up about 50 percent since the middle of May.
2011 May 27, Australian anesthesiologist, Dr. James Latham Peters (61), was charged with endangering his patients' lives after police alleged he infected nearly 50 women with hepatitis C at an abortion clinic.
2011 May 28, German government officials said two more people have died of a bacterial outbreak allegedly caused by contaminated Spanish cucumbers, bringing the number of deaths to nine. Almost 300 people were sick with haemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, in recent days. HUS is a rare complication arising from an infection most commonly associated with E. coli, a bacterium found in undercooked beef or contaminated food. Almost a dozen people with HUS have been hospitalized in Sweden in the past two weeks after travel to Germany. In Denmark, eight people are hospitalized with E.coli infection that could be linked to the outbreak. The E. coli was later identified as type O104:H4.
(AP, 5/28/11)(AP, 5/29/11)(Econ, 6/4/11, p.63)
2011 May 30, Russia banned the import of all vegetables from Germany and Spain and warned the sanction could soon be applied to the rest of Europe because of the deadly E. coli bacteria scare. German officials suspect the deadly strain, which has already killed 12 people, may have come from organic cucumbers imported from Spain.
2011 May 31, The death from a food-borne bacterial outbreak in Germany rose to 16 with nearly 400 people suffering severe symptoms. Scientists were unsure of which produce and which country was responsible for the unusual E. coli germ.
2011 Jun 2, Spain's prime minister hit out at the European Commission and Germany for singling out the country's produce as a possible source of a deadly bacterial outbreak in Europe, and said the government would demand explanations and reparations. The World Health Organization said the E. coli bacteria responsible for a mysterious outbreak that has left 18 people dead and sickened hundreds is a new strain that has never been seen before. The illness had now spread to at least 10 European countries and fanned uncertainty about eating tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce.
2011 Jun 2, In Haiti relief organization Oxfam said clinics in the Carrefour area west of downtown Port-au-Prince are seeing a sharp rise in cholera, with over 300 new cases per day.
2011 Jun 6, German officials retracted their assertion that the E.coli epidemic was caused by bean sprouts from an organic farm. They said there was not enough data to determine if the farm was in fact the source of the deadly outbreak, which sickened people all over Europe and resulted in twenty-two deaths.
2011 Jun 9, German authorities reported that 3 more people have died from E. coli raising the toll to 29 in less than 6 weeks.
2011 Jun 10, The death toll from the tornado in Joplin, Missouri, has risen to 151. A number of survivors were now returning to the hospital suffering from severe fungal infections, called zygomycosis, in their wounds.
2011 Jun 10, Laboratory tests have determined that the E. coli epidemic in Germany and parts of Europe was in fact caused by contaminated bean sprouts from an organic farm. German authorities had been forced to retract their assertion that the sprouts were to blame, but now, high-tech laboratory testing proved that the sprouts were the culprit in the outbreak that has killed 31 people and sickened nearly 3,000 Germans.
2011 Jun 16, In France a 7th child was hospitalized with an E. coli infection after eating meat that manufacturers said could come from Germany, where an outbreak of the bacteria has killed 37 people.
2011 Jun 23, Germany's national disease control center said the death toll from Europe's E. coli outbreak has risen to 43, up from 39 a day earlier. One person has died in Sweden.
2011 Jun 27, Germany's national disease control center said the death toll from the E. coli outbreak has risen to 47 including one person in Sweden.
2011 Jun 28, The UN officially declared that the rinderpest disease has been wiped off the face of the Earth. The UN program to eradicate the animal disease began in 1945 and cost some $5 billion.
2011 Jun 30, India's media reported that at least 17 infants have died in the last 48 hours at the government-run B.C. Roy Hospital for Children in Kolkata, West Bengal. In 2006, 22 infants died in three days at the same hospital because of prematurity or acute forms of either meningitis, encephalitis or septicemia.
2011 Jun, In Haiti the number of cholera cases each day spiked to 1,700 in Mid-June.
2011 Jul 1, Doctors without Borders (MSF) said cholera has claimed 153 lives out of 2,787 cases in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the provinces. MSF said that the outbreak began in March in the northeastern city of Kisangani, and soon spread westwards, with the first cases reported in Kinshasa on June 20.
2011 Jul 1, In India scientists warned that water off the famed beaches of the Indian holiday state of Goa was unfit for bathing and fishing due to high levels of bacteria from untreated sewage.
2011 Jul 2, Australian officials worked to isolate potential victims after uncovering two more cases of the deadly horse-borne Hendra virus, which has erupted in New south Wales and Queensland. Hendra can lead to fatal respiratory illness and has killed four of the seven people who have contracted it in Australia since it was first documented in 1994.
2011 Jul 5, The EU announced action against Egyptian bean and seed imports, after tests indicated that a 15-ton batch of Egyptian fenugreek seeds imported in 2009 to Germany and then distributed elsewhere was at the root of an E.coli outbreak that killed 50 people.
2011 Jul 5, Jamaica said it has shuttered all citrus nurseries in an attempt to check the spread of bacteria causing the incurable "citrus greening" disease. The bacteria has hobbled citrus production in parts of China and infested millions of trees in Florida and Brazil.
2011 Jul 8, US health officials confirmed the death of an Arizona man from the same E. coli bacteria blamed for an outbreak in Germany. He had visited Germany and died last month.
2011 Jul 11, Japanese scientists were reported to have found a "superbug" strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to all recommended antibiotics. They said it could transform a once easily treatable infection into a global public health threat.
2011 Jul 14, Switzerland suspended imports of some seeds, beans and sprouts from Egypt, after the EU blamed Egyptian fenugreek seeds for E.coli outbreaks in Germany and France. The temporary ban would expire in October 31, 2011, in line with the EU's suspension.
2011 Jul 15, UNICEF said at least 17,584 measles cases, including 114 deaths, have been reported by Ethiopian health officials in the first half of the year. The WHO said says at least 462 cases of measles, including 11 deaths, have been confirmed in recent months among Somali refugee children in the Kenyan refugee complex known as Dadaab.
2011 Jul 21, About 100 Swazi AIDS activists marched to the finance ministry to demand that the kingdom not allow a crippling financial crisis to interrupt the supply of life-saving drugs. Swaziland has the world's highest HIV infection rate, with one in four adults carrying the virus.
2011 Jul 26, Australia authorities said a lethal bat-borne horse virus has been detected in a dog for the first time, prompting fears it has jumped species.
2011 Aug 3, US meat giant Cargill said it is recalling 36 million pounds of ground turkey linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has killed one person in California and sickened at least 76 others. The fresh and frozen ground turkey products were produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2.
2011 Aug 14, In Cambodia a 6-year-old girl died from bird flu. She was the eighth person to die from the H5N1 flu virus this year in Cambodia.
2011 Aug 17, US health officials said two children and a young man have died this summer from the brain-eating Naegleria fowleri, an amoeba that lives in water. About 120 US cases, almost all of them deaths, have been reported since the amoeba was identified in the early 1960s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
2011 Aug 17, Doctors in Trinidad said PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar is among the nearly 1,700 people who have been diagnosed with hemorrhagic dengue, a mosquito-born virus. He was expected to recover.
2011 Aug 19, Vietnamese officials said hand, foot and mouth disease has killed 81 children and continues to surge. PM Nguyen Tan Dung called for stepped up efforts for prevention.
2011 Aug 29, The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned about a new mutant strain of the deadly bird flu H5N1 virus (H5N1 - 2.3.2.1.) in China and Vietnam, saying there could be a "major resurgence" of the disease.
2011 Aug 30, Nigerian officials said cholera has killed 35 people in northern Sokoto and Yobe states in recent days.
2011 Sep 13, An online 200-page paper by Project CLAMER, a collaboration of 17 European marine institutes, said the rising temperature of ocean water is causing a proliferation of the Vibrio genus of bacteria, which can cause food poisoning, serious gastroenteritis, septicemia and cholera.
2011 Sep 14, The World Health Organization issued a report saying cases of tuberculosis resistant to a multitude of drug treatments are rising at an alarming rate across Europe.
2011 Sep 20, The World Health Organization warned countries that a dangerous strain of polio, WPV1, has spread to China from Pakistan.
2011 Sep 23, Nigerian officials said a fresh cholera outbreak in the north has killed at least six people, raising the overall toll in the country to more than over 200 in recent months.
2011 Sep 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that 72 illnesses were linked to tainted Colorado cantaloupe. Colorado state and local officials said they are investigating three additional deaths that may be connected. Cantaloupes from Jensen Farms were recalled on Sep 10. The listeria outbreak left 33 people dead. On Sep 26, 2013, Eric and Ryan Jensen were arested on charges of introducing adulterated food into interstate commerce. On Oct 22, 2013, Eric and Ryan pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges.
(AP, 9/28/11)(SFC, 10/1/11, p.A6)(SFC, 9/27/13, p.A7)(SFC, 10/22/12, p.A5)
2011 Sep 30, Central African Republic health minister Jean-Michel Mandaba said a new cholera epidemic has hit the country and has already claimed at least 10 victims in the south.
2011 Oct 10, In Haiti an official with Doctors Without Borders said the number of cholera cases seen in Port-au-Prince has jumped about threefold in recent weeks.
2011 Oct 11, UNICEF, the UN children's agency, warned that the west and central Africa region is facing one of the worst cholera epidemics in its history, with over 85,000 cases reported leading to 2,466 deaths this year. The most significant increases were in Chad, Cameroon, and in western Democratic Republic of Congo.
2011 Oct 15, Indian officials said at least 430 people, mainly children, have died from an outbreak of encephalitis in a deeply neglected region of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
2011 Oct 17, Canadian scientists announced that a contagious and lethal fish virus has been detected for the first time in wild Pacific salmon. The European strain of the virus had only been identified before in farm-raised Atlantic salmon.
2011 Oct 18, The search for the world's first malaria vaccine received a boost with the release of early results from a major clinical trial showing it cut risk by about half in African children. The vaccine, known as RTS,S, is made by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's lab in Belgium. It is the first of its kind to attempt to block a parasite, rather than bacteria or viruses.
2011 Oct 18, In Haiti Dr. Paul Farmer said the local cholera outbreak is now the worst in the world with over 6,000 people killed and over 450,000 people sickened.
2011 Oct, Pakistan reported its 115th case of polio. The current annual global number was down to about 1000.
2011 Nov 21, The World Health Organization said 5,000 cases of Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD) have already been reported this year in Djibouti compared to 2,000 in 2010. Djibouti reported two deaths since October and 127 new cases this month.
2011 Nov 29, Three-quarters of British-grown oysters contain norovirus, a bug which causes diarrhea and vomiting, according to new research published by the Food Standards Agency (FSA).
2011 Dec 1, Pres. Obama marked World Aids Day with plans to boost spending on HIV treatment by $50 million.
2011 Dec 1, South Africa's President Jacob Zuma unveiled a 5-year plan to halve the number of HIV infections, cementing South Africa's turnaround from years of deadly denial.
2011 Dec 20, American authorities said they had asked the world's leading scientific journals to withhold research on bird flu after researcher teams in Madison and Rotterdam engineered the virus so that it could be transmitted through the air from ferret to ferret. In January scientists agreed to suspend their research for 60 days. On April 20, 2012, the US reversed its stance. On April 27 the Dutch government gave Ron Fouchier permission to publish his paper. A 2nd paper by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison was published in May.
(www.economist.com/node/21542156)(SFC, 1/21/12, p.A4)(Econ, 5/5/12, p.78)(Econ, 6/23/12, p.81)
2011 Dec 21, Hong Kong health workers began slaughtering 17,000 chickens after a carcass was found infected with bird flu at a poultry market.
2011 Dec 23, It was reported that a herpes virus has decimated oysters along its coast for a 4th straight season. 70-80% of France's young stock have died this year.
2011 Dec 26, China's biggest milk producer, Mengniu Dairy Group, said it has destroyed a batch found to have excessive levels of a cancer-causing toxin, in another safety scare for the country's dairy industry. The problem was reportedly discovered before the milk containing high levels of aflatoxin was sold to the public.
2011 Dec 30, China's food safety regulator in Shenzhen said it had found excessive levels of aflatoxin in peanuts sold in three stores, and in cooking oil in four restaurants.
2011 Dec 31, In China a bus driver who contracted the bird flu virus died Shenzhen. This was the nation's first reported human case of the deadly disease in 18 months.
2011 A toxic "red tide" killed tens of thousands of abalone as well as sea urchins, starfish and other mollusks along the northern coast of California. In 2014 scientists identified a poison producing micro-organism known as Gonyaulax spinifera as the culprit.
2011 West Virginia began field trails on a vaccine to stop the spread of rabies. Marshmallow-flavored packets of ONRAB, designed to be eaten by raccoons, skunks and other furry creatures, were dropped from aircraft.
2011 Some 8.7 million new cases of tuberculosis were reported this year. Multidrug-resistant TB accounted for as many as 400,000 cases.
2011 Schmallenberg virus - named after the German town where it was first detected - infected sheep and cows on at least 2,600 farms in eight EU countries in 2011. In 2013 British farmers became the first in Europe to get a new vaccine, made by Merck, against the virus.
2011 Japanese and Dutch scientists said had created a version of bird flu that could be transmitted between mammals by the respiratory route. The announcement prompted the Netherlands to treat the relevant academic papers as sensitive goods subject to export controls.
2011 In Madagascar 26,700 people contracted TB this year, a jump of more than 16 percent compared with 2009.
2011 Dr. Matthew Chang of Nanyang Technological Univ. in Singapore worked out a way to program E. coli to release destructive antimicrobial peptides when they came into contact with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He then armed the modified E. coli with the enzyme DNase1 which then acted to bacteial sheets know as biofilms.
2012 Jan 8, Wildlife officials said white-tailed deer populations in parts of eastern Montana and elsewhere in the Northern Plains could take years to recover from a devastating disease that killed thousands of the animals in recent months. The deaths were attributed to an outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), transmitted by biting midges.
2012 Jan 17, Rotary Int'l. announced it had raised another $200 million to eradicate polio. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will contribute a further $504 million. One of three active strains was eliminated in 1999.
2012 Jan 17, Afghan President Hamid Karzai urged the Taliban to allow teams conducting a polio vaccination campaign to reach areas under the insurgents' control. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the last three nations where polio remains endemic.
2012 Jan 17, The Indian government dispatched a team of medical experts to the financial capital, Mumbai, to assess reports of a handful of cases of apparently untreatable tuberculosis.
2012 Jan 19, Vietnam confirmed its first case death from bird flu in nearly 2 years, a day after Cambodia also logged its first fatality this year from the H5N1 virus.
2012 Jan 20, In Northern Ireland officials confirmed that 3 babies have died in the last week to 10 days after an infectious outbreak linked to the pseudomonas bacteria in a Belfast hospital.
2012 Jan 22, In southwest China a man who contracted the bird flu virus died, the second human death from the virulent disease in the country in just under a month.
2012 Jan 26, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths.
2012 Jan 31, Zimbabwe's health minister said up to 50 cases of typhoid were being reported per day. More than 1,500 people have been treated in an outbreak blamed on poor water and sanitation facilities.
2012 Feb 1, Some 24,000 Australian ducks were being destroyed after testing positive for a low pathogenic strain of the bird flu virus, an outbreak which has prompted poultry export bans in parts of Asia.
2012 Feb 3, A Minnesota food company said it is recalling more than a million hard-cooked eggs distributed to 34 states after testing revealed some may be contaminated with listeria.
2012 Feb 5, Nepal officials said health workers are to cull some 4,000 chickens following the discovery of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the southeastern part of the Himalayan country.
2012 Feb 13, An Indonesian woman died of H5N1 bird flu a day after being admitted to a hospital in Tangerang district on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta. This was Indonesia's third human death from the deadly disease this year.
2012 Feb 18, It was reported that more than 3,000 children in northern Uganda are suffering from a debilitating mystery ailment known as nodding disease. For several years, scientists have tried and failed to determine the cause of the illness. Scientists did not know if the disease is linked to similar outbreaks in neighboring South Sudan and Tanzania.
2012 Feb 25, India was taken off a list of polio endemic countries by the World Health Organization, marking a massive victory for health workers battling the crippling disease.
2012 Feb, In northern California and southern Oregon migrating waterfowl began dropping dead from avian cholera as they gathered in Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge. An estimated 10-20,000 birds died from the disease.
2012 Mar 3, Taiwan confirmed that nearly 58,000 chickens had been culled at two farms on the island following the latest outbreak of bird flu, most of them at a farm in central Changhua county. The next day Hsu Tien-lai, the chief of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine tendered his resignation. He had been accused in a documentary of covering up outbreaks of H5N2 bird flu, a less virulent strain of the virus.
2012 Mar 4, Zimbabwe state media reported that some 3,000 cases of typhoid have been reported in Harare since the first case was detected in a working-class suburb in January.
2012 Mar 24, South Africa launched a plan to diagnose tuberculosis in the country's gold mines, where the disease's incidence is the highest in the world.
2012 Apr 16, Haiti, the United States and international partners launched a nationwide vaccination campaign seeking to curb or prevent infectious diseases.
2012 Apr 24, The US Department of Agriculture reported the country's fourth-ever case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a California dairy cow, but stressed the outbreak was contained and no contaminated meat had entered the food chain.
2012 May 27, A 10-year-old Cambodian girl died from H5N1 bird flu, the country's third fatality from the virulent disease this year.
2012 Jun 2, Hong Kong health authorities urged the public not to panic after the southern Chinese city reported its first human case of bird flu in 18 months in a two-year-old boy.
2012 Jun 7, In Scotland the number of confirmed and suspected cases of Legionnaires' disease in Edinburgh rose to 51, as officials continued to search for the source of the deadly outbreak. One man, who had existing health problems, died a day earlier while being treated for the lung infection. A 2nd death was reported on June 15. A probe so far focused on industrial cooling towers in the southwest of the city.
(AFP, 6/7/12)(AFP, 6/15/12)
2012 Jun 24, In Saudi Arabia a man (60) died from severe pneumonia complicated by renal failure. He had arrived at a Jihad hospital 11 days earlier with symptoms similar to severe case of influenza or SARS. In September an Egyptian virologist said it was caused by a new coronavirus. Months later the illness was named MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome).
2012 Jul 3, Mexico's Agriculture Dept. said an outbreak of H7N3 bird flu virus has infected about 2.5 million chickens and led authorities to destroy or dispose almost a million birds in Jalisco state.
2012 Jul 4, Cambodian officials reported that 61 of 62 children, admitted to hospitals with a mysterious respiratory disease, have died. Lab tests soon confirmed that a virulent strain of hand, hoof and mouth disease, known as EV-71, was to blame for some of the cases.
(SFC, 7/5/12, p.A5)(SFC, 7/10/12, p.A2)
2012 Jul 11, Cuban public health officials said confirmed cholera cases have risen from 85 to 110, with the worst hit area in the province of Granma. Cholera had been eradicated in Cuba over 100 years ago. Haiti was suspected as the source of the new outbreak.
2012 Jul 12, In Brazil scientists released millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in the northern city of Juazeiro in an effort to end dengue fever.
2012 Jul 15, The Chinese province of Hunan urged parents to seek immediate treatment for children showing symptoms of hand, foot and mouth disease after official figures showed 112 people died from the illness last month.
2012 Jul 16, Pakistan began a widely publicized 3-day polio vaccination campaign.
2012 Jul 20, Sierra Leone's health ministry said an outbreak of cholera in the west African country has killed 66 people and sickened more than 3,800 since January.
2012 Jul 25, Britain's the Department of Health said it is to extend its seasonal flu vaccination program to all British children, free of charge, becoming the first country in the world to do so.
2012 Jul 28, Uganda government officials said an outbreak of Ebola virus in the western part of the country has killed 14 people, many in the past week.
2012 Jul 30, In Indonesia a man died of bird flu, the country's ninth fatal case this year.
2012 Aug 1, Doctors Without Borders said the first victim of the latest Ebola outbreak in Uganda was a 3-month-old girl and that of the 65 people who attended her funeral, 15 later contracted the deadly disease and at least 11 of those have since died.
2012 Aug 9, Guinea's health ministry said an outbreak of cholera has killed 60 people since February and is showing no signs of letting up.
2012 Aug 15, Texas authorities said the state is battling an outbreak of the West Nile virus, with 17 deaths blamed on the mosquito-borne disease.
2012 Aug 19, In California the Asian citrus psylid was reported to be threatening the state's $1.6 billion citrus industry.
2012 Aug 19, Japanese officials said 7 people, most of them elderly women, died after eating pickles contaminated with E. coli in Sapporo. This was the country's deadliest mass food poisoning in 10 years.
2012 Aug 23, A cholera epidemic in Guinea and Sierra Leone has left 250-300 people dead. 846 deaths were reported this year in the 14 countries of West and Central Africa. Sierra Leone's health ministry said that deaths from a cholera outbreak had reached 220.
(SFC, 8/23/12, p.A5)(AFP, 8/23/12)
2012 Aug 26, Canadian health officials said eight people have died in a rare outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in the province of Quebec, having identified more than 100 cases of the dangerous strain of pneumonia since July.
2012 Aug 30, In California Yosemite park officials closed 91 Curry Village tent cabins following 3 more cases of hantavirus, bringing the total number of cases to 6 cases, including 2 deaths. The cabins were apparently infested with deer mice, carriers of the disease. A 3rd death from the incurable disease was reported on Sep 6.
(SFC, 8/31/12, p.A1)(SFC, 9/7/12, p.A18)
2012 Aug 31, The Ohio state Dept. of Health said a woman's death this week was related to H3N2v, a new strain of swine flu. 12 new cases were reported in the US during the week.
2012 Sep 4, The World Health Organization said the number of people with Ebola, a rare haemorrhagic disease, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo has tripled since mid-August, after 14 patients died in two weeks.
2012 Sep 5, Texas health officials said at least 43 people have died this year in Texas of West Nile virus. Nationwide 87 deaths have been reported to the CDC.
2012 Sep 12, UC Berkeley chemical engineer Jay Keasling, founder of Amyris Biotechnology, won the prestigious Heinz Award of $250,000 for developing an inexpensive way to mass-produce artemisinin, a plant based drug to treat malaria. The Heinz Awards were established by Teresa Heinz in 1993 to honor the memory of her late husband, US Senator John Heinz.
(http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/publications/news/2012/keasling-wins-heinz-award.php)
2012 Sep 14, The UN said that an outbreak of the Ebola virus has killed 31 people in northeastern Congo, more than doubling the death toll from a week ago.
2012 Sep 16, It was reported that a 19th person has died at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., from an antibiotic-resistant strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae (KPC). The outbreak stemmed from a single patient carrying the superbug into the hospital last summer.
2012 Oct 2, The US National Institute for Public Health and the Environment said a salmonella outbreak traced to smoked salmon has sickened hundreds of people in the Netherlands and the United States. It has been traced to Dutch company Foppen, which sells fish to many major Dutch supermarkets and to stores around the world.
(AP, 10/2/12)(http://tinyurl.com/m3wv4tr)
2012 Oct 3, Mexico launched an extensive program to vaccinate fifth-grade girls against human papillomavirus.
2012 Oct 4, US health officials warned the hundreds of people who got steroid back injections in 23 states could be at risk for meningitis from contaminated vials of a steroid produced by the new England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass. At least 5 deaths were already reported. The fungus causing the meningitis was later identified as Exserohilum rostratum.
(SFC, 10/5/12, p.A10)(SFC, 10/19/12, p.A9)
2012 Oct 7, US health officials reported an additional 27 cases in a fungal meningitis outbreak linked to steroid injections that has killed seven people and now infected 91 in nine states.
2012 Oct 14, The US CDC said 15 people have died and 205 people in 14 states have now been infected meningitis traced to contaminated steroid shots mixed by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass.
2012 Oct 16, The US CDC said the number of people linked to the meningitis outbreak has climbed to 233 in 15 states. It has been traced to contaminated steroid shots mixed by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass.
2012 Oct 26, The US CDC said the number of people linked to the meningitis outbreak has climbed to 338 in 18 states and included 25 deaths. It has been traced to contaminated steroid shots mixed by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass.
2012 Nov 6, The number of people linked to a meningitis outbreak has climbed to 419 cases and included 30 deaths. It has been traced to contaminated steroid shots mixed by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass.
2012 Nov 13, The World Health Organization reported that a yellow fever outbreak in Sudan's Darfur region has killed 107 people in the last six weeks, warning that the disease could spread all over the country.
2012 Nov 2, Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced that Australia will spend over $104 million over the next four years to help reduce deaths from malaria in the Asia-Pacific region.
2012 Nov 14, Uganda confirmed a new Ebola outbreak in a district 40 miles from Kampala. Scores of Ugandans were isolated the next day to prevent its spread.
2012 Nov 15, World animal health body OIE said that Australia had reported a case of a highly pathogenic bird flu virus at an egg farm in the New South Wales region.
2012 Nov 16, Haitian officials confirmed 3,593 cases of cholera and 837 more suspected cases since Hurricane Sandy's passage.
2012 Nov 19, The UN said Sudan has begun a massive vaccination campaign to immunize3 2.4 million people against an outbreak of yellow fever in the Darfur region.
2012 Nov 27, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report saying young people ages 13 to 24 account for 26 percent of all new HIV infections.
2012 Nov 28, In New Hampshire David Kwiatkowski, a traveling medical technician, was indicted on 14 new charges. He is believed to have infected at least 39 people with hepatitis C through his use of stolen hospital drugs and syringes.
2012 Dec 18, An Indonesian health official said a boy (4) has died of H5N1 bird flu bringing the total to 160. At least 360 people have died worldwide from this virus since 2003.
2012 Dec 29, Carl Woese (84), biophysicist and evolutionary microbiologist, died at his home in Urbana, Ill. His 1977 discovery of a "third domain" of life in the vast realm of micro-organisms altered scientific understanding of evolution.
(http://tinyurl.com/bjkhfhw)
2012 Mark Harrison authored "Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease."
(Economist, 10/13/12, p.99)
2012 Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik authored "Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus."
2012 David Quammen authored "Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic."
2012 The meningitis outbreak traced to contaminated steroid shots mixed by a pharmacy in Framingham, Mass., killed 76 people this year and sickened more than 700 others. In 2017 pharmacist Glenn Chin went on trial for 2nd degree murder for his role in the deadly outbreak. In 2018 Chin was sentenced to eight years in prison.
(SFC, 10/27/12, p.A6)(SFC, 2/1/18, p.A5)
2012 A global coalition of charities, NGOs, some governments and 13 drug firms signed the London Declaration, which promised to control, eliminate or eradicate ten Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) by the end of the decade. The END Fund was set up to coordinate philanthropy for NTDs.
2012 In Pakistan 306 children died of measles in 2012, compared to 64 the year before.
2013 Jan 2, Britain's Health Protection Agency (HPA) said more than 1.1 million people in Britain have succumbed to the norovirus winter vomiting disease so far this season.
2013 Jan 9, British health officials said a new strain of the winter vomiting disease norovirus has spread to France, New Zealand and Japan from Australia and is overtaking all others to become the dominant local strain.
2013 Jan 12, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a public health emergency, giving pharmacists permission to administer flu vaccinations to more people as officials seek to stem the worst flu outbreak in that state in several years.
2013 Jan 15, Cuba's Public Health Ministry acknowledged 51 new cases of cholera in Havana amid growing concerns about the illness' spread and disappointment in the diplomatic community over the government's lack of transparency.
2013 Jan 24, US health officials said the new Sydney strain of norovirus, a stomach bug, has been sweeping the globe is taking over in the US. Since September more than 140 outbreaks in the US have been caused by the new strain.
2013 Jan, California researchers published findings of a brain tumor in raccoons associated with a newly discovered virus called RacPyV, or raccoon polyomavirus.
2013 Feb 11, British health officials said a new virus from the same family as SARS, that sparked a global alert last September, has been found in a patient in Manchester who had traveled to the Middle East and Pakistan.
2013 Feb 15, British health officials said a fourth person in Britain has contracted a potentially fatal SARS-like virus which was unknown in humans until a few months ago, but said the risk to the population remained very low.
2013 Feb 15, The UN said an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.
2013 Feb 23, China reported a 2nd fatality from the H5N1 bird flu in the city of Guiyang.
2013 Feb 27, British health officials said gonorrhea cases have soared by 25 percent in the past year in England as superbug or drug-resistant strains of the sexually transmitted infection (STI) take hold worldwide.
2013 Mar 11, Sally Davies, Britain's top health official, said antibiotic resistance poses a catastrophic threat to medicine and could mean patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that can no longer be treated.
2013 Mar 11, Russian scientists said a new form of microbial life has been found in water samples taken from Lake Vostok, a giant freshwater lake hidden under kilometers of Antarctic ice.
2013 Mar 17, It was reported that Lake Erie is sick and that a dead zone covers a large portion of the lake bottom due to a poisonous blue-green algae called Microcystis enhanced by high levels of phosphorous from fertilizer runoff. The problem was compounded by the zebra mussel, a foreign invader discovered in 1988, which excretes phosphorous providing Microcystis a ready-made meal.
2013 Mar 29, A top UNICEF official said as many as 240,000 children have missed UN-backed vaccinations against polio because of security concerns in Pakistan's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
2013 Mar 31, Chinese officials confirmed that three recent cases of influenza were due to a new strain called H7N9.
2013 Mar, Deaths from cholera epidemic in Haiti reached 8,205.
2013 Apr 1, In Egypt an outbreak of food poisoning at al-Azhar University forced the hospitalization of 479 students. It occurred after a meal served at the university dormitories in Cairo's Nasr City district. The outbreak led to student protests.
2013 Apr 6, Chinese officials in Shanghai reported two more cases of H7N9 bird flu, raising the number of cases in eastern China to 18, including 6 deaths. It was later reported that 27 days elapsed between the first death from H7N9 and its public announcement.
(SSFC, 4/7/13, p.A3)(Econ, 4/13/13, p.47)
2013 Apr 9, South African officials said they have detected bird flu on an ostrich farm near Oudtshoorn, but that it is unrelated to the strain that has killed 8 people in China. The EU imposed a ban on imports of South African ostrich meat after a 2011 outbreak of the H5N2 strain.
2013 Apr 11, China reported its 10th death from H7N9 bird flu.
2013 Apr 24, In a new study scientists reported that some bacteria and other microbes from the gut turn lecithin - a nutrient in egg yolks, liver, beef, pork and wheat germ - into an artery-clogging compound called TMAO (trimethylamine-N-oxide). They also found that blood levels of TMAO predict heart attack, stroke or death, and do so "independent of other risk factors."
2013 Apr 29, It was reported that 62 prisoners have died in California from 2006 through 2013 after coming down with a fungal infection called valley fever. The highes rates were reported at Pleasant Valley and Avenal prisons. The federal manager of health care in the state's prisons ordered officials to transfer 3,300 inmates out of Pleasant Valley and Avenal.
(SFC, 4/29/13, p.C4)(SFC, 4/30/13, p.C1)
2013 Apr 30, Guinean health officials said a meningitis outbreak has killed at least 40 people.
2013 Apr, Colorado and 14 other US states began reporting cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus. Up till now the virus was thought to exist only in Europe and China.
2013 May 2, Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said that five people have died and two other patients were in critical condition with confirmed cases of a new respiratory coronavirus related to SARS. The new virus was first identified last year in the Middle East and several of the people infected had all traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan.
2013 May 7, Scientists said Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) is destroying entire crops of cassava and has spread out of East Africa into the heart of the continent. It is attacking plants as far south as Angola and now threatens to move west into Nigeria, the world's biggest producer of the potato-like root that helps feed 500 million Africans.
2013 May 14, Saudi Arabia confirmed four new cases of the deadly new coronavirus virus related to SARS that appears centered in the Arabian Peninsula but that has also been reported in Europe.
2013 May 20, Saudi Arabia recorded another death from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing the total number of deaths in the kingdom to 16. More than 20 people have died from the virus worldwide.
2013 May 30, Saudi Arabia reported that 3 more people have died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing the total number of deaths globally to 30.
2013 Jun 1, Italy's health minister confirmed that 3 people were being treated in Tuscany for a new respiratory virus related to SARS. The patients included a man recently back from a visit to Jordan, a related child and a work colleague.
2013 Jun 2, Saudi Arabia reported that 3 more people have died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing the total number of deaths in the kingdom to 24.
2013 Jun 3, It was reported that coffee leaf rust has devastated coffee plantations across Central America and knocked half a million people out of work. Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were all severely impacted.
(SFC, 6/4/13, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/alqvfoc)
2013 Jun 17, Saudi Arabia said four more people have died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing the total number of deaths to 32 in the kingdom at the center of the growing crisis.
2013 Jun 19, Doctors investigating a new respiratory virus related to SARS, said it spreads easily between people and appears to be more deadly than SARS. The biggest outbreak of the virus, now called MERS, was in Saudi Arabia.
2013 Jun 23, The WHO said the new H7N9 strain of bird flu in China has killed 37 people with more than 130 sickened.
2013 Jun 28, It was reported that a pneumonia outbreak has killed at least 20 bighorn sheep on Old Dad Mountain in California's Mohave National Preserve. Nevada numbered some 10,000 adult animals in at least 60 mountain ranges.
2013 Jul 6, In Saudi Arabia two more people died from the new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 38 the number of deadly cases in the kingdom at the center of the growing outbreak.
2013 Jul 19, Health authorities in the United Arab Emirates said they have identified four new cases of a respiratory virus related to SARS whose main concentration has been in neighboring Saudi Arabia.
2013 Jul 27, In Saudi Arabia one more man died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 39 the number of deadly cases in the kingdom at the center of the growing outbreak.
2013 Aug 9, European scientists reported their finding of traces of antibodies against the MERS virus in dromedary, or one-humped, camels, but not the virus itself. Some experts think bats might be infecting other animals like camels with MERS before passing it to humans. Since the virus was first identified last September, there have been 94 illnesses, including 46 deaths, from MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome.
2013 Aug 14, In New Hampshire David Kwiatkowski, a traveling hospital technician, pleaded guilty to 14 charges of drug theft and tampering, along with two similar counts in Kansas. He was accused of infecting patients in multiple states with hepatitis C through tainted syringes.
2013 Aug 16, A WHO official said Somalia is suffering an "explosive" outbreak of polio and now has more cases — 105 — than all other countries in the world combined. The outbreak is complicated by the fact health workers have limited access to south-central Somalia, controlled by al-Qaida-linked militants.
2013 Aug 25, Saudi Arabia said a Saudi man (51) has died of the coronavirus MERS, bringing the kingdom's death toll from the SARS-like virus to 41, while two new cases were registered.
2013 Aug 26, Qatar health authorities announced the 2nd confirmed case in a week of the MERS coronavirus in the Gulf state, with a 29-year-old man infected and in intensive care.
2013 Aug 27, Kyrgyzstan officials scrambled to control the spread of bubonic plague that killed a rural boy last week as three more people showed possible symptoms of the disease.
2013 Aug 28, Saudi health authorities said another Saudi man has died of the coronavirus MERS, bringing the kingdom's death toll from the SARS-like virus to 42, adding a new case was registered.
2013 Aug 30, In Saudi Arabia another Saudi man died of the coronavirus MERS, bringing the kingdom's death toll from the SARS-like virus to 43.
2013 Sep 4, Qatar reported that a woman has died after contracting the MERS coronavirus, becoming the first recorded fatality from the SARS-like virus in the Gulf state.
2013 Sep 6, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said 2 women have died of MERS, bringing the total number of fatalities in the kingdom to 44.
2013 Sep 8, In Saudi Arabia another three people were reported dead after contracting the MERS coronavirus, bringing the kingdom's total fatalities of the SARS-like virus to 47.
2013 Oct 4, The World Health Organization said the global number of infections with the deadly MERS virus has risen to 136, after hard-hit Saudi Arabia confirmed six new cases.
2013 Oct 21, Nigerian officials said cholera has killed 50 people in the northwest in the past week.
2013 Oct 28, Saudi Arabia said one more person has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 52 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2013 Oct 29, The UN's health agency said it has confirmed 10 polio cases in northeast Syria, the first confirmed outbreak of the highly contagious disease in the country in 14 years, and a top UN official urged warring sides to grant health workers access to 500,000 children who have never received immunization.
2013 Oct 30, Oman said it has discovered the first case of the MERS coronavirus in the Gulf sultanate, a 68-year-old Omani man.
2013 Nov 4, It was reported that scientists are struggling to find the trigger for a disease that appears to be ravaging starfish in record numbers along the US West Coast. The deadly syndrome, known as "star wasting disease," caused the sea creatures to lose their limbs and turn to slime in a matter of days. The disease was first detected in tide pools this summer along the coast of Monterey, Ca.
(Reuters, 11/4/13)(SFC, 12/9/13, p.A13)
2013 Nov 8, Uganda's Pres. Yoweri Museveni tested for HIV in public to encourage millions of untested people to check their status, a critical step to stemming the spread of the virus in the East African country.
2013 Nov 8, The UN said emergency plans are under way to vaccinate more than 20 million children in the Middle East after polio resurfaced in war-torn Syria.
2013 Nov 10, Saudi Arabia announced another fatality from the MERS virus, taking its toll to 53, as neighbouring Oman recorded its first death from the respiratory disease.
2013 Nov 13, Kuwait said it has discovered its first case of the MERS coronavirus for a citizen who is in "critical condition." Later in the day Kuwait reported its 2nd case for a man who just returned from abroad.
(AFP, 11/13/13)(AFP, 11/14/13)
2013 Nov 13, The WHO said some 21 nations in the Middle East and nearby regions have jointly made the eradication of polio an emergency priority and recognized that Pakistan is a key part of the problem.
2013 Nov 20, Saudi health authorities announced a new MERS death, raising to 54 the number of people killed by the coronavirus.
2013 Nov 22, US regulators approved the use of Johnson & Johnson's Olysio, also known as simeprevir, as a treatment for chronic infection with the liver-destroying hepatitis C virus.
2013 Nov 22, Qatar health authorities said an expatriate (48) has died of MERS, bringing to four the number of deaths in the Gulf state from the coronavirus.
2013 Nov 24, Saudi Arabia said one more person has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 55 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2013 Nov 26, The World Health Organization said it has discovered two additional cases of the highly contagious polio virus in Syria, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 17.
2013 Nov 29, Abu Dhabi authorities said two new cases of the potentially deadly MERS respiratory virus, including a heavily pregnant woman, have been reported in the United Arab Emirates.
2013 Dec 3, Hong Kong officials said they will quarantine 17 people after the city confirmed its first human case of the deadly H7N9 bird flu.
2013 Dec 6, In China a woman died of the H10N8 strain of bird flu, the first ever reported human case of the virus.
2013 Dec 6, Hong Kong reported its second human case of H7N9 bird flu just days after the first, raising fears that the virus is spreading beyond mainland China.
2013 Dec 9, The World Health Organisation and UNICEF announced the launch of a polio vaccination campaign for 23 million children in the Middle East after 17 cases were discovered in Syria.
2013 Dec 21, In northwestern Pakistan gunmen attacked an anti-polio vaccination center in the Khyber tribal region, killing a medic on duty.
2013 Dec 21, Saudi Arabia said one more person has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 56 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2013 Dec 26, In Guinea a 2-year-old boy in the remote village of Meliandou fell ill with a mysterious illness characterized by fever, black stools, and vomiting. He died 2 days later. He was later identified as patient zero in the current outbreak of Ebola, which was not recognized until March.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meliandou)(Econ, 12/13/14, p.49)
2013 Dec 26, In Saudi Arabia a 73-year-old man died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 57 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2013 Dec 28, In northwest Pakistan gunmen attacked an anti-polio vaccination center on the outskirts of Peshawar and killed a medic on duty, then fled the scene.
2013 Dec 31, Utah officials said an unprecedented wintertime outbreak of West Nile virus has killed more than two dozen bald eagles in the state and thousands of water birds around the Great Salt Lake.
2013 Dec, Chikungunya fever, a mosquito-born virus common in Africa and Asia, was first detected in the Caribbean region on St. Martin and soon spread across across the region and onto South and Central America.
2013 Mexico this year registered over 62,000 cases of Dengue fever, a mosquito-born tropical disease.
2013 - 2015 The Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone killed more than 11,000 people.
2014 Jan 3, The health minister of Alberta, Canada, said an H1N1 flu outbreak in Alberta has sickened nearly 1,000 people and killed five over the past few weeks. He urged everyone to get vaccinated.
2014 Jan 8, Canada announced the first H5N1 avian flu death in North America, of a patient who had just returned from China.
2014 Jan 14, It was reported that canine distemper virus has killed four tigers and several other animals across northern and eastern India.
2014 Jan 17, China announced 4 more cases of H7N9 bird flu.
2014 Jan 18, South Korea confirmed the outbreak of highly pathogenic bird flu and said it would expand the culling of birds to a radius of 3-km (1.9 mile) around a duck farm.
2014 Jan 21, Gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan, attacked two teams of polio workers, killing 3 members of the teams and wounding a 4th before fleeing.
2014 Jan 22, In northwest Pakistan a bomb rigged to a bicycle exploded next to a police patrol on its way to guard a polio vaccination team outside Peshawar. 6 officers were killed as well as a boy who was nearby.
2014 Jan 26, The Royal Caribbean cruise line ended a 10-day trip in the Caribbean early after hundreds of passengers and crew members on the Explorer of the Seas were sickened with a gastrointestinal illness consistent with norovirus. Health officials boarded the ship at St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
2014 Jan 28, Hong Kong culled around 20,000 chickens after finding the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus in poultry imported from mainland China. Fears over avian flu have grown following the deaths of two men from the H7N9 strain in Hong Kong since December.
2014 Jan 29, Saudi health authorities announced a new MERS death, bringing to 59 the number of people who have died from the coronavirus in the country with the most fatalities.
2014 Jan 30, Uganda's government said it is planning to double expenditure on anti-retroviral drugs in an effort to reverse a worsening trend in HIV infections.
2014 Feb 4, Egypt's Health Ministry said swine flu has killed 24 people across the country over the past two months.
2014 Feb 5, It was reported that a new strain of avian influenza, H10N8, has been confirmed in two people in China. Cases of H7N9 were reported to be surging with some 300 cases and more appearing every day.
2014 Feb 7, In Cambodia a boy (8) died of H5N1 bird flu, the country's first case this year. His sister (2) also died the same day.
2014 Feb 9, Egypt's Health Ministry said the number of people killed by swine flu in the country since December has reached 38.
2014 Feb 11, The Afghan public health ministry said it has launched an emergency polio vaccination campaign in Kabul after a girl contracted the disease, the city's first case since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
2014 Feb 16, In Saudi Arabia another man died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 60 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2014 Feb 22, The World Health Organization began a campaign to prevent outbreaks of cholera in temporary camps in South Sudan housing thousands of people who have fled the country's two-month-old conflict.
2014 Feb 23, In Saudi Arabia a woman (81) died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 61 the number of deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2014 Mar 13, The Toronto National Post reported that a new generation of mutant lice have become immune to poisons of decades past and constituted 97.1% of all Canadian head lice cases.
2014 Mar 14, Saudi Arabia said a man (19) has died from a new respiratory virus related to SARS, bringing to 63 the deaths in the kingdom at the center of the outbreak.
2014 Mar 19, Guinea health authorities said an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 23 people in the southeastern forest region since February when the first case was reported.
2014 Mar 21, Guinea's ministry of health says that 49 people have been registered with viral hemorrhagic fever in the country's south since February, and 29 of those people have since died.
2014 Mar 23, Guinea government officials said samples from victims of a viral hemorrhagic fever that has killed more than 50 people have tested positive for the Ebola virus.
2014 Mar 24, Guinea announced that samples taken from three suspected cases of Ebola, which led to two deaths in Conakry, had tested negative for the virus. Health workers said the outbreak from the Ebola virus, which has killed at least 59 people in Guinea, may have spread to Liberia.
(AFP, 3/24/14)(SFC, 3/25/14, p.A2)
2014 Mar 26, Guinea health officials said the death toll from the rare Ebola virus has risen to 63. The outbreak is the first in West Africa in 20 years.
2014 Mar 27, The World Health Organization declared India polio-free after three years with no new cases.
2014 Mar 28, The Guinean health ministry confirmed eight cases of Ebola in Conakry, including one fatality. The total number of suspected cases recorded from January to March 28 was 111 cases of haemorrhagic fever, including 70 deaths.
2014 Mar 29, Guinea kept up its efforts to contain an Ebola epidemic which has killed dozens spreading from its southern forests to the capital Conakry, as neighboring Senegal closed its border.
2014 Mar 31, Doctors Without Borders warned that health authorities in Guinea faced an "unprecedented epidemic" of Ebola, as the death toll from the disease that causes severe bleeding reached 78.
2014 Apr 3, Liberia said it was dealing with its first suspected Ebola case thought to be unconnected to the epidemic raging in Guinea and to have originated separately within its borders. The fruit bat, thought to be the host of the highly contagious Ebola virus, is a delicacy in the region straddling Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and experts suspect huntsmen may be the source of the outbreak.
2014 Apr 4, Mali, Liberia and Sierra Leone geared up to tackle killer haemorrhagic fevers including Ebola, which has claimed 86 lives in Guinea. Mali claimed 3 suspect cases; Liberia claimed 14; Sierra Leone claimed several more.
2014 Apr 8, WHO officials said more than 100 people have died in an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, with as many as 175 people infected. This included 151 suspected and confirmed cases of the disease in guinea, where 98 people have died, and 10 deaths in Liberia.
2014 Apr 9, It was reported that a virus, never before seen in the US, has killed millions of baby pigs since porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) first showed up in May, 2013.
2014 Apr 9, Saudi health authorities said that 11 people in the western city of Jiddah have contracted the Middle East respiratory syndrome, resulting in two recent deaths, bringing to at least 66 the number of people who have died of MERS in the kingdom.
2014 Apr 11, The United Arab Emirates announced that one of six Filipino paramedics in Abu Dhabi, who have been infected by the MERS coronavirus, has died from the respiratory disease. The WHO said that it had been told of 212 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection worldwide, of which 88 have proved fatal.
2014 Apr 12, In Saudi Arabia the death of a foreign man (45) due to MERS brought the nationwide toll in the world's most-affected country to 68.
2014 Apr 13, Japan's Agricultural Ministry said two chickens have tested positive for avian influenza at a farm where more than 1,000 chickens have died, marking the country's first case of bird flu in three years.
2014 Apr 13, A Malaysian man (54), who went on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, became the first death in Asia from Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
2014 Apr 17, The World Health Organization said the death toll from an Ebola outbreak in Guinea has risen to 122, a sharp increase from a previous figure of 108.
2014 Apr 18, The US federal government said farms stricken with a deadly pig virus must report outbreaks as part of a new program to help monitor and possibly control the disease. Porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED), believed to have come from China, has killed millions of pigs in 27 states since it began showing up in the US last May.
2014 Apr 20, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said three more patients who contracted a potentially fatal Middle East virus related to SARS have died amid a recent increase in infections.
2014 Apr 21, Saudi media reported that a court has sentenced to death five people over deadly 2003 attacks that marked the start of a wave of Al-Qaeda violence.
2014 Apr 21, Saudi Arabia announced 17 new cases of MERS, bring the total number of Saudi infections to 261, of whom 81 have died. King Abdullah fired health minister Abdullah al-Rabiah.
(SFC, 4/22/14, p.A2)(Reuters, 4/22/14)
2014 Apr 23, Saudi Arabia announced 11 new cases of MERS, including a 13-year-old child. Acting health minister Adel Fakieh vowed to keep the public better informed on the coronavirus.
2014 Apr 24, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said two more patients who became infected with a Middle East virus related to SARS have died, and that 13 others have contracted the MERS virus. The deaths bring to 83 the number of people who have died in the kingdom since contracting the virus in September 2012.
2014 Apr 23, The WHO said 147 people have died from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, including 136 in Guinea and 11 in Liberia.
2014 Apr 25, Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said that five more people in the kingdom have died from MERS. The ministry says 92 people have died and 313 have contracted the virus in Saudi since September 2012.
2014 Apr 26, In Egypt a 27-year-old civil engineer was diagnosed with MERS after returning from Saudi Arabia.
2014 Apr 26, Two Saudi nationals died from MERS, taking the death toll from the coronavirus in the worst-hit country to 94.
2014 May 2, US Health officials confirmed the first case of an American infected with MERS, a mysterious virus that has sickened hundreds in the Middle East. The man fell ill after flying to the US late last week from Saudi Arabia where he was a health care worker.
2014 May 4, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said one more patient who contracted the potentially fatal Middle East virus related to SARS has died and that 14 new cases have been detected. The new 14 cases raised the number of those infected in Saudi Arabia to 411.
(AP, 5/514)
2014 May 7, Saudi health authorities said four more people have died after contracting MERS, a Middle East respiratory virus. Saudi Arabia has reported 449 cases and 121 deaths from MERS.
2014 May 8, Lebanon recorded its first case of the often-fatal Middle East respiratory virus (MERS). The patient had recently returned from a visit to several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia.
2014 May 9, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said the death toll from MERS has risen by five to 126 fatalities since the mystery respiratory virus first appeared in the kingdom in 2012.
2014 May 11, In Jordan a man died after being infected with the MERS virus.
2014 May 11, Saudi Arabia reported that three new deaths from MERS had taken its death toll from the disease to 142.
2014 May 11, A 2nd US case of MERS was diagnosed in Florida in a man visiting from Saudi Arabia.
2014 May 13, Saudi health authorities reported another five deaths from MERS. The potentially fatal Middle Eastern respiratory virus has sickened hundreds in the kingdom. A total of 152 people have now died and 495 have been confirmed to have contracted the virus in Saudi Arabia since it was discovered in 2012.
2014 May 17, US health officials reported what appears to be the first time that a mysterious Middle East virus (MERS) has spread from one person to another in the United States. An Illinois man probably picked up an infection from an Indiana man who earlier this month became the first US case of Middle East respiratory syndrome.
2014 May 22, The Pan American Health Organization reported more than 55,000 suspected and confirmed cases of the chikungunya virus since December throughout the Caribbean islands. The virus, spread rapidly by mosquitoes, was first identified in Africa in 1953. It has also reached French Guiana, the first confirmed transmission on the South American mainland.
2014 May 23, A Haitian government official said health authorities will distribute pain medication to clinics around the country amid a surge in suspected cases of a mosquito-borne virus that is new to the region. More than 5,500 suspected cases of the chikungunya virus have been reported in Haiti, up from 1,500 cases a week earlier.
2014 May 26, In Florida laurel wilt disease, caused by a beetle the size of a rice grain, was reported to be killing off swamp bay trees. It has been detected across more than 500 square miles of the Everglades and has also infected avocado and red bay trees in southern Miami-Dade County and elsewhere in the southeast.
2014 May 27, In Sierra Leone a woman died from the Ebola virus, the second person in the country to succumb to the haemorrhagic fever.
2014 May 28, Iranian media said the country has recorded its first two cases of the MERS virus.
2014 May 28, In Jordan a man (69) died after being infected with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus. This brought to 6 the number of fatalities in Jordan from MERS since it first emerged in 2012.
2014 May 29, Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said 13 people have died over the last two weeks from the Middle Eastern respiratory virus and that 186 people in total have died from the MERS virus since it was discovered in 2012.
2014 May, Venezuela saw its first cases of chikungunya, a disease that causes high fevers and severe joint pain. It took authorities five months to declare it a notifiable disease.
2014 Jun 3, In Sierra Leone the death toll from an Ebola outbreak rose to at least five victims. The Ebola disease has had a 70 percent fatality rate during the first crisis of its kind in West Africa.
2014 Jun 4, The UAE said the MERS coronavirus has killed 10 people and infected 68 in the United Arab Emirates since March 2013.
2014 Jun 11, The Sierra Leone government announced a state of emergency in the Kailahun district from the outbreak of the Ebola virus which has claimed 17 lives in this West African nation, banning public gatherings and closing schools. Local parliamentarian Momoh Moiwai said the death toll was actually 28.
2014 Jun 11, Authorities in the US Virgin Islands said chikungunya, a nasty mosquito-borne virus that has been spreading rapidly in the Caribbean, has made its way to the 3-island territory.
2014 Jun 11, UNICEF reported that Somalia is suffering an outbrteak of measles with 1,350 suspected cases reported in March and April.
2014 Jun 16, Britain's food safety watchdog said you should not wash a chicken before cooking it, because washing raw chicken spreads the campylobacter bacteria.
2014 Jun 17, A Liberian a health official said 7 people believed to have the Ebola virus have died in recent days in the first deaths reported in Monrovia since the outbreak began. 16 people were now believed to have died from the virus in the West African country.
2014 Jun 18, Cuban health authorities confirmed the country's first six cases of chikungunya fever, a debilitating, mosquito-borne virus that is suspected of afflicting tens of thousands across the Caribbean since its arrival in the region last year.
2014 Jun 18, The World Health Organization said an Ebola outbreak continues to spread in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the death toll in the outbreak has risen to more than 330.
2014 Jun 23, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the latest figures show 567 cases of Ebola with 350 deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The virus has no cure and causes internal bleeding and organ failure, spreading through contact with infected people.
2014 Jul 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said fifty new cases of Ebola and 25 deaths have been reported in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea since July 3.
2014 Jul 8, The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced that health researchers in Maryland had discovered vials of smallpox, declared eradicated in 1977, sitting in a forgotten fridge in an FDA storehouse.
2014 Jul 11, Save the Children said a cholera outbreak in South Sudan has infected over 2,600 people and left at least 60 people dead since the first cases were reported in Juba in May.
2014 Jul 11, The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 44 new cases of Ebola including 21 deaths. 539 deaths in Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone have been attributed to the outbreak.
2014 Jul 17, Florida health officials reported the first domestically-acquired infections in the United States of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus that has spread rapidly through the Caribbean. More than 230 chikungunya cases have been reported in Americans this year, but all the others were travelers believed to have been infected elsewhere.
2014 Jul 17, Puerto Rican health officials declared an epidemic of the mosquito-borne virus known as chikungunya, which was introduced into the Caribbean region late last year.
2014 Jul 18, Colorado state health officials said three more people have been diagnosed with the plague after coming in contact with an infected dog whose owner contracted a life-threatening form of the disease.
2014 Jul 22, In Sierra Leone Sheik Umar Khan (39), the head doctor fighting the deadly tropical virus Ebola, was reported to have caught the disease. Across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, 632 people have died from the illness according to the latest WHO report.
2014 Jul 25, The World Health Organization the death toll in West Africa's Ebola outbreak has risen to 660, with the number of cases surpassing 1,000. In Guinea fatalities reached 314, with 127 in Liberia and 219 in Sierra Leone.
2014 Jul 25, Nigeria said that Ebola caused the death of a Liberian national who died in quarantine in Lagos, confirmation that the worst-ever outbreak of the virus has reached Africa's most populous country. Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian national who moved from Minnesota to Liberia to work for the country's ministry of finance, died in what health officials determined to be the first probable case of the Ebola virus in Nigeria.
(AFP, 7/25/14)(Yahoo News, 7/29/14)
2014 Jul 26, Dr. Samuel Brisbane, a top Liberian health official, died. He had fallen ill while treating Ebola patients at the country's largest hospital, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia.
2014 Jul 27, Liberia's Pres. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson closed all but three border crossings, restricted public gatherings and quarantined communities heavily affected by the Ebola outbreak.
2014 Jul 29, In Sierra Leone Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, who was praised as a national hero for treating Ebola, died from the disease. ASKY regional airline announced it was suspending flights to the cities hardest hit by an outbreak that has killed more than 670 people.
2014 Jul 31, The US CDC said a US aid worker, infected with the deadly Ebola virus while working in West Africa, will be flown to the US to be treated in a high-security ward at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
2014 Jul 31, Sierra Leone leader Ernest Bai Koroma declared a state of emergency and as the country struggled to contain the deadly Ebola epidemic.
(Yahoo News, 7/31/14)
2014 Jul 31, The World Health Organization said the deaths of 57 more people from Ebola in west Africa have pushed the overall fatality toll from the epidemic to 729, including 339 in Guinea, 156 in Liberia and 233 in Sierra Leone.
2014 Aug 1, The leaders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone agreed to a $100 million emergency action plan to beef the response to Ebola.
2014 Aug 2, Toledo, Ohio, issued the warning just after midnight after tests at a treatment plant showed two sample readings for microsystin above the standard for consumption. The city said not to boil the water because that would only increase the toxin's concentration. The mayor also warned that children should not shower or bathe in the water and that it shouldn't be given to pets. The water supply was fouled by toxins possibly from algae on Lake Erie. On Aug 4 city officials declared the water safe.
(AP, 8/3/14)(SFC, 8/5/14, p.A12)
2014 Aug 2, Health experts said a cholera epidemic in northern Cameroon has killed at least 65 people and probably infected about 1,300 people over the last two months.
2014 Aug 4, Nigerian authorities said that a doctor in Lagos who treated a Liberian victim of Ebola has contracted the virus, the second confirmed case in sub-Saharan Africa's largest city.
2014 Aug 4, The World Bank said that it would provide up to $200 million to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to help the west African nations contain the deadly outbreak.
2014 Aug 5, Liberian officials said relatives of Ebola victims have defied government orders and dumped infected bodies in the streets as West African governments struggled to enforce tough measures to curb an outbreak of the virus that has killed 887 people.
2014 Aug 6, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its highest alert for an all-hands on deck response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
2014 Aug 6, Liberian Pres. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf announced emergency measures that will, for 90 days, allow her government to curtail civil rights by imposing quarantines on badly affected communities to contain the Ebola epidemic.
2014 Aug 6, Nigeria confirmed five new cases of Ebola in Lagos and a second death from the virus. Authorities said a nurse who treated Ebola victim Patrick Sawyer is now dead and five others are sick with one of the world's most virulent diseases, as the death toll rose to at least 932 people in four West African countries.
(AFP, 8/6/14)(AP, 8/6/14)
2014 Aug 6, A Saudi Arabian who had travelled to Sierra Leone and had symptoms similar to those found in Ebola sufferers died of a heart attack. Samples submitted to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came back negative for the Ebola virus.
(AFP, 8/6/14)(AP, 8/10/14)
2014 Aug 7, In Sierra Leone police and soldiers blockaded rural areas hit by the deadly Ebola virus, after neighboring Liberia declared a state of emergency to tackle the worst-ever outbreak of the disease, which has killed 932 people.
2014 Aug 8, In Canada a patient back from Nigeria who showed symptoms of fever and flu -- possible signs of Ebola -- was put in isolation in a Toronto-area hospital.
2014 Aug 8, Nigeria's president declared the containment of the Ebola virus a national emergency as officials confirmed two new cases of Ebola, bringing the total number of infections in Africa's most populous country to nine, including 2 deaths.
2014 Aug 8, The World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to be an international public health emergency that requires an extraordinary response to stop its spread.
2014 Aug 9, Guinea announced the closure of its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia in a bid to halt the spread of Ebola.
2014 Aug 11, The Ivory Coast announced that it has banned all flights from countries hit by Ebola as part of steps to prevent the deadly virus from reaching the west African nation.
2014 Aug 11, Nigeria confirmed a new case of Ebola in Lagos, bringing the total number of people in the country with the virus to 10.
2014 Aug 12, Canada said it will donate a small quantity of an experimental Ebola vaccine developed in its government lab to the World Health Organization for use in Africa.
2014 Aug 12, Danish officials said a listeria outbreak caused by contaminated sausages may have killed 10 people during the past few months. A small meat producer in Copenhagen was closed down Aug 11.
2014 Aug 12, In Liberia Fatu Sherrif (12) died overnight of Ebola in the village of Ballajah. She had been shunned and locked away with her mother's body for a week after most residents fled to the forest to escape an outbreak of the virus. In Liberia alone, some 599 cases have been diagnosed with 323 deaths.
2014 Aug 12, A Spanish missionary priest being treated for Ebola died in a Madrid hospital amid a worldwide debate over who should get experimental Ebola treatments. Miguel Parajes (75) had worked for the San Juan de Dios hospital order, a Catholic aid group, and had been helping to treat people with Ebola in Liberia when he became ill and was evacuated.
2014 Aug 13, Guinea declared a public health emergency over an Ebola epidemic that has killed more than 1,000 people in three West African states and is sending health workers to all affected border points.
2014 Aug 14, South Korea's Korean Air Lines Co. said will suspend flights to Kenya in a measure to prevent the spread of Ebola.
2014 Aug 14, The UN health agency said the death toll from the worst outbreak of Ebola in four decades had now climbed to 1,069 in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The WHO said the scale of the Ebola epidemic has been vastly underestimated and that "extraordinary measures" were needed to contain the killer disease.
2014 Aug 16, In Liberia residents in Monrovia's in the West Point slum raided a quarantine center for suspected Ebola patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses. Up to 30 patients were staying at the center and many of them fled at the time of the raid.
2014 Aug 18, The UN said it is undertaking a massive polio vaccination program in Iraq following two cases discovered earlier this year in Baghdad.
2014 Aug 19, Liberia's health ministry said all the patients who fled a medical center on Aug 16 are now being screened at a hospital in Monrovia and those who tested positive are being treated. Officials also said three health workers being treated with the last known doses of ZMapp were showing signs of recovery.
2014 Aug 20, Liberian security forces sealed off the West Point area, a seaside slum in Monrovia, in the latest effort to stop the spread of Ebola, setting off protests by angry residents.
2014 Aug 20, Democratic Republic of Congo said it has sent its health minister and a team of experts to the remote northern Equateur province after several people died there from a disease with Ebola-like symptoms.
2014 Aug 20, Nigeria's health ministry said a senior doctor who treated the country's first Ebola patient has died, taking the death toll in Africa's most populous country to five.
2014 Aug 21, The WHO said at least 70 people have died in northern Democratic Republic of Congo from an outbreak of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, denying that the illness was Ebola.
2014 Aug 21, Senegal closed its land border with Guinea as part of intensifying efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak that has killed 1,350 people since March in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
2014 Aug 22, It was reported that scientists have discovered a living ecosystem of microbes under 2,500 feet of ice in Antarctica's subglacial Lake Whillans.
2014 Aug 22, Ivory Coast closed its land borders with Ebola-affected West African neighbors Guinea and Liberia in an attempt to prevent the world's deadliest outbreak of the virus from spreading onto its territory.
2014 Aug 22, Nigeria confirmed two new cases of Ebola bringing the total number of confirmed infections in Nigeria to 12. Five have died from the illness and 213 people were under surveillance.
2014 Aug 22, Sierra Leone passed a new law imposing possible jail sentences for anyone caught hiding an Ebola patient.
2014 Aug 24, Congo DRC confirmed its first two cases this year of Ebola but claimed they were unrelated to the epidemic ravaging West Africa. The confirmation marked the 7th outbreak of Ebola in Congo DRC, where the virus was first identified in 1976 near the Ebola River.
2014 Aug 24, In Liberia Dr. Abraham Borbo, one of three Africans to receive the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, died. Only six people in the world are known to have received ZMapp. The small supply is now said to be exhausted and it is expected to be months before more can be produced by its US maker.
2014 Aug 24, Nigeria's striking public sector doctors said they would suspend a nearly two-month strike to help combat the Ebola outbreak.
2014 Aug 25, Japan said it is ready to provide a Japanese-developed anti-influenza drug as a possible treatment for the rapidly expanding Ebola outbreak.
2014 Aug 27, Sierra Leone said a third top doctor has died from Ebola, as health workers tried to determine how a fourth scientist also contracted the disease before being evacuated to Europe.
2014 Aug 28, In Ghana Ebola-hit nations met for crisis talks in Accra as the death toll topped 1,500 and the WHO warned that the number of cases could exceed 20,000 before the outbreak is stemmed.
2014 Aug 28, In Guinea riots broke out in the remote southeastern city of Nzerekore over rumors that health workers had infected people with Ebola.
2014 Aug 29, Senegal's Ministry of Health said a man infected with Ebola has traveled to Senegal, becoming the first recorded in this country of an outbreak that has hit four other West African countries and has killed more than 1,500 people.
2014 Aug 30, In Guinea a curfew was imposed in N'Zerekore after two days of protests by market stall holders against a team of health workers sent, without notice, to spray their market with disinfectant. Clashes left at least 55 people wounded.
2014 Aug 30, Liberia's government lifted quarantine measures in the seaside district of West Point in Monrovia, which had been designed to contain the spread of the Ebola virus. Officials announced plans to build five new Ebola treatment centers each with capacity for 100 beds.
2014 Sep 1, Japan urged local authorities to be on the lookout for further outbreaks of dengue fever, after confirming another 19 cases contracted at a popular local park in downtown Tokyo. The health ministry earlier reported three local cases, the first in nearly 70 years.
2014 Sep 1, Liberia's president ordered most civil servants to stay home another month in an effort to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus. Scores of healthcare workers at the country's main hospital in Monrovia went on strike over unpaid wages.
2014 Sep 1, Nigeria confirmed a third case of Ebola disease in the oil hub of Port Harcourt, bringing the country's total confirmed infections to 16 with some 200 under surveillance.
2014 Sep 2, CongoDRC government said the death toll from an outbreak of the Ebola virus in the northern Djera region has risen to 31. The WHO confirmed there was no link with an epidemic in West Africa.
2014 Sep 2, Doctors Without Borders warned that the world is losing the battle against Ebola and that the organization is completely overwhelmed by the outbreak in four West African countries.
2014 Sep 2, Japanese researchers said they have developed a new method to detect the presence of the Ebola virus in 30 minutes, with technology that could allow doctors to quickly diagnose infection.
2014 Sep 3, Nigeria announced that a seventh person had died from Ebola and another person was confirmed as having the virus.
2014 Sep 3, The Philippine Health Secretary said a nurse who flew home from Saudi Arabia last week has been confirmed as the Philippines' second case of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
2014 Sep 4, In Switzerland some 200 experts huddled in Geneva to debate experimental treatments for the Ebola virus as the world's worst-ever outbreak raged in west Africa.
2014 Sep 5, Sierra Leone said it will impose a four-day, countrywide "lockdown" starting Sept. 18, an escalation of efforts to halt the spread of Ebola across the West African country.
2014 Sep 6, The Democratic Republic of Congo upped its death toll from Ebola to 32 but insisted the outbreak, separate from an epidemic raging in west Africa, could be contained in its remote forest hotspot.
2014 Sep 8, US federal and state health officials said hundreds of children across the Midwest have been stricken by a potentially serious respiratory illness, and many states were asking for federal help testing and tracking cases. Many of the cases were positive for the Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68).
2014 Sep 8, In Ethiopia African Union chiefs held an emergency meeting to hammer out a continent-wide strategy to deal with the Ebola epidemic, which has killed over 2,000 people in west Africa.
2014 Sep 9, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in history has jumped by almost 200 in a single day to at least 2,296 and is already likely to be higher than that.
2014 Sep 14, A fourth Sierra Leonean doctor, a woman, died after contracting the dreaded Ebola virus.
2014 Sep 16, The United States announced it will send 3,000 troops to help tackle the Ebola outbreak as part of a ramped-up plan, including a major deployment in Liberia, the country where the epidemic is spiraling fastest out of control.
2014 Sep 16, In Guinea a team of health officials accompanied by journalists came to Womey village to educate people about how to avoid contracting Ebola. A group of local residents turned on their would-be benefactors, attacking them with knives and rocks and killing 8 of them.
2014 Sep 19, The Dominican Rep. said chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus, has sickened nearly 500,000 people, including 109 newborn babies.
2014 Sep 19, In Sierra Leone thousands of health workers began knocking on doors across the country in search of hidden Ebola cases as the entire West African nation was locked down in their homes in an unprecedented effort to combat the deadly disease.
2014 Sep 21, West Africa intensified its response to the deadly Ebola epidemic, with Sierra Leone uncovering scores of dead bodies during a 72-hour shutdown and Liberia announcing 1,000 hospital beds.
2014 Sep 22, Sierra Leone ended a 3-day unprecedented nationwide shutdown during which officials said about 75 percent of 1.5 million households were checked for Ebola patients and given information on the deadly disease. At least 130 cases of Ebola were identified and scores of bodies were buried during the shutdown.
2014 Sep 25, Sierra Leone began a quarantine of more than one million people in the largest open-ended lockdown in the Ebola outbreak.
2014 Sep 26, The International Monetary Fund fast-tracked $130 million (102.5 million euros) in aid to fight the Ebola epidemic after the governments of the worst-hit countries in west Africa said they were desperately counting on promises of global aid to be backed up with cash.
2014 Sep 27, Liberia's chief medical officer, Bernice Dahn, placed herself under quarantine for 21 days after her office assistant died of Ebola.
2014 Sep 30, The first case of the deadly Ebola virus was diagnosed in the United States after Thomas Eric Duncan, who flew from Liberia to Texas, tested positive for the disease. Duncan died on Oct 8.
(Reuters, 10/1/14)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.34)
2014 Oct 1, The Democratic Republic of Congo raised its death toll from the Ebola virus to 42 as it struggled to contain the second outbreak of the disease in Africa this year.
2014 Oct 2, The Save the Children charity warned that five people are being infected with Ebola every hour in Sierra Leone and demand for treatment beds is far outstripping supply.
2014 Oct 4, Pakistan officials said a record number polio case have already been detected this year. Doctors discovered 202 cases from January to October 3. The previous modern record was 199 cases in 2001.
2014 Oct 6, In Spain nursing assistant Teresa Romero was diagnosed with Ebola. She had cared for a Spanish priest who died of the disease last month. 4 other people were quarantined and her dog was ordered killed.
(SFC, 10/8/14, p.A3)(Econ, 10/11/14, p.62)
2014 Oct 7, Chinese officials said the dengue virus has killed six people and infected more than 23,000 in southern China's worst outbreak of the mosquito-transmitted disease in about two decades.
2014 Oct 8, The US said it will begin screening travelers from West Africa after Thomas Eric Duncan (42) of Liberia, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US, died in Dallas.
2014 Oct 16, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said it is seeing "sporadic" cases of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which has killed 324 people in the country since 2012.
2014 Oct 20, In Sierra Leone 49 confirmed cases of Ebola emerged just today in two Ebola zones in and around the capital. So many people were dying that removing bodies was a problem.
2014 Oct 24, The World Health Organization said that three more polio cases have surfaced in Pakistan, bringing the number of new cases to 220, a record figure that authorities blame on attacks by insurgents targeting vaccination teams. This was announced as many nations observed World Polio Day.
2014 Oct 29, The US FDA said it has cleared Pfizer's Trumenba to prevent a subtype of Meningococcal disease to people ages 10-25.
2014 Oct 29, Australian scientists said they have successfully tested a vaccine against chlamydia in wild koalas, in what they believe is a breakthrough in combating the sexually-transmitted disease ravaging the native marsupial.
2014 Nov 10, Portuguese health authorities said an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease has caused five deaths and sickened about 38 people over the past week in a cluster of small towns about 35 km (20 miles) north of Lisbon.
2014 Nov 16, In southern California the Crown Princess cruise ship arrived in San Pedro, Los Angeles County, with 172 people ill with the highly contagious norovirus. The ship had over 4,100 people on board.
2014 Nov 16, Authorities in the Netherlands said they have identified a "highly pathogenic" strain of bird flu at a farm in the central area of the Netherlands and announced a temporary ban on all transport to and from poultry farms across the country. They said it was the highly contagious H5N8 strain first detected in Europe less than two weeks ago.
2014 Nov 17, US researchers said they have identified a virus that has been wiping out starfish along the US Pacific coast. It was identified as a densovirus, a type of parvovirus, and was said to have also been found in museum specimans dating back to 1942.
2014 Nov 17, In Egypt a woman (19) diagnosed with bird flu died, the second fatality from the H5N1 virus this year in the country.
2014 Nov 20, Dutch authorities said a case of bird flu has been confirmed at a chicken farm, the second infection identified in the country this week.
2014 Nov 21, Dutch authorities said they will slaughter poultry at a cluster of three farms after new cases of bird flu were found in Kamperveen, in the 3rd outbreak this week.
2014 Nov 22, The WHO said a plague outbreak has killed 40 people on the island nation of Madagascar, with 119 people diagnosed with the bacterial disease since August. WHO said only two percent of the cases have been from the highly infectious pneumonic form of the disease.
2014 Nov 25, Benin's country's health minister said 9 people have died from Lassa fever, a viral disease common in West Africa with symptoms similar to Ebola. Lassa fever is in the same virus family as Ebola.
2014 Nov 27, Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) said some 70 percent of fresh chickens on sale in Britain are contaminated with a food poisoning bug.
2014 Nov 30, The Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said in a statement that poultry at the farm in the town of Zoeterwoude were suffering from an H5 strain of bird flu and that all 28,000 birds there were being slaughtered.
2014 Dec 19, US health officials warned consumers to avoid prepackaged caramel apples after they were linked to 4 deaths in which people were sickened with listeria. At least 28 more were known sickened in ten states.
2014 Dec 31, Hong Kong authorities began destroying 15,000 chickens at a poultry market and suspended imports from mainland China after some birds were found to be infected with bird flu.
2015 Jan 21, Nigeria confirmed that five states have been hit with the H5N1 strain of bird flu, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of poultry but no human cases.
2015 Jan, In Madagascar at least 57 people died of plague in the wake of cyclones Chedza and Bansi.
(SSFC, 2/8/15, p.D18)
2015 Feb 2, In Liberia large-scale human testing of two potential Ebola vaccines got under way in Monrovia, part of a global effort to prevent a repeat of the epidemic that has now claimed nearly 9,000 lives in West Africa.
2015 Feb 13, Canada, a major exporter of beef, said it has found a case of mad cow disease in a beef cow in the province of Alberta, the first in the country since 2011.
2015 Feb 20, Health authorities in India said a flu outbreak has killed over 700 people in the last ten weeks.
2015 Feb 21, Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said two more people have died after contracting Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS, pushing the total number of deaths from the virus in the kingdom to 385.
2015 Feb 27, New research indicated that that annual deaths from the bacterium Clostridium difficile have risen to 29,000, more than double the number since 2007. Most of some half million infected patients fell ill following prescriptions of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
2015 Feb 27, Saudi Arabia said ten more people have died from MERS over the past week, after an international mission urged extra measures to combat the virus.
2015 Mar 12, Indian biologists at MIT said the swine flu outbreak in India, which has claimed over 1,500 lives, may have mutated into a more dangerous strain.
2015 Mar 20, Bulgaria's authorities said they had discovered the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus in two dead pelicans in a nature reserve in northeastern part of the Balkan country, close to neighboring Romania.
2015 Mar 27, The White House announced a five-year plan to fight the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
2015 Apr 6, Canadian health authorities said two turkey farms in Ontario have been placed under quarantine after H5 bird flu was detected in one of them.
2015 Apr 9, Australia reported that second case of the so-called Tropical Race 4 strain of Panama disease affecting banana plants has been confirmed, dashing hopes that a recently confirmed outbreak would be isolated and threatening the country's A$550 million ($423 million) sector.
2015 Apr 9, A Japanese research team said it has developed a field test for Ebola that gives results in just over 11 minutes -- down from the 90-minute test used now.
2015 Apr 15, In Nigeria a mysterious disease broke out in Ode-Irele town and soon left 18 people dead. The disease, whose symptoms include headache, weight loss, blurred vision and loss of consciousness, killed the victims within 24 hours of their falling ill. On April 20 Nigerian health authorities said that ethanol poisoning from a local gin may have been responsible for the sudden deaths.
(AFP, 4/18/15)(AFP, 4/20/15)
2015 Apr 20, The USDA said bird flu has been found at a farm in Iowa holding nearly 10% of the state's egg laying chickens. Up to 5.3 million hens in Osceola County would have to be destroyed.
2015 Apr 21, The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) said they are now aware of ten cases of listeria linked to ice cream and other products produced by Blue Bell Creameries of Texas since 2010. The outbreak killed three people. Blue Bell has recalled all of its products. In 2020 Blue Bell pleased guilty to distributing contaminated goods. Former CEO Paul Kruse was charged with conspiracy and attempted wire fraud.
(SFC, 4/22/15, p.A9)(SSFC, 5/3/20, p.A4)
2015 Apr 24, Niger said the death toll in a meningitis epidemic that broke out in January has reached 129.
2015 Apr 23, Ohio-based Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams said that it has recalled its frozen products due to listeria found in a Whole Foods store in Lincoln, Nebraska.
2015 Apr 29, US health officials said German measles, aka rubella, is officially gone from North and South America. It has been over five years that the last case originated in the Americas. Vaccines against the disease were first licensed in 1969.
2015 May 20, Kenya health officials said at least 65 people are confirmed to have died in a nearly five-month-old cholera outbreak, with infections also continuing to rise in the capital Nairobi.
2015 May 21, South Korea a third case of MERS, a respiratory virus that has killed hundreds of people in the Middle East.
2015 May 21, The WHO said a cholera outbreak has killed at least 30 people in a Tanzanian refugee camp for Burundians.
2015 May 22, The UN refugee agency said an outbreak of cholera has infected 3,000 people in a Tanzanian border region where refugees from Burundi have massed. UNHCR said 300 to 400 new cases are being reported daily.
2015 May 27, In Kazakhstan international experts investigated the sudden deaths of some 134,000 endangered saiga antelope, raising fears that a species that has been around since the Ice Age may be at risk of dying out. Around 40 percent of the nation's population of the endangered saiga antelope have died in the past two weeks. The deaths were later believed to have been caused by two naturally occurring bacteria.
(Reuters, 5/27/15)(SSFC, 6/21/15, p.C14)
2015 May 29, China confirmed its first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in a South Korean businessman who ignored instructions to stay home after his father was diagnosed with the disease.
2015 May 29, South Korea confirmed five MERS cases, bringing the total number of patients infected with the potentially deadly virus to 12, including a man who defied a quarantine protocol and travelled to China.
2015 Jun 1, South Korean health officials said more than 680 people are being isolated after having contact with patients infected with the MERS virus that has killed hundreds of people in the Middle East.
2015 Jun 2, Polish authorities said they will cull about 5,800 pigs to prevent the spread of African swine fever.
2015 Jun 2, South Korea confirmed the country's first two deaths from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome as it fights to contain the spread of the virus.
2015 Jun 4, North Korea accused the United States of targeting it with anthrax and asked the UN Security Council to investigate Washington's "biological warfare schemes. The US Pentagon recently said live anthrax samples, which can be used as a biological weapon, have been inadvertently sent to Australia, Canada, Britain, South Korea and laboratories in 19 US states and Washington, D.C.
2015 Jun 4, South Korea confirmed a third death from MERS. 1,164 schools and kindergartens were reported to be temporarily shut down.
2015 Jun 6, A German man (65) died after contracting MERS during a trip to Abu Dhabi, in the first death linked to the virus in Europe this year.
2015 Jun 6, South Korea confirmed nine more cases of the MERS virus, which has killed four people, but said it did not represent a spread of the outbreak as the infected were already in quarantine.
2015 Jun 7, South Korea bowed to public pressure and identified 24 health facilities where infections took place or MERS patients visited. It reported 14 confirmed new cases of MERS and a 5th death.
2015 Jun 9, South Korea reported its seventh death from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) as the government said it hoped to end the crisis this week. Eight new infections brought the total number of cases to 95.
2015 Jun 11, South Korea reported a 10th death from the MERS virus. Officials said they believe the disease has peaked.
2015 Jun 12, Sierra Leone Pres. Ernest Bai Koroma imposed new restrictions preventing people from entering or leaving two northern districts that were experiencing a resurgence of Ebola. Sierra Leone reported 15 new cases in the week ending June 7.
2015 Jun 12, In South Korea 3 MERS patients in their 70s died, raising the country's number of MERS-related deaths to 13. Authorities temporarily closed two hospitals amid persistent fears over the MERS virus outbreak. Rescue teams digging through the debris pulled the bodies of 6 civilians from under the rubble.
2015 Jun 13, South Korea recorded its 14th death from the MERS virus and a dozen new infections.
2015 Jun 14, South Korea's Ministry of Health reported seven new MERS cases, taking the total to 145, as a 15th person died. The Samsung Medical Center in Seoul said it was suspending all non-emergency surgery and would take no new patients to focus on stopping MERS after more than 70 cases were traced to it.
2015 Jun 16, In South Korea the death toll in the MERS outbreak increased to 19 even as schools reopened and people recovered from the virus.
2015 Jun 18, In South Korea the death toll from Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) increased to 23.
2015 Jun 18, Thailand confirmed its first case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus in a businessman from Oman.
2015 Jun 18, Southern Yemen health officials said thousands of people have been diagnosed with dengue fever. Around 30 fighters were killed in clashes between Houthi militiamen and tribesmen in the central province of Mareb.
(AP, 6/18/15)(Reuters, 6/18/15)
2015 Jun 21, South Korea reported three new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), bringing the total to 169 in the largest outbreak outside Saudi Arabia.
2015 Jun 23, Sierra Leone's National Ebola Response Center (NERC) said three cases of Ebola had emerged in the east-end slum of Magazine Wharf -- three weeks after the last known infections in the capital.
2015 Jun 25, Sierra Leone said it has quarantined three doctors and 28 nurses in the capital Freetown when a mother tested positive for Ebola after giving birth.
2015 Jun 27, In Spain a six-year-old boy, the first child to contract diphtheria in Spain in 29 years, died from the disease in a Barcelona hospital. He had not been vaccinated against the disease because his parents had opted against inoculation.
2015 Jun 30, A UN report quoted Yemen health officials as saying that 8,000 people had contracted dengue fever in Aden since the crisis began in March. An average of 150 new cases of dengue fever and around 11 deaths were being reported daily.
2015 Jul 2, South Korea reported two new cases of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus, after four days in which no cases were spotted.
2015 Jul 3, An outbreak of salmonella began in the US. By September one person was dead and at least 285 others left sickened. It was traced to cucumbers imported from Mexico by a San Diego distributor.
2015 Jul 3, The UN children's agency said at least 29 people have died in South Sudan's latest cholera outbreak.
2015 Jul 12, In Liberia a second person died from Ebola in the latest resurgence of the deadly disease in the West African nation. The woman in her early 20s was linked to the 17-year-old boy who died on June 28.
2015 Jul 13, British authorities confirmed an outbreak at a farm of the H7N7 strain of avian flu that is both highly contagious and potentially deadly for birds.
2015 Jul 20, The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said markets and farms in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ivory Coast and Ghana have been hit with the deadly H5N1 virus over the past six months.
2015 Jul 28, South Korea said it is now virtually free of the deadly MERS virus that killed 36 people and sickened nearly 200 since an outbreak was declared in May.
2015 Jul 30, NYC said 31 cases of Legionnaire's disease have been reported in the South Bronx since July 10. NYC reported more than 100 cases since January 1.
2015 Jul 30, Sierra Leone authorities said they have quarantined 500 people after a man died of Ebola in his home village after contracting the disease in Freetown.
2015 Jul 31, Researchers said an Ebola test vaccine has provided blanket protection in a field trial in Guinea, possibly heralding "the beginning of the end" for the devastating West African outbreak that has killed thousands.
2015 Aug 3, Sierra Leone said two new cases of Ebola have surfaced in the Tonkolili District after a man died last week in the area where the deadly virus had been gone for months. Following the death authorities quarantined 500 people.
2015 Aug 4, NYC officials said the number of people sickened by Legionnaires' disease in the Bronx has climbed to 86. Water cooling towers were thought to be the source of the problem, which has left 7 elderly people dead.
2015 Aug 11, In North Carolina the GlaxoSmithKline plant in Zebulon was shut down after routine testing found the bacteria that causes Legionnaire's in cooling towers.
2015 Aug 12, A UN report said a measles outbreak in the copper-mining Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 315 people and infected at least 20,000.
2015 Aug 19, Saudi authorities said they have closed an emergency ward in King Abdulaziz Medical City after at least 46 people, including hospital staff, contracted the potentially fatal Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). The Health Ministry recorded three new MERS deaths in Riyadh. That brings the total number of deaths to 483 since the virus was first identified in 2012.
2015 Aug 19, The UN said typhoid has broken out among residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Syria.
2015 Aug 27, Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said 15 more people have died in the last seven days after contracting the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).
2015 Aug, Uganda wildlife officials were stumped by a mysterious illness among the lions of Kidepo Valley National Park that has left the big cats emaciated and docile.
(SSFC, 8/23/15, p.C12)
2015 Sep 1, In Sierra Leone a food trader (67) died of Ebola in Sella Kafta village in the northern district of Kambia, after being sick for up to 10 days without the authorities' knowledge. The entire village of almost 1,000 was soon placed under quarantine.
2015 Sep 2, The World Health Organization (WHO) said officials have found two children stricken by a mutated polio virus in Ukraine, the country's first cases of the paralytic disease in nine years. Health officials had warned Ukraine was at high risk of a polio outbreak due to its low vaccination rates.
2015 Sep 3, The WHO announced that Liberia, recently ravaged by Ebola, was free of the virus, 42 days after the last confirmed case passed a second negative test.
2015 Sep 8, The WHO said a child in Mali has been paralyzed by polio, the first case there since 2011. The child was stricken in Guinea before arriving in Bamako.
2015 Sep 17, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said cholera has killed 16 people in three camps in Nigeria housing over one million people who have fled the Boko Haram insurgency.
2015 Sep 19, Iraqi officials said a suspected cholera outbreak has killed 4 people west of Baghdad, where vulnerable displaced populations have been affected by the lack of clean water.
2015 Oct 6, A strain of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, linked to Costco chicken salads, began sickening 19 people in seven states. It was believed to be more life-threatening than a later E. coli outbreak at northwestern Chipotle restaurants.
2015 Oct 16, The UN said a measles outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo's copper-mining southeast has killed 428 people and infected about 30,000 since the start of the year.
2015 Oct 16, The World Health Organization says there were two new cases of Ebola in Guinea this week, ending two consecutive weeks in West Africa when no cases of the devastating disease were reported.
2015 Oct 18, In California the Mariscos San Juan No. 3 restaurant in downtown San Jose closed following reports of an outbreak of bacterial illness due to shigella. By Oct 23 some 141 people were reported sickened from the extremely contagious pathogen.
(SFC, 10/23/15, p.D2)(SFC, 10/24/15, p.C2)
2015 Nov 1, Iraq's health ministry said it is carrying out a major vaccination campaign to combat a cholera outbreak that has infected more than 2,200 people.
2015 Nov 3, It was reported that Chipotle has closed down 43 of its restaurants in Oregon and Washington states after at least 37 people were reported sickened in an outbreak of E. coli. This was the third food-borne illness at the chain this year.
(SFC, 11/3/15, p.D4)(SFC, 11/4/15, p.A4)
2015 Nov 19, Chinese scientists warned of the "epidemic potential" of deadly and fast-spreading bacteria resistant to last-line antibiotics. Prof. Jian-Hua Liu and colleagues found a gene, called MCR-1, that makes bacteria resistant to a class of antibiotics, known as polymyxins, used to fight superbugs. Although currently confined to China, they said the MCR-1 bacteria were likely to spread worldwide.
2015 Nov 19, In Liberia a new case of Ebola emerged. Three members of a family had contracted the disease in a setback for the country declared free of the disease on September 3.
(Reuters, 11/20/15)(SFC, 11/21/15, p.A2)
2015 Nov 20, Officials said that an outbreak of E. coli linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill in Washington and Oregon has now spread to six states including California, New York, Minnesota and Ohio.
2015 Nov 23, In Liberia a teenager (15) died in the first such death since the country was officially declared free of the virus in September. His parents had also tested positive for the virus and were under observation in the capital Monrovia.
2015 Dec 3, A Cambodian court sentenced Yem Chrin, an unlicensed medical practitioner, to 25 years in prison Thursday after finding him responsible for infecting more than 100 villagers with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, by reusing unsanitized syringes.
2015 Dec 4, The US Center for Disease Control said that seven additional people in three more states have been sickened in an E. coli outbreak linked to Chipotle.
2015 Dec 7, The County of Hawaii said 119 residents and 17 visitors have been confirmed with dengue fever.
2015 Dec 8, Boston College said the number of students complaining of gastrointestinal symptoms after eating at Chipotle has climbed to 80. Chipotle said it thinks the illnesses are an isolated case of norovirus.
2015 Dec 10, Iran's Health Minister Hassan Hashemi said an outbreak of H1N1 swine flu has claimed 42 lives since mid-November.
2015 Dec 11, France detected a case of the highly pathogenic H5N9 bird flu in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques region, taking to five the number of regions affected by the outbreak in the country's southwest.
2015 Dec 15, Iran's the health ministry said an outbreak of swine flu has claimed 57 lives since mid-November. Hundreds of people have been diagnosed with the virus.
2015 Dec 28, Iran media reported that a swine flu outbreak has killed 112 people since mid-November and the country's first medical worker has died of the virus.
2015 Dec 29, The UN's health agency declared Guinea's Ebola outbreak over two years after it emerged.
2015 Dec 31, It was reported that Brazil has registered at least 2,782 cases of babies born with small heads due to a virus spread by mosquitoes.
2015 Dec, Brazil declared a national public health emergency due to the mosquito-born Zika virus.
2015 Tuberculosis claimed the lives of an estimated 1.8 million people around the world this year, 60% of whom lived in China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.
2015 An estimated 395,000 Africans died of malaria this year, compared to 764,000 deaths in 2000 according to the World Health Organization.
2015 In Russia the total number of registered HIV cases exceeded one million this year, with authorities struggling to contain an epidemic that experts say could be curbed by increased funding and more awareness campaigns.
2015 A UN estimate in 2016 put AIDS-related deaths for 2015 at 1.1 million, down from a peak of 2 million in 2005.
2016 Jan 8, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said seven employees of an Oregon zoo contracted tuberculosis from three elephants in their care in 2013. Human-to-elephant transmission was first identified in 1996 and there have been a handful of cases in recent years in Tennessee and elsewhere.
2016 Jan 8, Nigeria's Health Minister Isaac Adewole said 40 people have died in a suspected outbreak of Lassa fever in 10 states across the country.
2016 Jan 9, UN officials said at least 10 people have died and over 1,000 fallen sick with cholera in an outbreak among Somali refugees in the world's largest refugee camp in Kenya.
2016 Jan 14, Ukraine said 25 people have died from swine flu since the start of the flu season.
2016 Jan 14, The World Health organization (WHO) said the two-year Ebola epidemic that killed 11,000 and triggered a global health alert was over, with Liberia the last country given the all-clear.
2016 Jan 15, US federal officials said an H7N8 strain of bird flu has been found at a southern Indiana turkey farm. The entire flock of some 60,000 turkeys was euthanized. Authorities the next day said nine more turkey farms had tested positive.
2016 Jan 15, The Brazilian government announced it will direct funds to a biomedical research center to help develop a vaccine against the Zika virus linked to brain damage in babies.
2016 Jan 15, The World Health Organization confirmed a new death from Ebola in Sierra Leone just a day after west Africa celebrated the end of an outbreak which killed 11,000 people.
2016 Jan 19, It was reported that at least 17 people have died of H1N1 swine flu in Russia since last month, as the virus appears to gain ground in the country.
2016 Jan 25, Britain's Chancellor George Osborne and Bill Gates announced a £3 billion ($4.28 billion, 4 billion euros) fund for research and to support efforts to eliminate malaria.
2016 Jan 25, It was reported that sales of rat poison have taken off in Nigeria following an outbreak of Lassa fever that has left at least 76 people dead and sparked fears of contagion across the country.
2016 Jan 25, Thailand's health ministry said it has quarantined 32 people as it seeks to prevent the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) after a second case of the virus was detected on Jan 22.
2016 Jan 27, Denmark and Switzerland joined a growing number of European countries to report Zika infections among travelers returning from Latin America, where the mosquito-borne virus has been blamed for a surge in birth defects.
2016 Jan 30, Colombia announced that more than 2,000 pregnant women have been infected with Zika, amid growing concern about the spread of the virus suspected of causing irreversible brain damage in newborns.
2016 Feb 1, Honduras declared a state of emergency after officials said the number of Zika infections is rising at an "alarming" rate in the Central American country.
2016 Feb 4, Brazilian officials said they're sending a set of samples related to the Zika outbreak to the United States, a move which follows complaints that the country was hoarding disease data and biological material.
2016 Feb 5, The South Pacific kingdom of Tonga said it has a Zika epidemic after five people tested positive for the virus and another 265 are suspected of having it.
2016 Feb 6, Nigerian health authorities released data that showed a growing Lassa fever outbreak has killed 101 people, as it battles to contain a flare-up of the virus.
2016 Feb 10, In India millions of children began getting deworming treatment in a massive national campaign to prevent parasitic worms from infecting them and impairing their mental and physical development.
2016 Feb 22, President Barack Obama sent lawmakers an official $1.9 billion request to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America and the US.
2016 Feb 22, Cuban President Raul Castro announced that he is dispatching 9,000 soldiers to help keep the Zika virus out of Cuba, calling on the entire country to fight the mosquito that carries the disease.
2016 Feb, In Puerto Rico a 70-year-old man infected with Zika died from a drop in blood platelets, the island's first Zika-related death.
2016 Mar 4, The World Health Organization said Laos has joined 41 countries in reporting a local transmission of Zika virus, as fears mounted over the mosquito-borne illness that has been linked to birth defects.
2016 Mar 8, French researchers said the Zika virus, suspected of causing brain damage in babies and a neurological ailment in adults, has now also been linked to the paralyzing disorder myelitis.
2016 Mar 10, Qatar health officials said a 66-year-old Qatari man has died after contracting the MERS virus, in the first fatal case in the Gulf state for 10 months.
2016 Mar 16, Guinean health officials alerted the WHO to Ebola symptoms in a family's village, where three people had died in unexplained circumstances in the last few weeks. The Alliance For International Medical Action (ALIMA) quickly reopened its specialist Ebola clinic to treat an infected woman and her child after the virus killed at least two of their relatives.
2016 Mar 31, In Liberia a woman (30) died of Ebola, months after the West African nation was declared free of the virus. Officials later said there were strong indications the woman came from Guinea when the border was closed.
2016 Apr 3, Liberian health officials said a second case of Ebola has been confirmed months after the country had been declared free from transmissions. The son (5) of a woman who died March 31 from Ebola was taken to a treatment center in Monrovia.
2016 Apr 4, The Philippines launched the first public immunization program for dengue fever, seeking to administer to a million schoolchildren the world's first licensed vaccine against a mosquito-borne disease that the World Health Organization estimates infects 390 million people a year globally.
2016 Apr 13, The US Centers for disease Control and Prevention said there is no longer any doubt the Zika virus causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and other severe brain defects.
2016 Apr 27, A Zanzibar health official said a cholera outbreak on the island archipelago has killed at least 45 people since March and that 3,000 people have been hospitalized with the disease.
2016 Apr, US-based Rational Vaccines began testing an experimental herpes vaccine on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. In 2017 the government of St. Kitts and Nevis announced the opening of an investigation into the clinical trial because officials had not been notified.
2016 May 5, The US FDA said it is investigating a listeria outbreak that led to a massive recall of frozen fruits and vegetables by CRF Frozen Foods. 8 people had become infected from food made at its Pasco, Wa., plant. A recall included 358 products under 42 separate brand names since May 1, 2014.
2016 May 19, World Health Organization held an emergency meeting on the outbreak of yellow fever in Angola. Yellow fever has been raging since last December, and especially in the capital Luanda, killing 293 people in the country to date and infecting another 2,267.
2016 May 20, The World Health Organization said that the Zika virus strain linked to surging cases of neurological disorders and birth defects in Latin America has for the first time been found in Africa.
2016 May 26, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a US patient has been infected with bacteria resistant to colistin, a last resort antibiotic. A woman in Pennsylvania was infected with E. coli and carried a gene resistant colistin.
2016 May 27, Britain told the G7 industrial powers meeting in Japan to do more to fight killer superbugs as the United States reported the first case in the country of a patient with bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic.
2016 Jun 2, Niger reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus among poultry after the outbreak was confirmed at the end of May. The outbreak, which killed all 86,000 poultry birds at the affected site, started in late February, and followed a previous outbreak in the country last year.
2016 Jun 7, Hong Kong culled 4,500 birds after the deadly H7N9 bird flu virus was discovered in a chicken at a local market.
2016 Jun 23, The World Health Organization (WHO) said if will carry out emergency yellow fever vaccination campaigns along the border between Angola and Congo. Since last December there were 347 suspected deaths from yellow fever in Angola and 75 deaths in Congo.
2016 Jun, US health officials warned clinicians to be on the lookout for Candida auris, a deadly and highly drug-resistant emerging pathogen. By March 2017 nearly three dozen people in the US were diagnosed with the fungal infection first found in a patient in Japan in 2009.
2016 Jun, In Utah an elderly man infected with the Zika virus died late this month. He was the first Zika-infected person to die in the continental US. A relative who cared for the man was soon diagnosed with the virus.
2016 Jul 25, Colombia's Health Ministry said the number of cases of the virus have been falling steadily to as few as 600 per week compared to more than 10 times that amount at the outbreak's peak in February.
2016 Jul 25, Spanish health officials said a woman has given birth to a baby boy with microcephaly associated with the Zika virus, the first detected case in the country.
2016 Jul 30, Doctors in Honduras said six women have delivered babies with the birth defect microcephaly in just three days, raising fresh concerns about the spread of the Zika virus. Honduras has detected 27,869 cases of Zika this year.
2016 Aug 2, In Russia the Yamal regional governor's office said a child has died of anthrax in Siberia in the first fatal outbreak of the bacterial disease reported in Russia in 75 years. More than 2,300 reindeer have also died in the outbreak in the region.
2016 Aug 5, Myanmar health officials confirmed that a measles outbreak is behind the deaths of more than 30 people, mostly children, in the northern Sagaing region.
2016 Aug 18, The New Zealand government launched an inquiry into the contamination of a regional water supply that has left thousands of people sick with vomiting and diarrhoea. The outbreak of campylobacter bacteria, a form of gastroenteritis, has affected around 3,000 people on North Island.
2016 Aug 18, The United Nations said for the first time that it was involved in the introduction of cholera to Haiti and needs to do "much more" to end the suffering of those affected, estimated at more than 800,000 people.
2016 Aug 19, Montana wildlife officials closed a lengthy stretch of the Yellowstone River to all recreational activities at the height of the summer tourist season following the deaths of thousands of fish this week from a rare but virulent microbial parasite.
2016 Aug 19, Donald Ainslee Henderson (b.1928), American epidemiologist, died in Maryland. He directed a 10-year international effort (1967–77) that eradicated smallpox throughout the world and launched international childhood vaccination programs.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Henderson)(Econ, 8/27/16, p.70)
2016 Aug 26, Nicaraguan officials said the first baby with the birth defect of microcephaly has been born to a mother infected with the Zika virus.
2016 Aug 28, Singapore officials said at least 41 people have been infected locally by the Zika virus, most of them foreign workers at a construction site.
2016 Aug, In Oregon Abby Beckley had 14 tiny worms removed from her left eye. She was diagnosed Thelazia gulosa, a type of worm seen in the northern US and southern Canada, but never before in humans.
2016 Sep 1, Florida authorities said tests have found the Zika virus in mosquitoes from Miami, the first detected on continental US, confirming local transmission of the disease.
2016 Sep 1, Malaysia reported its first suspected case of Zika, a 58-year-old woman believed to have contracted it in neighbouring Singapore where more than 100 cases have been confirmed.
2016 Sep 3, Singapore confirmed 26 more cases of locally-transmitted Zika infections bringing the tally to 215.
2016 Sep 13, The World Health Organization said yellow fever outbreaks in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are "under control" after a massive vaccination campaign involving millions.
2016 Sep, South Africa became one of the first African states to adopt a "test and treat" protocol whereby anyone infected with the HIV virus can get drugs immediately, instead of waiting for the symptoms of full-blown aids to appear.
2016 Oct 18, In India the Delhi Zoo was closed to the public after autopsies confirmed at least three birds had died from H5N1 avian influenza. Days later city authorities closed Hauz Khas Deer Park after eight birds died of suspected bird flu.
2016 Nov 18, The World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva declared an end to its global health emergency over the spread of the Zika virus and said the disease should now be viewed as an ongoing threat like malaria and yellow fever.
2016 Nov 20, The German news agency dpa reported that some 8,800 geese on two poultry farms will be culled in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein because some of the animals are infected with the bird flu. Last week 30,000 chickens were destroyed in Schleswig-Holstein after H5N8 was detected in their enclosure.
2016 Nov 24, In the SF Bay Area a Thanksgiving luncheon at the American Legion in Antioch left 3 people dead and another 18 suffering symptoms of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. On Dec 20 CDC officials said the illness was caused by Clostridium perfringens.
(SFC, 12/3/16, p.D2)(SFC, 12/21/16, p.D2)
2016 Nov 24, German media reported that authorities in northern Germany have killed 16,000 turkeys and ordered 92,000 chickens slaughtered after detecting an outbreak of bird flu.
2016 Nov 27, Dutch officials said they have culled 190,000 ducks on a farm where inspectors have confirmed the presence of a highly infectious strain of bird flu.
2016 Nov 30, South Africa launched a major clinical trial of an experimental vaccine against the AIDS virus, which scientists hope could be the "final nail in the coffin" for the disease.
2016 Dec 23, The World Health Organization (WHO) said a prototype vaccine for Ebola may be "up to 100 percent effective" in protecting against the deadly virus. The new vaccine was initially developed in Canada by public health authorities before being taken over by pharmaceutical giant Merck.
2016 Dec 25, The Chinese city of Suzhou, Jiangsu province, said it will suspend trade of live poultry as of midnight in the interests of public health after neighboring provinces reported cases of human bird flu infections.
2016 Dec 26, Iranian officials said hundreds of thousands of birds have been killed in recent weeks as avian flu spread across seven provinces of the country. State news said 63,000 chickens, along with 800,000 fertilized eggs and day-old chicks, were culled at a farm in Qazvin province in recent days after an outbreak of the deadly H1N8 and H1N5 strains of the disease.
2016 Paul Richards authored "Ebola: How a People's Science Helped End an Epidemic."
2016 Sonia Shah authored "Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond.
2016 Ed Yong authored "I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life."
2017 Jan 4, Czech authorities said they had detected highly-contagious bird flu at two small poultry farms and in dead swans in the first such cases in a decade.
2017 Jan 5, French authorities started slaughtering ducks in the main foie gras-producing region to try to contain a dangerous form of bird flu.
2017 Jan 6, In southwestern France workers wearing masks and protective clothes gassed thousands of ducks, in a massive cull that was ordered in an attempt to prevent a spread of the H5N8 bird flu virus.
2017 Jan 9, Angolan health officials said they had recorded the country's first two cases of the Zika virus, a French tourist (two months ago) and a resident in the capital Luanda (last week).
2017 Jan 18, In Venezuela Eliannys Vivas (9) died of diphtheria. Her death and a wider outbreak of diphtheria, showed how vulnerable the country is to health risks amid a major economic crisis that has sparked shortages of basic medicines and vaccines.
2017 Jan 26, In Germany more than 15,000 turkeys were being culled after the new bird flu subtype H5N5 was confirmed on a north German farm.
2017 Jan – 2017 Feb, In China some 140 people died of avian influenza. Officials later said a tiny genetic change in the H7N9 strain has allowed the virus to more easily infect humans.
2017 Feb 3, Mexico's health ministry confirmed the first case of a Zika-related severe birth defect known as microcephaly.
2017 Feb 8, A Brazilian zoologist said an outbreak of yellow fever has claimed the lives of more than 600 monkeys and dozens of humans in the Atlantic rainforest region, threatening the survival of rare South American primates.
2017 Feb 27, It was reported that laboratory mice exposed to Enterovirus D68 often developed sudden –onset paralysis in one or more limbs. The virus has hit more than 200 US children with polio-like paralysis since 2014.
2017 Feb 27, The UN World Health Organization (WHO) issued a list of the top dozen bacteria most dangerous to humans, warning that doctors are fast running out of treatment options. They included Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus.
(AP, 2/27/17)(Econ, 3/4/17, p.65)
2017 Mar 1, US salmonella illnesses linked to turtles began to infect people. According to the US Centers for Disease Control some 37 people across 13 states were diagnosed with salmonella until August 3.
2017 Mar 1, The World Health Organization (WHO) said it has noticed changes in the bird flu virus now spreading in China, but says the risk of the disease spreading easily between people remains low. It also said scientists have identified genetic changes suggesting the viruses are resistant to Tamiflu, the recommended treatment for the illness, in about 7 percent of recent cases.
2017 Mar 6, It was reported that tens of thousands of chickens have been destroyed at a Tennessee chicken farm due to a bird flu outbreak. 30 other farms within a six-mile radius were being quarantined.
2017 Mar 9, Scientists said they have developed a vaccine to shield endangered chimpanzees and gorillas against Ebola, which has wiped out tens of thousands of the wild apes in three decades.
2017 Mar 10, Romania's health minister said thousands of people have caught measles in an ongoing outbreak in the country, which has claimed 17 lives. Around 3,400 people had contracted the disease since the outbreak began in September 2016.
2017 Mar 10, Spain reported a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly called mad cow disease, on a farm near the city of Salamanca.
2017 Mar 11, In Brazil Watila Santos (38) died from yellow fever in Casimiro de Abreu, 93 miles (150 km) from Rio de Janeiro. Around 30,000 of the city's 42,000 people were soon vaccinated.
2017 Mar 13, Burundi's health minister said about 700 people have died from malaria in Burundi so far this year. He said authorities have registered 1.8 million infections in a rising epidemic.
2017 Mar 17, In China poultry trading in Hunan's provincial capital of Changsha went into effect. An outbreak of H7N9 bird flu virus originated from a farm with about 29,760 infected birds. Over 170,000 birds were culled as a result. At least 162 deaths have been reported since last October.
2017 Mar 22, In Massachusetts Barry Cadden (50), former head of the New England Compounding Center, was convicted of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud over a 2012 meningitis outbreak that killed 76 people across the country and was traced to fungus-contaminated drugs. On June 26 Cadden was sentenced to nine years in prison.
2017 Mar 27, In Pakistan a special 3-day anti-polio drive was launched in Islamabad after traces of the virus were found in the city's sewage system.
2017 Mar 29, The UN said a malaria outbreak has killed more than 4,000 people in Burundi this year, a significant increase over the 700 cited by the country's health ministry on March 13.
2017 Mar, In Brazil the howler-monkey population in Espirito Santo and Minas Gerais states was reported to be crashing. Doctors suspected this was due to yellow fever. Since December 371 human cases have been reported, a third of them fatal.
2017 Apr 7, Doctors Without Borders said they have begun a huge measles vaccination program in Guinea after 14 deaths and 3,400 cases were confirmed this year.
2017 Apr 13, The UN said cholera and acute diarrhea have killed more than 500 people and left tens of thousands of others sick in drought-hit parts of Somalia since January.
2017 Apr 21, It was reported that a fungus that causes "vomitoxin" has been found in some US corn harvested last year, forcing poultry and pork farmers to test their grain, and giving headaches to grain growers already wrestling with massive supplies and low prices.
2017 Apr 24, The World Health Organization announced that Ghana, Kenya and Malawi will begin piloting the world's first injectable malaria vaccine next year with hundreds of thousands of young children, who have been at highest risk of death.
2017 Apr 28, United Nations officials said at least 11 people have died from a mysterious illness in Liberia, and tests have been negative for the Ebola virus. Those who fell sick this week all had attended a relative's funeral.
2017 May 9, The World Health Organization (WHO) said thirty-four people have died in Yemen of cholera-related causes and more than 2,000 have been taken ill, and warned that the outbreak could spiral out of control.
2017 May 11, Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the heroin epidemic is driving up hepatitis C infections. New infections had tripled in five years to about 2,400 in 2015.
2017 May 11, The US Center for Disease Control said more than 1,000 people have died in an outbreak of meningitis in Nigeria, but added that the spread of the disease is slowing. A new strain of meningitis C was first reported in Zamfara last November.
2017 May 11, The United Nations confirmed 58 cases of cholera and 47 cholera-associated deaths across war-torn Yemen in the past two weeks, the second such outbreak in a year.
2017 May 12, Congo DRC's health minister said one person has been confirmed dead from Ebola in an outbreak in a remote corner of northern Congo as health authorities look into a total of nine suspected cases. The outbreak emerged April 22 in Bas-Uele province. The WHO said at least three people have died in the last three weeks.
2017 May 14, The International Committee of the Red Cross said a cholera outbreak in war-torn Yemen has killed 115 people and left 8,500 ill as hospitals struggle to cope with an influx of patients.
2017 May 15, India reported three cases of Zika virus to the WHO. They were detected through routine blood surveillance in a hospital in Ahmadabad. Two cases were detected in February and November last year, while a third case was detected in January this year.
2017 May 16, The World Health Organization said a second case of Ebola has been confirmed by laboratory testing amid an outbreak in a remote corner of northern Congo.
2017 May 19, Italy's government declared a new law making a series of childhood vaccinations a condition of school inscription in a move triggered by a spike in measles cases.
2017 May 19, The WHO said the cholera outbreak in war-ravaged Yemen has killed 242 people, and left nearly 23,500 others sick in the past three weeks alone.
2017 May 21, Chinese state media reported that the government will shut down poultry markets in certain districts of Binzhou city, Shandong province, and Zigong city, Sichuan province, after H7N9 bird flu infections were detected in two men.
2017 May 21, The World Health Organization said the cholera outbreak in war-ravaged Yemen has killed 315 people in under a month. The WHO has recorded another 29,300 suspected cases of cholera in 19 provinces.
2017 May 29, The Democratic Republic of Congo said it has approved using an experimental Ebola vaccine to combat an outbreak of the virus in the northeast.
2017 Jun 2, South Sudan's health ministry said fifteen children died in Nachodopele village last month after being administered with contaminated measles vaccines. Local officials failed to follow guidelines, storing the vaccine unrefrigerated for four days and using a single syringe for the entire campaign.
2017 Jun 3, South Korea said on it will raise the bird flu alert level to the second highest after small flocks of farm birds tested positive for the H5N8 virus, the first in the country since early April.
2017 Jun 3, UNICEF said Yemen was getting an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 new cholera cases every day and that many patients can't afford to travel to free clinics.
2017 Jun 6, South Korea raised the national bird flu alert to its highest level, as it ordered more than 180,000 chickens, ducks and other birds be culled. The first case in this outbreak of the virus was confirmed in the southern island of Jeju on June 2, and four more cases have been confirmed in different locations across the country.
2017 Jun 8, A Yemeni health official said more than 96,000 people have been infected with cholera in an outbreak that has caused at least 746 deaths since late April.
2017 Jun 14, The World Health Organization said two separate outbreaks of the polio virus have been confirmed in Congo, the first cases of polio in the vast Central African nation since 2012.
2017 Jun 29, The latest reports of suspected cholera cases in Yemen has exceeded 200,000 people with an estimated 5,000 new cases daily.
2017 Jul 1, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the rapidly spreading cholera outbreak in Yemen has claimed 1500 lives since April and is suspected of sickening 246,000 people.
2017 Jul 2, Sudanese doctors and aid workers urged the government to declare a state of emergency over a cholera outbreak and delay the start of the school year, which began today, although authorities say the situation is under control. Some 22,000 cases of acute watery diarrhea have led to at least 700 fatalities since May 20.
2017 Jul 4, Sri Lanka's government deployed 400 soldiers and police to clear away potential mosquito breeding grounds in the wake of a dengue outbreak that has killed 225 people this year.
2017 Jul 10, The Red Cross said a cholera outbreak in Yemen has now surpassed 300,000 suspected cases with more than 1,600 deaths.
2017 Jul 11, The World Health Organization said measles has killed 35 children in Europe in the last year. The most recent death was a 6-year-old boy in Italy, where there have been more than 3,300 cases and two deaths since last June.
2017 Jul 19, Kenya's health minister said a cholera outbreak in Nairobi has killed four people since May and the government has shut down a three-star hotel and a popular restaurant there to control its spread.
2017 Jul 24, Researchers said Swaziland, which bears the world's heaviest HIV burden, has halved the rate of new infections in five years by boosting access to virus-suppressing drugs.
2017 Jul 25, Japanese authorities said a local woman has died from SFTS, or severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome, a tick-borne virus after being bitten by a stray cat in what is possibly the world's first animal-to-human transmission of the disease.
2017 Jul 27, Myanmar health authorities said they have asked the UN's health agency for help to combat a deadly outbreak of swine flu that has sparked alarm in Yangon. At least six people have died and 30 more have been infected over the past week, most of them in Yangon.
2017 Aug 1, China's Ministry of Agriculture said the Inner Mongolia region has culled 66,500 chickens following an outbreak of bird flu that has affected 35,000 birds.
2017 Aug 2, South African poultry producer Astral Foods confirmed a second outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu at one of its farms.
2017 Aug 5, The WHO said Saudi Arabia has pledged $33.7 million to help the World Health Organization eradicate cholera in war-wracked Yemen, where the disease has killed nearly 2,000 people.
2017 Aug 8, The US Centers for Disease Control said an increasing number of people have been sickened by eating salmonella infected papaya traced to a farm in southern Mexico. 109 people in 16 states were now sickened. One death in NYC was reported.
2017 Aug 10, Scientists in Germany said they have identified a new type of pox virus that's sickening young red squirrels in Berlin.
2017 Aug 11, Philippine officials said they will cull at least 200,000 birds after confirming its first H5 avian flu outbreak in Papanga province.
2017 Aug 18, Vietnam's Ministry of Health said 10,000 new infections of dengue fever have been reported over the past week. 24 deaths have been recorded in the latest outbreak that has infected over 90 thousand people.
2017 Aug 29, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Germany has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus in three swans in the central state of Saxony-Anhalt.
2017 Aug 30, South Africa's Agriculture Minister Senzeni Zokwana said South Africa has detected 24 outbreaks of the H5N8 strain of bird flu since June, including 10 at commercial chicken farms and three at ostrich farms.
2017 Sep 3, It was reported that California's Dept. of Public health has confirmed three recent deaths from West Nile virus. In all 87 cases from 13 California counties have been recorded this year.
2017 Sep 18, The World Health Organization urged Yemen to approve cholera vaccinations it has offered to help contain an epidemic that could affect nearly a million people by year's end.
2017 Sep 28, Madagascar's health minister said an outbreak of plague has killed 19 people and may have infected 85 others in just two months.
2017 Sep 30, Madagascar's government banned public meetings in the capital Antananarivo in response to a plague outbreak that has killed 24 people. A day later the World Health Organization said it was boosting its response to a plague outbreak.
2017 Oct 13, The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it is deploying its first-ever plague treatment center to Madagascar where dozens have been reported killed by the outbreak.
2017 Oct 13, The Seychelles government ordered schools to close, after the discovery of two suspected cases of plague thought to have been brought from Madagascar where the disease has killed scores.
2017 Oct 20, The World Health Organization said an unusually large plague outbreak in Madagascar has taken 94 lives.
2017 Oct 28, The Los Angeles Times reported that more than 200 people in Los Angeles County have contracted the West Nile virus this year and that 17 have died.
2017 Oct, In Brazil Sao Paulo health authorities started a huge vaccination program after a dead monkey infected with yellow fever was found in the city. The virus has been blamed for at least 261 Brazilian deaths since December.
2017 Nov 11, In California the Orange County Health Care Agency said two cooling towers at the Disneyland theme park have been shut down following a dozen cases of legionnaires' disease.
2017 Nov 16, The World Bank agreed to grant war-torn Yemen $150 million to help some of its hardest-hit cities restore basic services and fight a cholera epidemic.
2017 Nov 22, Doctors in Yemen said three people have died of suspected diphtheria, as the World Health Organization and International Committee of the Red Cross warned the disease was spreading.
2017 Nov 29, It was reported that 66,000 people out of Iran's 80 million people have HIV, though about 30,000 of them have no idea they have the virus. The report cited government statistics.
2017 Dec 4, The UN voiced alarm over the spread of HIV in Egypt, where new cases were growing by up to 40% a years. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.
2017 Dec 5, The UN warned of a ticking time bomb of drug-resistant germs brewing in the natural environment, aided by humans dumping antibiotics and chemicals into the water and soil.
2017 Dec 8, The Dutch government ordered the country's farmers to keep all poultry indoors after H5 bird flu was discovered at a duck farm.
2017 Dec 11, French Baby milk maker Lactalis and French authorities ordered a global recall of millions of products over fears of salmonella bacteria contamination. The company said it was warned by health authorities in France that 26 infants have become sick since December 1.
2017 Dec 11, It was reported that Indonesia is immunizing millions of children and teenagers against diphtheria after the disease killed 38 people, mostly children, since January.
2017 Dec 21, French dairy giant Lactalis recalled millions more products globally because of fears of salmonella contamination.
2017 Dec 21, The International Committee of the Red Cross said the number of suspected cholera cases in war-torn Yemen has reached one million.
2017 Dec 29, It was reported that doctors across Yemen have recorded at least 380 cases of diphtheria over the last four months, a bacterial disease that last appeared here in 1992.
2017 Dec 29, Zambian President Edgar Lungu directed the military to help fight the spread of cholera, which has killed 41 people in the nation's capital and made more than 1,500 others sick since late September.
2017 Jonathan Cape authored "Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World.
2017 Daniel Dennett authored "From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds."
2017 Globally about 120 million people were infected with lymphatic filariasis, some times known as elephantiasis, an infestation of worm larvae transmitted by mosquitos. China eliminated the disease in the 1950s and 1960s by adding an anti-parasitic drug to table salt.
2017 It was reported that wax moth caterpillars could eat a milligram of polyethylene plastic in about 12 hours. This compared with the bacterium Nocardia asteroides, which takes about six months to obliterate a film of plastic a half millimeter thick.
2018 Jan 11, Brazilian scientists said the cetacean morbillivirus is the main cause for the death of close to 200 gray dolphins since late November on the coast of Rio de Janeiro state.
2018 Jan 14, The head of French dairy company Lactalis said that a recall of baby milk products because of a salmonella scare has been extended to 83 countries.
2018 Jan 16, The World Health Organization announced that it now considers all of Brazil's Sao Paulo state at risk for yellow fever, recommending that all international visitors to the state be vaccinated.
2018 Jan 20, In Brazil the government of Minas Gerais state declared a state of emergency for its public health system because of an outbreak of yellow fever in 94 of its 853 cities.
2018 Feb 2, The Philippines said the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia, made by French drug maker Sanofi, may be connected to three deaths in the country, according to a government-ordered inquiry, and that the drug is not ready for mass immunization.
2018 Feb 6, South Korean authorities deployed 900 military personnel at the Pyeongchang Olympics after the security force was depleted by an outbreak of norovirus.
2018 Feb 7, Brazil's Health Ministry confirmed more than 350 cases of yellow fever as infections pick up steam in the state at the center of the last outbreak.
2018 Feb 9, California public health officials reported 36 flu-related deaths during the first week of February.
2018 Mar 2, Australian health authorities said three people have died and 12 others have fallen ill in a national listeria outbreak linked to contaminated rockmelons, also called cantaloupes, and that more cases are expected.
2018 Mar 17, South African supermarket chain Shoprite said it has withdrawn a third brand of sausages after the world's worst listeria outbreak which has claimed at least 183 lives since January last year.
2018 Mar 17, The World Health Organization said a diphtheria outbreak in war-torn Yemen has spread rapidly nationwide and infected more than 1,300 people.
2018 Mar 21, German authorities confirmed outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu type at a farm off the German North Sea coast. The virus was found on a farm of with 57 chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese on the island of Hallig Suederoog. All the birds on the farm have been culled.
2018 Apr 5, The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) said Lassa fever has killed 142 people in Nigeria since the start of the year, reporting a rise of 32 fatalities in a month.
2018 Apr 6, Romanian authorities said a 9-month-old baby has died of measles, the 46th fatality from an epidemic that has struck the country over the past year.
2018 Apr 9, Pakistani authorities launched a new polio vaccination drive, aiming to reach 38.7 million children under the age of 5.
2018 May 5, Stanford Prof. Stanley Falkow (b.1934) died at his home in Portola Valley, Ca. He had discovered how antibiotic resistance spreads among bacteria. His awards included the National Medal of Science (2014).
2018 May 7, In Pakistan a five-day anti-polio drive was launched to vaccinate millions of children under five years of age against the crippling disease.
2018 May 10, A Congo DRC hospital director said there are five new suspected cases of Ebola in the northwestern town of Bikoro, where an outbreak of the often deadly hemorrhagic fever was declared this week.
2018 May 14, The World Health Organization said it has been given the go-ahead by officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo to import and use an experimental Ebola vaccine in the country. The vaccine, developed by Merck in 2016, has proven safe and effective in human trials, but it is still experimental as it does not yet have a license. The Congo DRC had reported 39 suspected, probable or confirmed cases of Ebola between April 4 and May 13, including 19 deaths.
2018 May 17, In Congo DRC case of Ebola was reported confirmed in Mbandaka a city of more than 1 million in northwestern Equateur province, bringing the latest outbreak of the often deadly hemorrhagic fever out of remote rural areas.
2018 May 18, Congo's health minister announced that three new cases of the often lethal Ebola virus have been confirmed in Mbandaka, a city of more than 1 million people.
2018 May 21, In Congo DRC the death toll in an outbreak of Ebola rose to 26 after a person died in the northwest city of Mbandaka, as the government began vaccinating first responders against the dreaded disease.
2018 May 22, Congo's health ministry announced six new confirmed Ebola cases and two new suspected cases as vaccinations entered a second day in an effort to contain the deadly virus in Mbandaka, a city of more than 1 million.
2018 May 22, Indian health officials said at least 10 people have died of Nipah since an outbreak began earlier this month in Kerala. There is no vaccine for the virus, which can cause raging fevers, convulsions and vomiting, and kills up to 75 percent of people who come down with it.
2018 May 26, Congo DRC's health ministry said Ebola vaccinations will begin May 28 in the two rural areas where the latest deadly outbreak was declared this month, as the number of confirmed Ebola cases rose to 35, including 10 deaths.
2018 May 27, Congo DRC's health ministry said another person has died of a confirmed case of Ebola, bringing the number of fatalities to 12. The latest death was in Iboko, a rural area in northwestern Equateur province. Congo now has 35 confirmed Ebola cases.
2018 May 27, Indian authorities said another patient has died from the Nipah virus, taking the number of fatalities from an outbreak of the rare disease in Kerala state to 13. Nipah is named after the Malaysian village where it first appeared in 1998. The bat-borne pathogen ended up killing 21 out of 23 people infected. In 2019 the film "Virus," the true story of the struggle to contain the virus, won critical acclaim in Mollywood.
(AFP, 5/27/18)(Econ., 5/9/20, p.25)
2018 May 28, New Zealand politicians and industry leaders announced plans to slaughter about 150,000 cows in an effort to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis, a strain of disease-causing bacteria from the national herd.
2018 Jun 2, Congo DRC health authorities said they had detected five fresh suspected cases of Ebola in the deadly outbreak afflicting the northwest of the country.
2018 Jun 6, Congo DRC's health ministry said two more people have died of Ebola, bringing the toll to 27. Fifty-eight Ebola cases have been recorded as of June 4.
2018 Jun, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria officially ended grants to North Korea that supported the treatment of 120,000 TB patients last year.
2018 Jul 7, It was reported that researchers from half a dozen states in West Africa have joined together in a battle against what one expert calls a root crop "Ebola" -- a viral disease that could wreck the region's staple food and condemn millions to hunger. The Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), a virus that strikes cassava, was first discovered in Tanzania eight decades ago. The root in some of the region's countries is consumed by as many as 80 percent of the population.
2018 Jul 18, Hundreds of farmers from around Bulgaria rallied in the capital Sofia against the government-ordered mass slaughter of livestock following the first outbreak in the EU of the highly contagious Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR).
2018 Jul 24, Congo DRC officially declared the end of an outbreak of Ebola, bringing the curtain down on a 10-week re-emergence of the disease which claimed 33 lives. This was the country's ninth outbreak of Ebola since 1976.
2018 Jul 26, Authorities in Poland banned swimming at over 50 beaches along its Baltic coast, after hot weather led to the toxic growth of bacteria in the unusually warm sea.
2018 Aug 1, Congo's health ministry said at least four new cases of Ebola have emerged in the country's east, just a week after an outbreak in the northwest was declared over.
2018 Aug 3, Latvia's government voted to fund the disposal of pig carcasses after a pork producer decided to exterminate all of its livestock when the animals contracted African swine fever. 15,570 pigs were to be killed via lethal gassing.
2018 Aug 3, The World Health Organization said Yemen may be on the brink of a new cholera epidemic, with a heightened death rate due to widespread malnutrition. The UN hoped for a ceasefire in the north to allow for vaccinations.
2018 Aug 6, Pakistani authorities launched a week-long anti-polio campaign touted as a 'final push' against the crippling disease.
2018 Aug 6, Romanian authorities reported more than 500 separate outbreaks of African swine fever in pigs, mainly in the Danube Delta and near the Hungarian border. 48,000 pigs had been culled since June after they came down with the disease.
2018 Aug 8, CongoDRC began Ebola vaccinations in the country's latest outbreak of the deadly virus that has already claimed at least nine lives in North Kivu province.
2018 Aug 14, CongoDRC's health ministry said its latest Ebola outbreak has spread from North Kivu province into neighboring Ituri province.
2018 Aug 18, CongoDRC's government said deadly Ebola outbreak has now claimed 49 lives since the start of the month. A day earlier the World Health Organization said it expects more cases.
2018 Aug 20, The UN's World Health Organization said the number of measles cases in Europe jumped to more than 41,000 during the first six months of 2018 and at least 37 people have died. Half, or some 23,000 cases, occurred in Ukraine.
2018 Aug 21, CongoDRC said it has approved four more experimental treatments against the deadly Ebola virus as the health ministry raced to contain an outbreak in its violence-torn east. The total number of deaths rose to 59 and confirmed cases to 75 since last month.
2018 Aug 24, Brazil's health officials said more than 4 million children still needed to be vaccinated against measles. More than 1,380 people have been infected in an outbreak linked to cases imported from Venezuela.
2018 Aug 25, CongoDRC authorities said an outbreak of Ebola has killed 67 people this month, as they rolled out a battery of new drugs to tackle the virus amid concerns it has spread to a rebel-encircled area. Congo's health ministry said two of the first 10 people to receive an experimental treatment for the Ebola virus in the latest outbreak have recovered.
2018 Sep 2, China's agriculture ministry said more than 38,000 hogs have been culled as of Sept. 1 due to African swine fever outbreaks.
2018 Sep 2, In India there were nearly 200 confirmed cases of what is locally called rat fever in Kerala state following the worst flooding in a century. The waterborne disease leptospirosis is transmitted via the urine of infected animals, with symptoms including muscle pain and fever.
2018 Sep 3, Scientists in Australia warned that a superbug resistant to all known antibiotics that can cause "severe" infections or even death is spreading undetected through hospital wards across the world. The bacteria, known as Staphylococcus epidermidis, is related to the better-known and more deadly MRSA.
2018 Sep 3, China's agriculture ministry said new case of African swine fever has been confirmed in Wuxi in eastern Jiangsu province.
2018 Sep 5, Congo health officials said that a case of Ebola has been discovered in Butembo, a city of 1.4 million people in the country's northeast. Since August 1 the current Ebola outbreak has seen 93 confirmed cases which have caused 54 deaths.
2018 Sep 6, China reported four new cases of African swine fever, bringing the number of outbreaks to 13 since the virus was discovered in the country just over a month ago.
2018 Sep 8, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said a South Korean man (61) has been diagnosed with the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) after a business trip to Kuwait. The infectious disease swept South Korea in 2015 leading to 38 fatalities.
2018 Sep 9, Japan's agriculture ministry said it had confirmed the country's first outbreak of swine fever in 26 years and suspended exports of pork and wild boar meat. The fever, a different kind from the African swine fever that has broken out in China, was found in a farm in central Japan's Gifu city.
2018 Sep 11, Zimbabwe declared a cholera outbreak in the capital Harare after 20 people died from the disease and more than 2,000 were infected by drinking contaminated water.
2018 Sep 12, Egypt's chief prosecutor said tests showed that E.coli bacteria were behind the August 21 deaths of two British tourists in a hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.
2018 Sep 12, Zimbabwe banned public gatherings in the capital Harare following a cholera outbreak which has claimed at least 21 lives and left hundreds of people ill over the past week.
2018 Sep 13, Indian health authorities rushed medical supplies to northern towns and villages where at least 50 people have died from fever over the past two weeks in the Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh state.
2018 Sep 16, Zimbabwe state media said the death toll in the cholera outbreak in Harare has risen to 28.
2018 Sep 19, The UN said more than 500 people have died from cholera in the Lake Chad region since the start of the year, representing the worst outbreak to hit the area in four years. The Lake Chad region straddles parts of Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger, which are also grappling with a jihadist insurgency.
2018 Sep 20, A Congolese woman (32), who refused an Ebola vaccination and then disappeared, died of the virus near the heavily traveled border with Uganda, which is preparing to begin vaccinations as needed.
2018 Sep 21, Fabrizio Stabile (29) of New Jersey died of a rare "brain-eating amoeba" after visiting the BSR Cable Park and Surf Resort in Waco, Texas. In 2019 his mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit seeking more than $1 million.
2018 Sep 22, The United Nations said a cholera outbreak in north-eastern Nigeria has claimed nearly 100 lives over the past two weeks.
2018 Sep 27, It was reported that the Atlanta-based CDC has estimated that 80,000 Americans died of flu last winter.
2018 Sep 27, The UN said the cholera outbreak in Niger has killed 67 people since July out of thousands of recorded cases.
2018 Sep 28, In CongoDRC the latest Ebola outbreak had 124 confirmed cases, including 71 deaths. The World Health Organization said risk of the deadly virus spreading from Congo is now "very high" after two confirmed cases were discovered near the Uganda border.
2018 Oct 2, The World Health Organization said it was helping Yemeni authorities with a second round of vaccination against cholera in three hard-hit districts. More than 2,500 people have died of the waterborne infection since the worst cholera outbreak in Yemen's history began in April 2017.
2018 Oct 3, Niger kicked out an employee of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), accused of exaggerating the death toll from a malaria epidemic in the south of the West African country. A video by Anne Pittet, an MSF pediatrist, said 10 children were dying each day in the southern town of Magaria from malaria or malnutrition.
2018 Oct 17, It was reported that six to ten sea lions suffering from leptospirosis were being received on a daily basis at the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands. Veterinarians have treated 220 sea lions so far this year.
2018 Oct 19, The London-based European Medicines Agency said it had adopted a "positive opinion" of Dengvaxia, the first vaccine for dengue, made by Sanofi of France.
2018 Oct 20, Congolese rebels killed 15 civilians and abducted a dozen children in an attack in the Beni area at the center of the latest deadly Ebola outbreak. Confirmed Ebola cases have now reached 200, including 117 deaths.
2018 Oct 22, The Press Trust of India news agency reported that the number of Zika virus cases has crossed 100 in the northern state of Rajasthan.
2018 Oct 24, US regulators approved Xofluza, the first new type of flu drug in nearly two decades. It was initially developed by Shionogi & Co. of Japan with marketing rights sold to Roche.
2018 Oct 24, In New Jersey the Wannaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation said another child has died of adenovirus, bringing the death toll to seven in the viral outbreak.
2018 Nov 1, The Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed 180 lives, according to the health ministry, with 10 more reported deaths in recent days.
2018 Nov 9, Congo's health ministry said the latest Ebola outbreak is the worst in the country's recorded history with 319 confirmed and probable cases. The deadly virus has killed about 198 people since the outbreak was declared Aug. 1 in the volatile east.
2018 Nov 17, China's agriculture ministry said four new outbreaks of African swine fever have been reported in the provinces of Jiangxi, Yunnan and Sichuan as well as the municipality of Shanghai.
2018 Nov 21, Researchers said they have found a second patient in Hong Kong who contracted a strain of hepatitis carried by rats, in what appears to be the first known human cases in the world.
2018 Nov 23, China reported its first cases of swine fever in Beijing. Xiamen Airlines announced it was suspending the use of pork in inflight meals.
2018 Nov 26, The WHO said Congo last week began the first-ever trial to test the effectiveness and safety of four experimental Ebola drugs, the first time scientists have directly compared such treatments.
2018 Nov 29, The WHO said Congo's deadly Ebola outbreak is now the second largest in history with 198 confirmed deaths and 47 probable ones
2018 Nov 30, Romanian health authorities temporarily closed a maternity hospital in the capital after 13 babies born there recently were diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
2018 Nov 30, The Pan-American Health Organization reported a big jump in measles cases in the Americas this year, with Brazil surpassing crisis-hit Venezuela as the nation with the most confirmed cases.
2018 Dec 2, It was reported that authorities in the Houthi-held Yemeni capital Sanaa are sterilizing water supplies at wells, distribution networks and houses to help stem the world's worst outbreak of cholera. UNICEF said more than 250,000 cases of cholera have been recorded in Yemen since the beginning of 2018, with 358 associated deaths.
2018 Dec 4, The US Department of Agriculture says a unit of Brazil's JBS is now recalling a total of more than 12 million pounds of raw beef that was shipped around the country because it may be contaminated with salmonella. JBS Tolleson in Arizona already recalled about 7 million pounds of beef in October.
2018 Dec 6, In eastern CongoDRC suspected militiamen killed at least 18 civilians, near the town of Beni, the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak. Congo's health ministry announced 13 new confirmed cases.
2018 Dec 10, Romanian authorities said the number of babies diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus at a maternity hospital in Bucharest has risen to 39.
2018 Dec 20, Congo's health minister said the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history is "certainly" expected to continue for another three or four months. So far there have been 549 Ebola cases in the outbreak that was declared on Aug. 1, including 501 confirmed cases. There have been 278 confirmed deaths.
2018 In the US the suspected viral disease acute flacid myelitis (AFM) was confirmed in 228 victims. The mysterious diseased seem to ebb and flow on an every-other-year cycle.
2019 Jan 13, It was reported that at least 26 people have died from hantavirus in the Patragonia region of Argentina since December. A judge has ordered 85 residents of Epuyen, a town of 3,000 where nine people have died, to remain in their homes for at least 30 days to help halt the outbreak.
2019 Jan 25, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee declared a statewide public health emergency following a number of confirmed measles cases in and near Vancouver.
2019 Jan 29, Congo DRC army and health sources said two soldiers in Beni have died after catching Ebola in an outbreak that has killed hundreds in the eastern region. The deaths of the soldiers brought the total toll to 459 recorded deaths.
2019 Feb 3, It was reported that Britain's brown hares are dying from a pathogen found to be the deadly rabbit hemorrhagic disease Type 2. Numbers of the animals have plummeted by about 80 percent in recent decades due to intensive agriculture that has destroyed their habitats and food supplies.
2019 Feb 7, The Philippines expanded the area of a declared measles outbreak from Manila to nearby regions. The outbreak has killed 55 children age 4 or younger in Manila since the start of the year.
2019 Feb 8, China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reported that swine disease had been detected on a farm in Yongzhou in the central province of Hunan, where 4,600 pigs were being raised. First detected in August, the disease has killed more than 1 million pigs in China.
2019 Feb 13, Authorities in Ukraine said eight people have died of measles since the start of the year. 53,000 confirmed measles cases were confirmed last year.
2019 Feb 14, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that at least 922 children and young adults have died of measles in Madagascar since October, despite a huge emergency vaccination program.
2019 Feb 18, The Philippine health secretary said that 136 people, mostly children, have died of measles and 8,400 others have fallen ill in an outbreak blamed partly on vaccination fears.
2019 Feb 20, Czech authorities said they would slap checks on beef imported from Poland after veterinarians found the dangerous Salmonella bacteria in a 700-kg batch of Polish beef. The beef was imported from Poland on February 13.
2019 Feb 21, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that an epidemic of measles in Madagascar has caused more than 900 deaths since the outbreak began last September.
2019 Feb 22, In eastern Congo DRC a new case of Ebola was confirmed in the Beni area where authorities believed the epidemic had been brought under control after 23 days without any fresh infections.
2019 Mar 5, It was reported that for just the second time ever an HIV patient was in sustained remission from the virus in what was hailed by experts as proof that the AIDS-causing condition could one day be curable.
2019 Mar 7, Medecins Sans Frontières said the battle against Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo is failing because ordinary people do not trust health workers and an overly militarized response is alienating patients and families.
2019 Mar 21, Congo DRC's health ministry said a six-month-old baby in the eastern city of Bunia has died of Ebola, becoming the first fatality of the disease in a provincial capital.
2019 Mar 27, A Mozambique government official said five cases of cholera have been confirmed following Cyclone Idai that ravaged the country, killing at least 468 people.
2019 Mar 29, In Mozambique the number of confirmed cases of cholera in the cyclone-hit port city of Beira jumped from five to 138, as government and aid agencies battled to contain the spread of disease among the tens of thousands of victims of the storm.
2019 Mar 30, Mozambique authorities said cholera cases among cyclone survivors have jumped to 271, a figure that nearly doubled from the previous day.
2019 Apr 1, Mozambican and international health workers raced to contain the outbreak of cholera in the cyclone-hit city of Beira and surrounding areas, where cases of the disease has jumped to more than 1,000.
2019 Apr 2, The World Health Organization said Ebola is on the rise in eastern Congo following a series of attacks on health facilities. A total of 73 new cases were reported last week, compared to 57 the week before.
2019 Apr 2, Mozambique officials said cholera cases have risen above 1,400 as hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses arrived in an attempt to limit the rapid spread of the disease.
2019 Apr 3, In Mozambique a vaccination campaign was launched in the central city of Beira after a cyclone slammed into the region and unleashed an outbreak of cholera. The disease has already killed two people and infected more than 1,400.
2019 Apr 5, It was reported that cholera is surging once more in Yemen, with more than 76,000 suspected new cases and 195 deaths in March, double the number in the previous two months.
2019 Apr 6, China's Inner Mongolia region reported a case of human infection with the H7N9 bird flu virus. The same bird flu strain killed almost 300 people in the country during the winter of 2016/2017.
2019 Apr 11, Congo's health ministry reported 1,206 confirmed and probable cases of Ebola, including 764 deaths. Health ministry statistics showed 40 new cases over two days this week. 75% of new Ebola cases have no obvious link to previous patients, meaning that officials have lost track of where the virus is spreading.
2019 Apr 16, North Macedonia's health authorities declared a nationwide measles epidemic in the small Balkan country after more than 960 cases were registered since the beginning of this year.
2019 Apr 18, Oxfam warned that war-torn Yemen risks a "massive resurgence" of cholera, with around 195,000 suspected cases of the disease recorded so far this year.
2019 Apr 22, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 71 more cases of measles were reported last week, with 68 of them from New York, where most of the cases have been from unvaccinated people in Orthodox Jewish communities.
2019 Apr 22, In Pakistan hundreds of school children were taken to hospitals complaining of nausea and vomiting after being given polio vaccinations. Angry family members responded by storming a local health facility in Peshawar and setting it ablaze.
2019 Apr 23, The World Health Organization said Malawi has become the first country to begin immunizing children against malaria, using the only licensed vaccine to protect against the mosquito-spread disease. The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and was approved by the European Medicines Agency in 2015.
2019 Apr 24, Pakistan recorded two new polio cases in the country's northwest despite efforts against the crippling disease. Gunmen in Bannu killed a policeman protecting polio workers during a three-day nationwide polio drive.
2019 Apr 29, Congo's health ministry confirmed 27 cases of Ebola today, the highest number since the outbreak was declared in August.
2019 Apr 30, Ghana rolled out the world's only proven malaria vaccine for infants as part of a landmark campaign against the deadly mosquito-borne disease, one week after Malawi became the first country to do so.
2019 May 2, A ship with 300 passengers left St. Lucia late today after spending two days under quarantine. Authorities there said the ship's doctor requested 100 vaccines after a female crew member was diagnosed with measles. The 440-foot Freewinds ship is reportedly owned by the Church of Scientology.
2019 May 3, More than 1,000 people have now died of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as aid workers warned that the highly contagious virus combined with insecurity in the restive region was creating a "deeply worrying situation".
2019 May 4, Authorities in Curacao boarded the Freewinds ship that arrived in the Dutch Caribbean island under quarantine, to start vaccinating people to prevent a measles outbreak.
2019 May 4, Tropical cyclone Fani, the strongest to hit India in five years, killed at least 12 people in eastern Odisha state before swinging north-eastwards into Bangladesh where five more people died and more than a million were moved to safety.
2019 May 10, It was reported that case of African swine fever has been detected in a Hong Kong slaughterhouse, prompting the culling of all 6,000 pigs at the facility. The incurable virus was found in a single pig imported from a farm in Guangdong province in mainland China.
2019 May 23, The UN named David Gressly as pointman to coordinate the global response to the devastating Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it ramps up efforts to contain the outbreak.
2019 May 31, The Brazilian government reported a case of atypical mad cow disease in an animal in Mato Grosso state. The case was considered "atypical" as the animal contracted the BSE protein spontaneously, rather than through the feed supply.
2019 May 31, Hong Kong confirmed its second case of African swine fever, in a further sign that the virus is continuing to spread beyond mainland China, with the government ordering a cull of 4,700 animals.
2019 May 31, Pakistani health officials say 681 people have tested positive for HIV in Ratodero, of whom 537 are children, since April 25. Officials suspected the outbreak is linked to reused syringes and needles and improperly screened blood transfusions.
2019 May 31, South Korea said that it is scrambling to prevent the spread of the highly contagious African swine fever on its pig industry after North Korea confirmed an outbreak at a farm near its border with China.
2018 May, The Trump administration dismantled the National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, another pandemic would hit the nation. The apparatus had been put in place 5 years before in the face of the Ebola crisis.
{TrumpD, USA, Microbiology}
2019 Jun 4, It was reported that deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo has surpassed 2,000 cases and is picking up speed.
2019 Jun 5, South Korea said that North Korea has so far ignored its calls for joint efforts to stem the spread of highly contagious African swine fever following an outbreak near North Korea's border with China.
2019 Jun 10, Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo declared an epidemic of measles which may have killed 1,500 people, according to statistical analysis.
2019 Jun 12, Indian health officials said at least 31 children have died in northern Bihar state in the last 10 days from a deadly brain disease believed linked to a toxic substance found in lychee fruit.
2019 Jun 12, Uganda's health minister said a five-year-old boy in Uganda has died of Ebola, as his grandmother and younger brother also tested positive for the virus after joining the child on a visit to neighboring DR Congo.
2019 Jun 13, New York state's Democrat-led Senate and Assembly voted to repeal the religious exemption to vaccine requirements for schoolchildren. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the measure minutes after the vote.
2019 Jun 13, A Ugandan health ministry official said a 50-year-old woman who tested positive for Ebola in Uganda has died, the second fatality since the virus spread from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
2019 Jun 14, The World Health Organization emergency committee met on whether to declare a raging Ebola epidemic an international threat, after an outbreak that began in Democratic Republic of Congo crossed into Uganda. The committee expressed deep concern but declined to declare a global emergency.
2019 Jun 18, Indian authorities said more than 100 children have died in an encephalitis outbreak in the eastern state of Bihar.
2019 Jun 19, Indian authorities said that 114 children have died in an encephalitis outbreak this month in eastern Bihar, one of the country's poorest states. There have been more than 500 cases of encephalitis registered since the outbreak began June 1.
2019 Jun 20, Asian nations scrambled to contain the spread of highly contagious African swine fever, with Vietnam culling 2.5 million pigs and China reporting more than a million dead in an unprecedentedly huge epidemic some fear is out of control.
2019 Jun 20, Laos reported its first cases of African swine fever (ASF), confirming outbreaks in the southern province of Saravane.
2019 Jun 21, China said it has banned direct and indirect imports of pigs, wild boars and related products from Laos due to the first African swine fever outbreaks reported by the Southeast Asian nation on June 20.
2019 Jun 23, In eastern India a medical official said at least 129 children have now died of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in the town of Muzaffarpur, Bihar state, since an outbreak earlier this month.
2019 Jun 24, Congo DRC's health ministry said more than 1,500 people have died in a nearly 10-month-old outbreak of Ebola.
2019 Jun 24, India's Supreme Court directed state and national authorities to file reports to the court on an encephalitis outbreak in the eastern state of Bihar this month in which 152 children have died.
2019 Jul 4, Chinese officials said new cases of African swine fever have declined and pork production is returning to normal, after millions of pigs were culled because of the deadly disease.
2019 Jul 7, It was reported that bats in northern California have begun dying from white-nose syndrome, a mysterious fungus that has killed millions of bats in the eastern United States. The first case in the state was detected a year ago and officials said the disease, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, was poised to spread across the state.
(SSFC, 7/7/19, p.C10)
2019 Jul 7, A Tennessee man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria during a trip to a Florida beach died just 48 hours after his last swim. The man did have a compromised immune system due to cancer treatments and that may have put him at greater risk.
2019 Jul 8, The UN said war-battered Yemen has been hit with more than 460,000 suspected cholera cases so far this year — a sharp rise from the 380,000 cases for all of 2018.
2019 Jul 15, The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that Ebola's arrival in eastern Congo's main city of Goma severely raises the risk of the virus spreading if it takes root in this metropolis near the border with Rwanda. Goma's first confirmed Ebola case was confirmed a day earlier.
(Reuters, 7/15/19)(SFC, 7/16/19, p.A4)
2019 Jul 16, In Virginia health officials reported a third death amid a virus outbreak at a retirement community in Springfield.
2019 Jul 17, Bulgaria said it has stepped up measures to prevent the spread of deadly African swine fever and protect the country's 600-million lev ($344 million) pig-breeding industry.
2019 Jul 17, In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet approved a plan to make measles vaccinations mandatory for children and employees of kindergartens and schools.
2019 Jul 17, The World Health Organization announced that deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo is now an international health emergency, after a case was confirmed in Goma, a city of 2 million people.
2019 Jul 20, Bulgaria reported an outbreak of African swine fever at a breeding farm for pigs near the Danube city of Ruse in the north east of the Balkan country and said all pigs on the holding, or 17,000, will be culled.
2019 Jul 22, US federal health officials said the United States recorded 25 new measles cases last week, bringing the total number of cases in the year to 1,148 as the country recorded its worst outbreak of the disease since 1992.
2019 Jul 24, The World Bank Group said it is readying a $300 million package of grants and credits to support the fight against the deadly Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of Congo.
2019 Jul 26, Bulgarian veterinary authorities said they will cull 30,000 pigs after detecting an outbreak of African swine fever at a breeding farm in northern Bulgaria, the third industrial farm hit by the fast spreading deadly virus.
2019 Jul 30, Bangladesh confirmed 15,369 cases of dengue fever since January 1. There have been 14 deaths from the mosquito-borne viral infection.
2019 Jul 30, In eastern Congo DRC the second patient to be diagnosed with Ebola in Goma died overnight after he sought treatment too late and was already bleeding. Confirmation of the case increased fears the virus could take root in the densely populated city of 2 million.
2019 Jul 31, Bulgarian authorities said that they would cull another 17,000 pigs after detecting an outbreak of African swine fever at a breeding farm in the north of the country, the fifth hit by the fast-spreading virus this month.
2019 Aug 1, Scientists reported finding multidrug-resistant "superbug" bacteria lurking on cash machines, escalators and handrails in London's underground rail system, shopping centers and hospitals and say they pose a potential risk to public health.
2019 Aug 2, Congo DRC's Ebola response coordinator said the second case of Ebola recorded in Goma had a large family including 10 children and managed to infect several people before dying of the hemorrhagic fever. WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said 538 primary and secondary contacts had so far been traced of all four Ebola patients in Goma.
2019 Aug 1, Florida's Surgeon General declared a public health emergency, allowing health officials to test and treat people suspected of carrying the Hepatitis A virus. 56 new cases of Hepatitis A were reported statewide in the week since the last reporting period. Philadelphia also declared an emergency.
(http://tinyurl.com/y4tdgtcz)(SSFC, 8/4/19, p.A8)
2019 Aug 6, The UN's humanitarian agency said malaria has killed more than 1,800 people in Burundi this year.
2019 Aug 12, The Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Serbia has reported four suspected outbreaks of African swine fever among backyard pigs. The suspected cases of the disease killed seven pigs while another 114 were slaughtered.
2019 Aug 12, It was reported that scientists are a step closer to being able to cure the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever after two experimental drugs showed survival rates of as much as 90% in a clinical trial in Congo. An antibody cocktail called REGN-EB3 developed by Regeneron and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 will now be offered to all patients infected with the viral disease.
2019 Aug 16, Congo DRC health officials said a woman and her child were the first two cases confirmed with Ebola in the South Kivu region this week, opening a new front in the fight against the outbreak. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo has killed 1,808 people out of 2,765 confirmed cases.
2019 Aug 19, Congo DRC's Health Ministry said overnight that authorities have confirmed a new case of Ebola in the remote, militia-controlled territory of Walikale, hundreds of kilometers away from where previous cases near the border with Uganda and Rwanda occurred.
2019 Aug 23, The World Health Organization's emergencies chief said the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo is approaching a "stark" milestone with nearly 2,000 people killed by the virus in the year-long epidemic.
2019 Aug 28, In was reported that 109 deaths from dengue fever, a mosquito-borne disease, have been recorded this year. At least 2 million people have caught the disease so far this year in Latin America and the Caribbean and more than 720 have died, according to PAHO, the regional arm of the World Health Organization (WHO).
2019 Aug 29, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that mumps has swept through 57 immigration detention facilities in 19 states since September.
2019 Aug 29, In Uganda a Congolese girl (9), who tested positive for Ebola, died. The WHO said that the outbreak has neared 3,000 cases. The girl, who was traveling with her mother, was identified at a border screening a day earlier as a possible Ebola patient and isolated.
2019 Sep 5, It was reported that the UN agencies for health and children have launched a diphtheria vaccination campaign in war-torn Yemen targeting over 2.8 million children between the ages of six weeks and 15 years. A UN spokesman said that over 4,000 Yemenis have gotten diphtheria since 2017 and more than 200 have died.
2019 Sep 6, A Vietnamese official said about 4.7 million pigs have been culled to contain an outbreak of African swine fever that has spread to all 63 provinces in the Southeast Asian country.
2019 Sep 7, Norwegian officials said they haven't been able to detect the cause behind an unexplained disease that is estimated to have killed dozens of dogs in the country in recent days.
2019 Sep 10, Sudan's Health Ministry said it had identified 37 people with acute watery diarrhea between Aug. 28 and Sept. 8 and that three of them have died. It was not immediately clear when they died or if they had cholera.
2019 Sep 14, Japanese officials culled 753 pigs in Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo after detecting an outbreak of swine fever.
2019 Sep 16, The World Health Organization (WHO) said three people have died and at least 222 have been infected in Spain's largest ever outbreak of listeria.
2019 Sep 16, Sudan's Health Ministry said at least seven people have died from a cholera outbreak over the past three weeks in a southeastern province.
2019 Sep 17, South Korea reported its first cases of African swine fever, becoming the latest country hit by the disease that has killed pigs from China to North Korea, pushing up pork prices worldwide.
2019 Sep 19, Philippine health officials declared a polio outbreak in the country, 19 years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it to be free of the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease.
2019 Sep 20, The UN's humanitarian agency said that two of Sudan's southeastern provinces have reported 124 suspected cholera cases with seven deaths.
2019 Sep 21, The World Health Organization issued an unusual statement raising questions about whether Tanzania is covering up possible cases of the deadly Ebola virus.
(The Telegraph, 9/22/19)
2019 Sep 23, China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reported a new case of African swine fever on a farm in the southwestern region of Guangxi. China, the world's top pork producer, has seen its hog herd shrink by a third since the uncurable disease arrived in the country more than a year ago.
2019 Sep 23, The World Health Organization announced Congo will start using a second experimental Ebola vaccine, as efforts to stop the deadly outbreak are stalled and Doctors Without Borders criticizes vaccination efforts to date. The second vaccine, made by Johnson & Johnson, will be used from October in areas where Ebola is not actively spreading.
2019 Sep 23, The Philippines' Department of Agriculture said it has detected more African swine fever outbreaks in the country, such as in a village in Antipolo, Rizal, east of the Philippine capital Manila, and some areas in central Luzon.
2019 Sep 23, South Korea's agriculture ministry said it has confirmed a third case of African swine fever at a hog farm in a city near Seoul after the country's first outbreak of the deadly virus last week.
2019 Sep 29, Hungary's national food safety authority Nebih said it has found five cases of African swine fever in wild boar carcasses near Budapest.
2019 Sep 30, East Timor said it is imposing restrictions on the movement of livestock to contain African Swine flu, after reporting multiple outbreaks to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
2019 Oct 3, A Pakistani health official said about 20,000 cases of dengue fever have been confirmed in recent months along with 34 deaths from the disease.
2019 Oct 4, Dutch health authorities ordered a major recall of processed meats from grocery stores after saying they had linked a spate of food poisonings over the past two years to a likely single source. Experts had been testing the DNA of listeria bacteria involved in cases that affected 20 people in all, killing three of them and causing one woman to miscarry.
2019 Oct 8, The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said US infections from three sexually transmitted diseases have risen for a fifth consecutive year. Chlamydia rose 3% from 2017, gonorrhea rose 5% and syphilis rose 15%.
2019 Oct 9, UNICEF, the UN children's agency, said more than 4,000 people have died in Congo this year in the world's largest measles outbreak. More than 200,000 measles cases have been reported across Congo since January.
2019 Oct 9, Save the Children warned of a spike in cholera cases in northern Yemen affecting hundreds of thousands of children and their families as a result of an increase in fuel shortages.
2019 Oct 10, The Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said France has detected a low-pathogenic H5 bird flu virus on a duck farm in the center of the country.
2019 Oct 11, The World Health Organization said it has launched a vaccination campaign in two southeastern provinces in Sudan to contain a cholera outbreak following flash floods that swept the country in late August.
2019 Oct 11, World Health Organization (WHO) experts said measles is staging a devastating comeback in epidemics across the world as the virus exploits dangerous gaps in vaccination coverage.
2019 Oct 14, It was reported that South Korea is deploying snipers to the Demilitarized Zone with orders to shoot any wild boar that are seen in the buffer zone with North Korea before they can bring more cases of African swine fever into the South.
(The Telegraph, 10/14/19)
2019 Oct 15, China's Agriculture Ministry said African swine fever has been detected in pigs being transported to Guangxi region from outside provinces.
2019 Oct 22, A report in Clinical Infectious Diseases said a Nebraska woman was infected last year by Thelazia gulosa, a roundworm that usually afflicts cows. She had been out for a trail run in Carmel Valley, Ca., and ran into a swarm of small flies. In March, 2018, she washed out three worms from her eye.
(SFC, 11/9/19, p.C4)
2019 Oct 30, The World Health Organization said more than 7 million cases of malaria have been reported in Burundi this year. Officials blamed the outbreak on factors including the lack of protective bed nets, problems with medicines and climate change. Malaria has killed nearly 2,700 people this year in the East African nation and caused 64% more cases than in 2018.
2019 Oct 31, It was reported that the recent transfer of hundreds of elephants to Malawi's largest wildlife reserve has led to residents falling ill from sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease spread by testse flies, a companion of the elephants.
2019 Nov 7, It was reported that the sudden oak death pathogen has established itself throughout the SF Bay Area and has spread along the California coast from Monterey to Humboldt County.
2019 Nov 8, Zimbabwe said it has suspended imports of livestock and meat from South Africa for the second time this year after an outbreak of foot and mouth in the north of the country.
2019 Nov 17, Samoa declared a state of emergency this weekend, closing all schools and cracking down on public gatherings, after several deaths linked to a measles outbreak that has spread across the Pacific islands. The island state of just 200,000 declared a measles epidemic late in October after the first deaths were reported.
2019 Nov 19, In Abu Dhabi donor governments and philanthropists pledged $2.6 billion to help fund a worldwide polio eradication plan that has taken decades to reach what global health specialists say is now the "last mile." The funding included $1.08 billion from the Gates Foundation, around $514 million from Britain, $215 million from the United States, $160 million from Pakistan and $150 million from the charity Rotary International.
2019 Nov 22, Samoa's government said deaths related to measles, mostly among small children, have more than tripled to 20 in the past week, eight days after declaring a state of emergency over the outbreak.
2019 Dec 2, Samoa's government said five children have died due to measles in the last 24 hours bringing the death toll to 53 since late October.
2019 Dec 4, Poland's agriculture minister said an outbreak of African swine fever near the German border has killed 21 wild boar.
2019 Dec 5, Samoa's government told most public and private workers to stay at home and shut down roads to nonessential vehicles as teams began going door-to-door to administer vaccines against the measles epidemic that has killed 62 people.
2019 Dec 6, A three-month-old Malaysian infant was diagnosed with polio, the first case reported in the country in nearly three decades.
2019 Dec 7, It was reported that a flesh-eating bacteria linked to the use of black tar heroin has killed at least seven people over the past two months in the San Diego area.
2019 Dec 8, Congolese health authorities said an Ebola survivor has fallen ill with the disease for a second time in eastern Congo. It was not yet clear if it was a case of relapse or reinfection. The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has infected over 3,300 people and killed more than 2,200 since the middle of last year, making it the second worst year on record.
2019 Dec 9, The US CDC said a multistate E. coli outbreak, linked to packaged salad from the Salinas Valley of California, has sickened 8 people in the upper-Midwest and 16 in Canada.
2019 Dec 9, The UN released $2.6 million in emergency aid to combat the measles epidemic in Samoa as the death toll reached 70.
2019 Dec 16, It was reported that mosquito-borne dengue fever is the latest challenge facing Yemenis who have endured almost five years of a conflict that has killed thousands, pushed millions to the brink of famine and caused major cholera outbreaks.
2019 Dec 18, Indonesian officials said nearly 30,000 pigs have died from African swine fever (ASF) in North Sumatra province as of Dec. 15, causing millions of dollars of economic losses as authorities try to quarantine the areas affected.
2019 Dec 24, China's agriculture ministry said African swine fever has been detected in pigs being illegally transported in southwestern Sichuan province.
2019 Dec 26, Mexican authorities ordered the temporary closure of a shelter housing Central American migrants sent to Mexico from the United States following an outbreak of chicken pox. 72 people, including 69 children, were diagnosed with the virus.
2019 Dec 30, The first public alert outside China about a novel coronavirus came from the automated HealthMap system at Boston Children's Hospital.
2019 Dec 31, Chinese health authorities said they are investigating 27 cases of viral pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan, after rumors on social media suggested the outbreak could be linked to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The disease later identified as COVID-19 was first reported by Chinese authorities to the WHO, and was not previously believed to have spread to Europe until January.
(Reuters, 12/31/19)(Reuters, 5/5/20)
2019 Dec, Taiwan sent an early warning to the World Health Organization (WHO) late this month about the risk of transmission of the coronavirus between humans. The warning was not shared by the WHO because of its relationship with China.
2020 Jan 3, In China the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said 44 people have been diagnosed with pneumonia, the cause of which is unknown. That's up from 27 three days earlier. Eleven people were in serious condition.
(Bloomberg, 1/4/20)
2020 Jan 8, China's agriculture ministry said an H5N6 avian flu virus outbreak has been detected in swans in the western region of Xinjiang.
2020 Jan 8, Researchers in Germany said a review of fatal encephalitis cases in the state of Bavaria has found that more than twice as many as previously known were tied to a rare animal-borne virus. Borna disease virus 1, or BoDV-1, is normally found in horses, sheep and other mammals. It was first identified as the cause of severe human encephalitis in 2018.
2020 Jan 8, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said India has reported an outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus on a poultry farm in the central state of Chhattisgarh.
2020 Jan 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said a cluster of more than 50 pneumonia cases in China's central city of Wuhan may be due to a newly emerging member of the family of viruses that caused the deadly SARS and MERS outbreaks.
2020 Jan 9, Chinese state media reported that a preliminary investigation into viral pneumonia illnesses sickening dozens of people in and around the country has identified the possible cause as a new type of coronavirus.
2020 Jan 9, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Poland recorded 55 outbreaks of African swine fever in wild boar near the German border last month, in a sign the deadly virus is spreading near one of the European Union's biggest pork exporters.
2020 Jan 10, The genetic sequence of SARS-COV—2, the virus which causes COVID-19, was published.
2020 Jan 11, In China health authorities said a 61-year-old man has died from pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan after an outbreak of a yet to be identified virus while seven others are in critical condition. A total of 41 people have been diagnosed with the pathogen.
2020 Jan 13, Hungary's National Food Chain Safety Authority reported that the H5N8 strain of bird flu has been found at a large turkey farm. NEBIH said more than 50,000 birds, would have to be culled and other precautionary measures implemented to contain the spread of the infection.
2020 Jan 13, In Poland a new outbreak of pathogenic H5N8 bird flu was reported, with around 6,000 geese set to be exterminated.
2020 Jan 13, The WHO said that Thai officials have reported that a traveler from the Chinese city of Wuhan has been hospitalized in Thailand with a recently identified new type of coronavirus. The report galvanized leaders in Beijing into recognizing the possible pandemic before them.
2020 Jan 15, Hungary's National Food Chain Safety Authority (NEBIH) said a second outbreak of H5N8 bird flu has been found at a large duck farm in the eastern part of the country.
2020 Jan 15, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Romania has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a farm in the northern part of the country, the first such outbreak in nearly three years.
2020 Jan 15, Serbia's state Tanjug news agency said the country has seen an outbreak of the pig disease African swine fever (ASF) in wild boars in the east of the country, close to the country's borders with Bulgaria and Romania.
2020 Jan 16, It was reported that foul tasting and smelling tap water has been running for more than a week in dozens of neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro. The local O Globo newspaper has reported a spike in cases of diarrhea, gastroenteritis and vomiting in Rio's west zone.
2020 Jan 18, Chinese health authorities said they had discovered four more cases of pneumonia following an outbreak of what is believed to be a new coronavirus strain in the central city of Wuhan, raising concerns that the disease could spread further.
2020 Jan 19, Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) said a new strain of coronavirus is behind the outbreak of pneumonia in the central city of Wuhan, which has erupted just ahead of the Lunar New Year, the country's biggest festival. As of today there were 65 confirmed cases of patients with pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus.
2020 Jan 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country would curb the spread of an outbreak of pneumonia caused by a new coronavirus. A leading Chinese epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, announced for the first time that the virus was transmissible from person to person on national television, a development that raises the possibility that it could spread more quickly and widely.
2020 Jan 20, Slovakia said it has detected its second case of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus at a farm in the west of the country.
2020 Jan 20, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Ukraine has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu on a farm in the west-central part of the country, the first of such outbreak in nearly three years. The outbreak killed 4,856 birds out of a flock of 98,000 in Vinnitsa. The rest of the flock was slaughtered.
2020 Jan 22, Deaths from China's new virus rose to 17 with more than 540 cases confirmed, increasing fears of contagion from an infection suspected to originate from illegally-traded wildlife. A patient infected with the new coronavirus died in Hebei province, marking the first confirmed death outside Hubei province where the outbreak began. This raised the death toll from the outbreak to 18.
(Reuters, 1/22/20)(Reuters, 1/23/20)
2020 Jan 22, North Korea banned foreign tourists to guard against the spread of a new virus from China.
2020 Jan 22, Singapore began taking the temperatures of air passengers arriving from China, a day before China stopped travel into and out of Wuhan.
2020 Jan 23, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention raised its travel alert for the coronavirus outbreak to a level 3, recommending people avoid all nonessential travel to Wuhan, China. The outbreak has now killed 18 and infected nearly 600 people globally.
2020 Jan 23, Chinese authorities moved to lock down three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year travel period. The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Similar measures would take effect the following day in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. Wuhan underwent a 76-day lockdown. The virus death toll in Wuhan ended in mid-May with 3,869 fatalities.
(AP, 1/23/20)(Econ., 9/19/20, p.42)
2020 Jan 24, The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed a second US case of the new coronavirus from China in a Chicago woman, and said as many as 63 potential cases were being investigated as the sometimes deadly illness continues to spread around the globe.
2020 Jan 24, China announced that it is swiftly building a 1,000-bed hospital dedicated to patients infected with a new virus that has killed 26 people, sickened hundreds and prompted unprecedented lockdowns of cities during the country's most important holiday.
2020 Jan 24, More airports began to screen passengers arriving from China amid growing concerns over the outbreak of a new virus there that has already killed more than two dozen people and sickened hundreds.
2020 Jan 24, An official in Kathmandu said a Nepali student home from China tested positive for the new coronavirus, making it the first confirmed case in the Himalayan nation.
2020 Jan 25, Australia declared its first confirmed case of the Wuhan coronavirus in the state of Victoria, with the patient hospitalized in a stable condition in a suburb of Melbourne.
2020 Jan 25, China's President Xi Jinping called the accelerating spread of a new virus a grave situation, as cities from the outbreak's epicenter in central China to Hong Kong scrambled to stop the spread of an illness that has infected more than 1,200 people and killed 41.
2020 Jan 25, Japan said it has confirmed a third case of infection by China's coronavirus.
2020 Jan 26, China banned wildlife trade nationwide in markets, supermarkets, restaurants, and e-commerce platforms due to the coronavirus outbreak. The new viral illness accelerated its spread with 56 deaths so far and a total of 1,975 infections.
2020 Jan 26, A group of Hong Kong protesters set alight the lobby of a newly built residential building that authorities planned to use as a quarantine facility, as public fears in the financial hub about the coronavirus outbreak intensified. Anger grew towards government plans to convert the building into a quarantine zone as the number of confirmed cases in the city climbed to six.
2020 Jan 26, Japan confirmed a fourth case of infection by China's coronavirus.
2020 Jan 26, The health minister in Thailand, the country with the most confirmed cases outside China of the new coronavirus, called an emergency meeting with the transport and tourism ministries amid rising public discontent over the government's handling of the illness.
2020 Jan 26, US officials said five people in the United States, all of whom recently traveled from Wuhan, China, have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus.
2020 Jan 27, The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in China rose to 81 and a small number of cases linked to people who travelled from Wuhan were confirmed in more than 10 countries. US stocks fell more than 1% as investors worried about the economic fallout of the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak in China that has prompted the country to extend the Lunar New Year holidays and businesses to close some operations.
2020 Jan 29, In China the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 5,974, surpassing the 5,327 in mainland China during the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003. The death toll rose to 132.
2020 Jan 30, China raised the death toll from the coronavirus to 170 and more countries reported infections from a new virus, including some spread locally, as foreign evacuees from China's worst-hit region returned home to medical tests and even isolation.
2020 Jan 30, North Korea said it is intensifying efforts to prevent the spread of a new virus from China into the isolated country by blocking tourists, reducing flights and mobilizing more screening efforts.
2020 Jan 30, The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency over the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, citing the potential of the virus to spread to countries not prepared to deal with the contagion.
(South China Morning Post, 1/31/20)
2020 Jan 31, China counted 9,692 confirmed cases of coronavirus with a death toll of 213, including 43 new fatalities. The United States drew China's wrath with a travel warning while businesses struggled with supply problems from the coronavirus epidemic that has killed 213 people and been declared a global emergency.
2020 Jan 31, Guatemala said it is imposing travel restrictions on people who have recently been in China to prevent the new coronavirus entering the Central American country.
2020 Jan 31, Sweden reported its first confirmed case of coronavirus.
{Sweden, Microbiology}
2020 Jan 31, Vietnam Airlines said it will suspend its flights to destinations in China from next week over coronavirus concerns.
2020 Jan 31, The Trump administration declared a public health emergency and announced series of steps to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has stricken China and spread to countries around the world.
(Bloomberg, 1/31/20)
2020 Feb 1, China's death toll from a new virus rose to 259 and the number of confirmed cases in China rose to 11,791. A World Health Organization official said other governments need to prepare for "domestic outbreak control" if the disease spreads in their countries. At least 24 countries have reported cases since China informed WHO about the new virus in late December.
2020 Feb 1, Indonesian officials said that around 250 of its nationals being evacuated from China's Hubei province, the center of the coronavirus epidemic, will be quarantined in its Natuna Islands military base.
2020 Feb 1, Japan moved to contain the economic impact of a coronavirus outbreak originating in China as strict new measures aimed at limiting the spread of the virus, including targeting foreign visitors, came into effect. Japan had 17 confirmed cases as of Jan. 31, including some without symptoms.
2020 Feb 1, Three Philippine airlines cancelled flights to China, joining many others around the world that have done the same, after health officials confirmed the Philippines' first case of coronavirus.
2020 Feb 1, Russia's aerospace defence forces began evacuating Russian citizens from China due to the coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Feb 2, China's coronavirus has infected at least 14,000 people since it was first detected in late December and spread to about two dozen countries although most, like the United States, have few cases. The incubation period is so long that people may not know where or when they picked it up. Based on the first 425 confirmed cases in China, each infection led to 2.2 others on average.
2020 Feb 2, The US military command in South Korea instituted a 14-day self quarantine for any troops who recently traveled to China, adding that an outbreak in that country of a new coronavirus could harm military readiness.
2020 Feb 2, California health officials said they had confirmed 11 cases of the new, fast-spreading coronavirus in the United States, with one in Santa Clara County and two more in San Benito County.
2020 Feb 2, The Philippines recorded the first death outside China from the new coronavirus, as countries around the world evacuated hundreds of their citizens from the infection zone and Chinese authorities completed a new, rapidly constructed 1,000-bed hospital for victims of the outbreak.
2020 Feb 2, The Philippines's Department of Agriculture said blood samples taken from pigs in a southern province tested positive for the African swine fever virus.
2020 Feb 3, China accused the United States of whipping up panic over a fast-spreading coronavirus with travel restrictions and evacuations as Chinese stocks plunged on the first day back from the extended Lunar New Year holiday.
2020 Feb 3, In China the first patients arrived at a 1,000-bed hospital built in 10 days as part of China's sweeping efforts to fight a new virus that is causing global alarm. A woman (36) in the northern municipality of Tianjin was detained by police after "deliberately concealing" her contact with someone from a coronavirus-stricken area. Authorities reported 425 deaths and 20,438 confirmed cases. At least 180 cases have been confirmed outside China.
(AP, 2/3/20)(Reuters, 2/3/20)(SFC, 2/4/20, p.A3)
2020 Feb 4, The US Department of Health and Human Services said it was partnering with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc to develop a treatment for the coronavirus, making the drugmaker the latest to join the race to develop a therapy.
2020 Feb 4, Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd said has canceled eight cruises out of China through March 4 in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Feb 4, Officials in the Chinese city of Macao asked its 41 casinos to close for half a month to help the stop the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 4, Hong Kong hospitals cut services as thousands of medical workers went on strike for a second day to demand the border with mainland China be shut completely, as a new virus caused its first death in the semi-autonomous territory and authorities feared it was spreading locally. The fast-spreading outbreak has killed 490 people with 24,324 confirmed cases.
2020 Feb 4, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Saudi Arabia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a poultry farm.
2020 Feb 4, The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said Vietnam has reported an outbreak of highly pathogenic H5N6 bird flu in a village in the northern part of the country.
2020 Feb 4, In Saudi Arabia the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) caimed another victim, bringing the total to 858.
(https://tinyurl.com/cgn6qfp)(Econ., 5/2/20, p.65)
2020 Feb 5, It was reported that at least 10 people aboard a cruise ship moored in Japan have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The Diamond Princess will remain under quarantine in Yokohama with everyone on board for at least 14 days. Three more cruise ship passengers were soon diagnosed with the virus in Japan for a total of 64 on board the ship.
(Good Morning America, 2/5/20)(AP, 2/7/20)
2020 Feb 6, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said it is ramping up efforts to develop a set of coronavirus treatments, which could be available for testing or use in some patients within a few months.
2020 Feb 6, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared a "people's war" against the fast-spreading coronavirus. Chinese health authorities reported 563 deaths and another sharp jump in the number of confirmed cases to 28,018. Outside mainland China, at least 260 cases have been confirmed. China finished building a second new hospital to isolate and treat patients of the virus.
2020 Feb 6, A US citizen (60) died from the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. It was the first known American death from the illness, and was likely to add to diplomatic frictions over Beijing's response to the epidemic.
(NY Times, 2/8/20)
2020 Feb 6, Greek officials said they have detected their first case of African swine fever at a breeding farm in the north of the country this week. African swine fever is harmless to humans but it is highly contagious and deadly in pigs. It has spread from Africa to Europe and Asia and has already killed hundreds of millions of pigs, affecting global meat markets.
2020 Feb 6, Russia said it has begun checking the body temperature of officials and reporters attending events involving President Vladimir Putin due to coronavirus fears.
2020 Feb 6, Saudi Arabia barred its citizens and residents of the kingdom from traveling to China amid the new virus outbreak.
2020 Feb 7, It was reported that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has signed into law quarantine rules for Brazilians who will be brought back from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of a coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Feb 7, China confirmed 31,161 cases and 636 deaths on the mainland. Dr. Li Wenliang (34) died overnight due to the coronavirus at Wuhan Central Hospital. Police in December had reprimanded eight doctors including ophthalmologist Li for warning friends on social media about the emerging threat.
2020 Feb 7, Independent scientists questioned research that suggested that the outbreak of coronavirus disease spreading from China might have passed from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins. South China Agricultural University had led the research.
2020 Feb 8, China's city of Wuhan, at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, opened another makeshift hospital, providing 1,500 beds.
2020 Feb 8, The World Health Organization (WHO) said the death toll in mainland China has risen to 723, looking likely to pass the 774 deaths recorded globally during the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A total of 34,546 cases were reported on the mainland. The virus has spread to 27 countries and regions, based on official reports, infecting more than 330 people.
2020 Feb 8, France said it is closing two schools and tried to reassure vacationers in the Alps after five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the new virus from China at a French ski resort.
2020 Feb 9, China raised the death toll from its coronavirus outbreak to 811. Total confirmed coronavirus cases in China stood at 37,198.
2020 Feb 9, The Philippines confirmed that African swine fever infections had spread in the south of the country, which accounts for nearly a third of the nation's 12.8 million pig herd.
2020 Feb 9, Spain's National Center for Microbiology confirmed the country's second case of new coronavirus, after tests on one of four people suspected of having the virus in Mallorca came back positive. The other three were negative.
2020 Feb 10, Officially, much of China got back to work, but there were few signs of activity on the streets of the capital, Beijing, as the new coronavirus has now killed 909 people and sickened 40,235. An advance World Health Organization team of medical experts arrived in China to help investigate the coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Feb 11, China reported 42,708 confirmed cases, including 1,017 deaths. More than 300 cases were also reported in at least 24 other countries. Franco-British biotech company Novacyt said it can offer a coronavirus test that is faster than rival methods by focusing on a narrow sequence of DNA coding.
2020 Feb 11, The UN's World Health Organization convened outside experts to fast-track promising tests, drugs and vaccines to help slow the outbreak of a new virus that emerged in China that has killed more than 1,000 people and spread to two dozen other countries. The coronavirus is now called COVID-19.
(AP, 2/11/20)(ABC News, 2/11/20)
2020 Feb 12, China's leadership touted "positive results" from efforts to contain the new coronavirus epidemic but warned it still faced a "large-scale war" against the outbreak. The death toll rose to 1,113, while more than 44,600 people had been infected by the newly named COVID-19 virus.
2020 Feb 12, It was reported that two Russian women who were kept in isolation for possible inflection by a new virus say they fled from their Russian hospitals this month because of uncooperative doctors, poor conditions and fear they would become infected.
2020 Feb 12, This year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, was cancelled by trade show organizer GSMA due to coronavirus concerns.
2020 Feb 13, US officials reported the 15th case of coronavirus in the United States, saying the patient was among those who had been evacuated from Wuhan, China, and placed under federal quarantine at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
2020 Feb 13, LabCorp said it has begun work on developing its own test for the coronavirus that has killed over 1,300 in China.
2020 Feb 13, The cruise ship MS Westerdam, stranded at sea for about two weeks after being refused entry by four Asian governments because of virus fears, finally docked in Cambodia. No cases of the COVID-19 viral illness have been confirmed among its 1,455 passengers and 802 crew members.
2020 Feb 13, Diplomats and experts said China is dragging its heels in accepting help on the ground from international health specialists. China has recorded 48,206 cases of a new coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2. The death toll in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, leapt by a record 242 to 1,310, with a sharp rise in confirmed cases after the adoption of new methodology for diagnosis. China's Communist Party fired several senior officials in Hubei province, the center of the new coronavirus outbreak.
(Reuters, 2/13/20)(The Week, 2/13/20)
2020 Feb 13, Confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus in mainland China rose to 63,851 by the end of today, up 5,090 from the previous day. The death toll rose 121 to 1,380.
2020 Feb 13, Japan announced its first death from a new virus from China, hours after confirming 44 more cases on a cruise ship quarantined near Tokyo as fears of the spreading disease mount in the country. The Diamond Princess, which is still carrying nearly 3,500 passengers and crew members, now has 218 people infected with the virus out of 713 tested since it entered Yokohama Port on Feb. 3.
2020 Feb 14, Zeng Yixin, vice minister of China's National Health Commission, told reporters that 1,716 medical workers have tested positive for the newly discovered virus, known officially as COVID-19, and six of them have died.
(ABC News, 2/15/20)
2020 Feb 14, Egypt's Health Ministry confirmed the first case of the new virus in the North African country.
2020 Feb 14, Paraguay health officials said that deaths from dengue fever increased to 16 in the South American country's worst outbreak of the disease in the last decade, severely straining its health system.
2020 Feb 15, China reported 143 virus deaths and a dip in new cases. China reported 2,641 new cases in the 24 hours through midnight Feb. 14, raising its total to 66,492. Mainland China's death toll rose to 1,523.
2020 Feb 15, French authorities said an 80-year-old Chinese tourist infected with the coronavirus has died in France, the first fatality in Europe and the fourth outside mainland China from the epidemic.
2020 Feb 15, In Hong Kong hundreds of anti-government protesters marched in multiple neighborhoods against government plans to potentially turn some buildings into coronavirus quarantine centers, demanding full closure of the mainland China border.
2020 Feb 15, Malaysia said an 83-year-old American passenger on the Westerdam cruise ship that docked in Cambodia has tested positive for the new coronavirus. The woman had taken a flight to Malaysia a day earlier from Cambodia.
2020 Feb 16, China reported a drop in new virus cases for the third straight day. Its latest figures showed 68,500 cases and 1,665 deaths due to the COVID-19 virus, most of the in Hubei province. The National Health Commission reported 2,009 new cases and 142 deaths.
2020 Feb 16, Taiwan's health minister said a man has died from the coronavirus, marking the first such death on the island since the epidemic spread from mainland China.
2020 Feb 17, China's health authorities reported 2,048 new cases of the virus and 105 more deaths. Another 10,844 people have recovered from COVID-19, a disease caused by the new coronavirus, and have been discharged from hospitals. The death toll reached 1,770 with 70,548 cases. Another 1,200 doctors and nurses from China's military began arriving in Wuhan, the latest contingent sent to help shore up the city's overwhelmed health care system.
2020 Feb 17, A Chinese professor said doctors in Shanghai are using infusions of blood plasma from people who have recovered from the coronavirus to treat those still battling the infection, reporting some encouraging preliminary results.
2020 Feb 17, Japanese officials confirmed 99 more people were infected by the new virus aboard the quarantined cruise ship Diamond Princess, bringing the total to 454.
2020 Feb 17, Two charter flights carrying cruise ship passengers from Japan landed at military bases in California and Texas overnight, starting the clock on a quarantine period to ensure passengers don't have the new virus that's been spreading in Asia.
2020 Feb 17, Biotechnology company Novacyt said that it had launched a 'CE-Mark' molecular test to help detect the coronavirus afflicting China, marking a step forward in Novacyt's plans to commercialize a product for the virus.
2020 Feb 17, Bulgaria's food safety agency authorities reported an outbreak of the H5N8 bird flu virus on a duck farm in the southern town of Rakovski. The agency said all 5,830 ducks at the farm will be culled.
2020 Feb 18, Cambodian health authorities said that 409 of the 2,257 passengers and crew of the Westerdam had left Cambodia for their homes scattered across the globe. The rest remain in hotels in Phnom Penh, the capital, or on the ship. After hundreds of passengers had earlier disembarked, one soon tested positive for the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 18, China reported 1,886 new cases and 98 more deaths. That raised the number of deaths in mainland China to 1,868 and the total number of confirmed cases to 72,436. China reported the death of Dr. Liu Zhiming (51), the man who mobilized all the resources of his hospital in Wuhan's Wuchang district to deal with the thousands of sick people arriving daily.
2020 Feb 18, French drugmaker Sanofi said it is working with a US government agency to develop a vaccine against the new coronavirus from China, saying it could have a candidate ready for clinical trials within a year.
2020 Feb 18, Japan, announced that 88 more cases of the virus were confirmed aboard a quarantined cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, bringing the total to 542 among the 3,700 initially on board.
2020 Feb 19, China's President Xi Jinping called for greater protection of medical staff fighting the new coronavirus after the deaths of prominent doctors sparked national anger at the government's handling of the outbreak. 1,716 medical workers have been confirmed as infected. Mainland China reported 1,749 new cases and 136 additional deaths. The death toll from the virus jumped past 2,000, while 74,185 cases of infection have been confirmed on the mainland. Inspectors in protective suits went door-to-door in the epicenter of the viral outbreak to try to find every infected person in an epidemic that is showing signs of waning as new cases fell for a second straight day.
2020 Feb 19, Two people in Iran tested positive for the deadly new coronavirus, in the Islamic republic's first cases of the disease.
2020 Feb 20, The number of new cases in China declined again, to 394, a notable shift from the 1,749 figure released a day earlier. Another 114 deaths in China were linked to the virus. The statistics came after yet another change in how cases are counted.
2020 Feb 20, Iran said that three more people have been infected with the new virus that originated in central China, following an announcement the day before that two people had died of the illness caused by the virus in the city of Qom.
2020 Feb 20, The first case of coronavirus was confirmed in Lebanon after a woman arriving from Iran was found to be positive.
(Reuters, 2/21/20)(AP, 4/1/20)
2020 Feb 20, South Korea reported its first death from the new virus while the mayor of a southeastern city urged its 2.5 million people to stay inside as infections linked to a church congregation spiked. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 22 additional cases of the virus, raising the total in South Korea to 104.
2020 Feb 20, The World Health Organization chided the international community for not stepping up enough to finance the battle to contain the novel coronavirus that has shut down many parts of China and killed more than 2,000 people.
2020 Feb 21, Costa Mesa, California, won a battle against the state, at least temporarily, when a judge halted the transfer of people diagnosed with the coronavirus to its community for a quarantine site.
2020 Feb 21, In Australia, two people who had been evacuated from a virus-wracked cruise ship off Japan tested positive for mild cases of the COVID-19 illness.
2020 Feb 21, China reported 118 more deaths from the COVID-19 virus, raising the toll to 2,236, most of the them in Hubei. China tallied 889 new cases. Two correctional facilities in east China reported cases, with 200 prisoners and seven guards testing positive at Rencheng prison in Shandong province. Another 34 cases were found at a prison in Zhejiang province.
2020 Feb 21, An Iranian health ministry official said the coronavirus has spread to several cities in the country. Health authorities reported two more deaths from the new virus that emerged in China and said the fatalities were from among 13 new confirmed cases of the virus.
2020 Feb 21, An Israeli doctor said one of the 11 Israelis who were flown home after being quarantined on a cruise ship in Japan has tested positive for the new virus that emerged in China late last year, the first case to be reported inside the country. Another four Israelis were hospitalized in Japan after testing positive for the virus.
2020 Feb 21, South Korea's government banned major rallies in its capital and declared a health emergency in its fourth largest city as 100 new virus cases were reported, bringing the country's total to 204.
2020 Feb 21, The United Arab Emirates said it had registered two new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of people diagnosed with the virus in the Gulf Arab state to 11.
2020 Feb 22, In China 397 new cases of coronavirus were reported nationwide and another 109 people died. The outbreak of the new COVID-19 strain has claimed 2,345 lives on the mainland and infected more than 76,000 people, with cases in more than 25 countries. State media said President Xi Jinping has written a letter thanking the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for committing up to $100 million for the global response to the outbreak.
(AFP, 2/22/20) (AP, 2/22/20)
2020 Feb 22, In China woman traveled by car to a relative's home in Beijing after being released from Wuhan Women's Prison, a facility stricken by an outbreak affecting more than 250 people. Her coronavirus infection was disclosed by local officials on Feb. 26.
2020 Feb 22, Iranian authorities reported one more death among 10 new cases of the coronavirus. Iran ordered the closure of schools and universities in two cities hit by the virus outbreak that has killed five people, the most outside the Far East. 28 cases in total have been confirmed.
2020 Feb 22, Israeli and Palestinian authorities sought to quell fears of a potential local outbreak of the coronavirus after learning that South Korean pilgrims who had toured some of the holy land's most popular sites were later found to be carrying the virus.
2020 Feb 22, A dozen towns in northern Italy effectively went into lockdown after the deaths of two people infected with the new virus from China and a growing cluster of cases with no direct links to the origin of the outbreak abroad. Secondary coronavirus contagions prompted local authorities in the Lombardy and Veneto regions to order schools, businesses, and restaurants closed, and to cancel sporting events and Masses. Hundreds of residents and workers who came into contact with an estimated 54 people confirmed infected in Italy were in isolation pending test results. Two people infected with the virus have died.
2020 Feb 22, South Korea reported an eight-fold jump in viral infections with 433 cases mostly linked to a church and a hospital.
2020 Feb 22, A South Korean Air flight with 188 passengers that landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport was taxied away from the allotted terminal while authorities allowed only 11 Israelis to enter the country. The next day the plane returned to South Korea with the rest of the passengers.
2020 Feb 23, Four passengers tested positive for coronavirus in England after being evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan. This brought the total number of cases in the UK to thirteen.
2020 Feb 23, Mainland China reported 648 new coronavirus infections for a total of 76,936. The daily death toll fell slightly to 97. In all, 2,442 people have died in the country from COVID-19.
2020 Feb 23, Iran's health ministry raised the death toll from the new coronavirus to eight, with 43 confirmed cases.
2020 Feb 23, Italian authorities stepped up measures to ban public gatherings, including stopping Venice's famed carnival events, which have drawn tens of thousands of revelers to a region that is now in the heart of the outbreak. Nearly all of the known cases, including three deaths, were clustered in the north, at least 25 of them in the Veneto region. Italy reported more than 150 confirmed cases, a sharp increase from fewer than five last week. Officials locked down at least 10 towns in the northern region of Lombardy, affecting at least 50,000 people.
(AP, 2/23/20)(Reuters, 2/23/20)(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, In Japan a third passenger from the virus-infected Diamond Princess cruise ship died. Japan's health ministry announced 57 more cases of infections from the ship, including 55 crew members still on board and two passengers who had infected roommates and are in a prolonged quarantine at a government facility. Japan has confirmed a total of 838 cases and four deaths from the virus.
2020 Feb 23, Pakistan temporarily closed its borders with Iran, which announced a weeklong closing of schools, universities and cultural centers. The outbreak has killed at least 12 people in Iran, according to state television, the largest number of deaths outside China.
2020 Feb 23, In Saudi Arabia finance leaders of the world's top 20 economies wrapped up their two-day meeting in Riyadh, a session that was dominated by growing concern over the widening fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. In a draft G20 communique the finance leaders clung to their upbeat projection of a modest pick-up in global growth despite the outbreak.
2020 Feb 23, South Korea raised its infectious disease alert to its highest level due to the coronavirus outbreak. South Korea announced 169 more cases of the new virus, bringing the country's total more than 760. The country also reported three more fatalities, raising its death toll to six.
(Reuters, 2/23/20)(AP, 2/23/20)(NY Times, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 23, South Korean health authorities said that 18 of the 39 South Koreans from the southeastern region who had made a group pilgrimage to sites in Israel later tested positive for the virus.
2020 Feb 23, Turkey closed its border with Iran would due to the number of coronavirus cases in its eastern neighbor.
2020 Feb 24, Afghanistan's minister of public health said one of three suspected cases had been confirmed in the Western province of Herat.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Bulgaria's food safety agency authorities reported two new outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu in the southern part of the Balkan country.
2020 Feb 24, Chinese authorities announced 409 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 77,150. The number of coronavirus deaths was reported at 2592. Large parts of China relaxed curbs on transport and movement of people as reported new cases of the coronavirus outside the worst-hit province fell to the lowest in a month.
(NBC News, 2/24/20)(Reuters, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Iran's government vowed to be transparent after being accused of covering up the deadliest coronavirus outbreak outside China. The coronavirus death toll jumped by four to 12, by far the highest outside China. There were 47 confirmed cases.
(AFP, 2/24/20)(NBC News, 2/24/20)
2020 Feb 24, Iraq's health ministry said local health officials in the Shi'ite city of Najaf have detected the first case of coronavirus in the country, an Iranian theology student.
2020 Feb 24, Italy recorded a 6th coronavirus death as it became the worst-hit country in Europe, bringing the total number of cases across the country to 219. Police manned checkpoints around quarantined towns in the north and residents stocked up on food as the country became the focal point of the outbreak in Europe and fears of its cross-border spread.
2020 Feb 24, Mongolia's National Emergency Commission halted all flights from South Korea and will block entry through its borders until March 2 as it steps up its efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 24, South Korea reported 833 confirmed cases with 8 dead. Health officials reported 231 new cases of COVID-19. A military spokesperson said there were 13 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the troops.
2020 Feb 25, Mainland China had 406 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, down from 508 cases a day earlier. The death toll from the outbreak reached 2,715, up by 52 from the previous day.
2020 Feb 25, Iran said its coronavirus outbreak, the deadliest outside China, has infected the country's deputy health minister. The health ministry confirmed three new deaths and 34 new infections, bringing the overall tally to 15 deaths and 95 cases.
2020 Feb 25, In Iraq religious officials closed down the Imam Ali mausoleum in Najaf, allowing visitors access only to its surroundings due to the coronavirus outbreak. The health ministry advised against non-essential travel to Najaf and urged citizens to refrain from holding large gatherings.
2020 Feb 25, The US Center for Disease Control warned the American public to prepare for an outbreak of the disease, which has spawned more than 80,000 cases around the world but relatively few so far in the US.
2020 Feb 26, US Pres. Donald Trump announced he was putting Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the US.
(Yahoo News, 2/26/20)0
2020 Feb 26, The USA stepped up travel advisories for Iran, Italy and Mongolia, warning of the risks of coronavirus or disruptions related to efforts to control the disease's spread.
2020 Feb 26, US health officials said a new coronavirus case in California, a resident of Solano County, could be the first in the US that has no known connection to travel abroad or another known case, a possible sign the virus is spreading in a US community. The patient was brought to UC Davis Medical Center from another Northern California hospital on Feb. 19, but it was four days before the CDC heeded a request to test the patient for COVID-19.
2020 Feb 26, US officials said the first clinical trial in the US of a possible coronavirus treatment is underway in Nebraska and is eventually expected to include 400 patients at 50 locations around the world. At least two patient studies are already underway in China, including the other study involving remdesivir, which is made by Gilead Sciences.
2020 Feb 26, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, unveiled an $8.5 billion request to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, more than triple Pres. Trump's request.
2020 Feb 26, An employee in the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Seattle developed flu-like symptoms after visiting a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington. On March 3 the US Department of Homeland Security closed its field office in Seattle.
{Washington, USA, Microbiology}
2020 Feb 26, Algeria and Greece reported their first cases of the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 26, Bahrain's number of coronavirus infections rose to 26.
2020 Feb 26, Brazil confirmed the first case of coronavirus in Latin America, a man in Sao Paulo who returned recently from Italy. The disease reached the Amazon region by mid-March.
2020 Feb 26, A second person died in France overnight as health officials tried to find out how the college teacher, who had not visited any country with a known outbreak, had caught the new coronavirus disease.
2020 Feb 26, In Germany two people tested positive for coronavirus, taking the total to 18. Officials said a German couple who contracted the coronavirus had taken part in local carnival celebrations and also visited the Netherlands in the 10 days before they were diagnosed.
2020 Feb 26, Iranian cyberpolice announced the arrests of 24 people accused of online rumor-mongering about the spread of a coronavirus outbreak that has claimed 19 lives in the country. The health ministry announced four more deaths and 44 new infections, including in six previously unaffected provinces. This brought the total to 139 cases.
2020 Feb 26, Iraq announced sweeping measures late today to try to contain the spread of the coronavirus, ordering the closure of schools and universities, cafes, cinemas and other public spaces until March 7. Iraq also banned travel to or from some of the worst affected countries.
2020 Feb 26, Italy become a frontline in the global outbreak of the coronavirus, with over 370 cases and 12 deaths.
2020 Feb 26, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe called for sports and cultural events to be scrapped or curtailed for two weeks as domestic cases of coronavirus increased to 175.
2020 Feb 26, Kuwait's coronavirus cases rose to 25 after 13 more cases were confirmed.
2020 Feb 26, North Macedonia said it has confirmed its first case of the coronavirus infection, diagnosed in a woman who recently arrived from Italy.
2020 Feb 26, Pakistan said it has detected its first two cases of the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 26, In South Korea the coronavirus has infected 1,260 people. 20 South Korean soldiers and one American have tested positive.
2020 Feb 26, Thailand reported three new cases of coronavirus, taking its total tally to 40.
2020 Feb 26, World health officials said the coronavirus illness had now spread to 37 counties. The WHO reported that the number of new cases reported outside China exceeded the number of new cases in China for the first time.
2020 Feb 27, A US federal agency confirmed that a government whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging that some federal workers did not have the necessary protective gear or training when they were deployed to help Americans evacuated from China during the coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Feb 27, US federal officials issued new rules allowing more people to be tested for the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 27, China said the number of new deaths stood at 29, the lowest daily rate since Jan. 28 and reported 433 new cases. The coronavirus has now killed 2,744 people in the country, mostly in the central province of Hubei.
2020 Feb 27, In Germany, the Berlin state government struck down the honorary citizen title of former German Pres. Paul von Hindenburg (1925-1934) citing his act of appointing Adolf Hitler as chancellor in 1933.
2020 Feb 27, Greek islanders on Lesbos and Chios gathered for a fourth consecutive day to protest government plans to build new migrant detention centers.
2020 Feb 27, Top supplier Godrej Agrovet Ltd said a false rumor that the coronavirus can be spread by chickens has slashed Indian poultry sales by almost 50%.
2020 Feb 27, It was reported that the coronavirus has killed 26 people in Iran, the highest toll outside of China where it originated. Many of the over 240 confirmed cases in the region have links to Iran, including dozens in Kuwait and Bahrain, six in Iraq and two in Lebanon.
2020 Feb 27, Iraq announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Baghdad, taking nationwide infections to six and raising concerns about the capacity of the dilapidated health system to respond.
2020 Feb 27, A Japanese woman tested positive for coronavirus for a second time as the number of confirmed cases in Japan, excluding the 704 on the quarantined cruise liner, rose above 190. The death toll rose to eight after another death was reported in Hokkaido.
2020 Feb 27, In Kuwait confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to 43.
2020 Feb 27, Lebanon confirmed the country's third case of coronavirus, after a man arriving from Iran on Feb. 24 tested positive.
2020 Feb 27, It was reported that North Korea has postponed the new school term to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus.
2020 Feb 27, Saudi Arabia banned pilgrims from visiting Islam's holiest sites as the number of deaths jumped in neighboring Iran. Japan and Iraq ordered the closure of schools. Saudi Arabia made the unprecedented decision to halt the umrah pilgrimage amid the global outbreak of the coronavirus. The lesser umrah pilgrimage can be performed year-round. Nearly 20 million Muslims undertake the umrah pilgrimage each year, including more than 7 million foreign travelers.
(AFP, 2/27/20) (Good Morning America, 2/27/20)
2020 Feb 27, South Korea reported 334 additional cases of the new coronavirus.
2020 Feb 27, In the past 24 hours, the WHO recorded seven nations that announced their first cases of the novel coronavirus: Brazil, Georgia, Greece, North Macedonia, Norway, Pakistan and Romania.
2020 Feb 28, US Pres. Donald Trump accused Democrats of exaggerating the danger of the coronavirus in order to destroy his presidency.
2020 Feb 28, The number of coronavirus cases in the United States was confirmed at 62. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also confirmed that four more patients tested positive for the virus in California, Oregon and Washington states.
2020 Feb 28, Lifeguards in San Diego County rescued 13 people and searched for others believed to have been dropped by Mexican migrant smugglers in the Pacific. As many as three people remained missing.
2020 Feb 28, Washington state lawmakers passed a measure prohibiting homicide defendants from claiming a defense based on panic over a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. the measure was name after Nikki Kuhnhausen, a transgender teenager who was killed last year. Nine states have similar legislation.
2020 Feb 28, The list of countries hit by the COVID-19 illness edged toward 60 as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Nigeria reported their first cases.
2020 Feb 28, China's death toll from the coronavirus reached 2,788, up 44. Cases climbed to 78,824, up 327.
2020 Feb 28, Iran reported eight new deaths from coronavirus, raising its toll to 34. The health ministry said 143 cases had been detected over the past 24 hours, increasing the total of confirmed infections to 388. At least seven officials in the country have tested positive for the coronavirus.
(AFP, 2/28/20)(The Week, 2/28/20)
2020 Feb 28, Italy reported that four more people have died from coronavirus, bringing the total to 21, while the number of those testing positive for the illness jumped to 821.
2020 Feb 28, Mexico said a man (35) has been confirmed as the first coronavirus case in the country. The man had taken a trip to Italy in February. Mexican health officials confirmed three coronavirus cases, all with mild symptoms and likely from the same source.
2020 Feb 28, New Zealand health officials said the country had its first case of the new coronavirus, a person in their 60s who recently returned from Iran.
2020 Feb 28, In Russia Moscow's deputy mayor said 88 foreign nationals will be deported for allegedly violating quarantine measures imposed on them as a precaution against the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 28, South Korea confirmed 256 more cases, bringing total to 2,022, doubling in two days and raising alarm about the worst outbreak outside of neighboring China.
2020 Feb 29, US health officials reported three more cases of the new coronavirus transmitted to people who did not travel overseas or come in contact with anyone known to be ill. The first US coronavirus-related death was reported in Washington State.
(AFP, 2/29/20)(The Daily Beast, 2/29/20)
2020 Feb 29, Azerbaijan said it had closed its border with Iran for two weeks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, after the death toll in Iran rose to 43, the highest number outside of China.
2020 Feb 29, The number of people infected with coronavirus in the United Kingdom rose to 23, after three more patients tested positive.
2020 Feb 29, China reported 47 more coronavirus deaths and 427 new infections.
2020 Feb 29, Ecuador said it has confirmed the first case of a fast-spreading new coronavirus. The patient had arrived in Ecuador on Feb. 14 on a direct flight from Madrid without showing any symptoms, but soon felt ill and went to a hospital where she was diagnosed with the coronavirus.
2020 Feb 29, France said it is banning all indoor public gatherings of more than 5,000 people to slow the spread of coronavirus cases and recommending that people no longer greet each other with kisses.
2020 Feb 29, Iran reported a surge in new coronavirus cases as the number of deaths jumped to 43 among 593 cases, but it dismissed as "rumors" a report the real toll was much higher.
2020 Feb 29, In Japan a man in his 70s died on the northernmost island of Hokkaido late today after testing positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The man's death marked the sixth fatality from COVID-19 in Japan, excluding six deaths among those aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess.
2020 Feb 29, Lebanon's health ministry said that three new cases of coronavirus had been confirmed, bringing the total number of cases in the country to seven.
2020 Feb 29, Pakistan confirmed two more cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of positive cases to four since Feb 26, when the first two cases were reported in the country.
2020 Feb 29, South Korea reported its biggest surge in new coronavirus cases with 3,150 infections as 813 more patients were reported. Three women in the Daegu area died of the illness, taking the national toll to 17.
2020 Feb 29, Spain's total number of active coronavirus cases rose to 49. Authorities said an Italian national staying at a hotel in Tenerife, which has been placed on lockdown after four cases of the coronavirus were detected, has tested positive for the virus. This brought the total number of active cases in the Canary Islands to six.
2020 Mar 1, President Donald Trump said travelers from countries at high risk of coronavirus would be screened before boarding and upon arrival, without specifying which countries. New cases were reported in the Chicago area and Rhode Island. To date, more than 86,500 cases have been confirmed. Outside of China, it has spread to 53 countries, with more than 6,500 cases and more than 100 deaths. Globally, the illness has killed nearly 3,000 people.
(Reuters, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, SF Bay Area officials announced five new cases of coronavirus, two in Vacaville and 3 in Santa Clara County.
2020 Mar 1, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's office confirmed the state's first coronavirus case late today, in a woman in her late thirties who recently travelled to Iran.
(The Independent, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 1, A second person died of coronavirus in the northwestern US state of Washington as number of infections passed 75.
(AFP, 3/2/20)(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 1, Britain announced a jump in coronavirus cases, with 12 new infections taking the total to 35.
2020 Mar 1, Mainland China reported the biggest daily rise in coronavirus cases since Feb. 22. A total of 2,870 people have died in mainland China and 79,824 have been infected by the virus.
2020 Mar 1, Ecuador confirmed five cases in patients who all had direct contact with an elderly woman who brought the coronavirus to the Andean country from Spain.
2020 Mar 1, Ireland, Luxembourg and Qatar reported their first cases of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 1, France now has 100 confirmed cases. Of those, two have died. Louvre workers who guard Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and other masterpieces walked off the job, fearful of being contaminated by the museum's flow of tourists from around the world.
2020 Mar 1, Germany's Robert Koch Institute for disease control said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany has jumped to 117 from 66.
2020 Mar 1, Iran's health ministry raised the nationwide death toll from the new coronavirus to 54 as the number of confirmed infected cases jumped overnight by more than half to 978 people.
2020 Mar 1, Italy reported 1,694 positive cases of coronavirus and 34 deaths.
2020 Mar 1, In South Korea the number of coronavirus cases is now at 3,736 with 21 deaths tied to the Shincheonji religious sect. The founder of the sect and 11 others have just been charged with murder.
(The Daily Beast, 3/1/20)(Reuters, 3/1/20)
2020 Mar 2, US health authorities urged all baby boomers to get a one-time hepatitis C test because that age group appeared at particularly high risk. The US Preventive Services Task Force said that hepatitis C is on the rise because of the opioid crisis, prompting the recommendation to expand testing.
2020 Mar 2, In California the number of coronavirus cases in the Bay Area were confirmed at 26 with 43 cases statewide.
2020 Mar 2, Washington state health authorities said six people have died from coronavirus. Researchers said earlier that the virus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in the state.
2020 Mar 2, Andorra, Armenia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Iceland and Indonesia confirmed their first cases of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 2, The death toll from the new coronavirus epidemic surpassed 3,000 as more people died in China, Iran and the US and Europe raised its state of alert. The virus has now infected more than 89,000, spread to over 60 countries and threatens to cause a global economic slowdown.
2020 Mar 2, China's UN ambassador said that North Korea is suffering "negatively" from the coronavirus and called for greater flexibility from the United States and other countries on lifting sanctions against the country.
2020 Mar 2, Australian health officials said that a woman and a male doctor have contracted coronavirus, becoming the first cases of community transmissions in the country.
2020 Mar 2, Britain's Foreign Office said Germany, France and the UK have offered a 5 million-euro ($5.6 million) package to Iran to help fight coronavirus in the country.
2020 Mar 2, China reported 42 more deaths due to coronavirus, all in central Hubei province, putting death toll in China to 2,912. The National Health Commission reported 202 new infections, the lowest daily rise since late January, bringing the nationwide total over 80,000.
2020 Mar 2, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said: "As of this morning, we have 2,100 confirmed cases in 18 EU member states and we have 38 citizens who have lost their lives".
2020 Mar 2, In Germany the number of novel coronavirus cases rose to 150, up from 129 the previous day, with Berlin reporting its first infection.
2020 Mar 2, India reported three new cases of coronavirus, including an Italian national in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.
2020 Mar 2, Iran reported 12 more deaths due to the coronavirus, raising the country's toll to 66. Iran reported more than 500 new cases, raising its total number of infections to 1,501. Mohammad Mirmohammadi (71) of Iran's Expediency Council died in a Tehran hospital after contracting the COVID-19 coronavirus. A team from the World Health Organization (WHO) arrived in Tehran to support the country's response to the coronavirus outbreak
(AFP, 3/2/20)(The Week, 3/2/20)(Reuters, 3/2/20)
2020 Mar 2, Five more cases were confirmed in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, taking the island's total tally to 77.
2020 Mar 2, Qatar's health ministry said that medical tests had revealed four new cases of coronavirus infection in the country.
2020 Mar 2, Saudi Arabia confirmed its first case of coronavirus after one its citizens who had returned from COVID-19 hotspot Iran tested positive.
2020 Mar 2, South Korea reported 599 new cases of coronavirus, raising its total to 4,355. The death toll rose to 26. South Korea sought murder charges against leaders of Shincheonji Church, to which most of South Korea's cases have been traced.
2020 Mar 2, Spain's confirmed cases of coronavirus rose to around 120 from 81 the day before.
2020 Mar 3, US officials said there are now at least 120 confirmed cases in the US. Nine deaths have all been all in the Seattle area. Two cases were reported in New Hampshire.
(NY Times, 3/4/20)(Good Morning America, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 3, New York reported its 2nd case of coronavirus after Westchester County man tested positive. About 100 people nationwide have tested positive for the virus.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Reuters, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Belgium's federal public health service said they had found five new cases after conducting tests the previous night. All of the patients had been traveling in the north of Italy.
2020 Mar 3, China's death toll from coronavirus reached 2,943, with more than 75 deaths elsewhere as 77 other countries and territories have reported the respiratory disease. More than 90,000 cases of the new coronavirus have been reported globally.
2020 Mar 3, Germany said the number of confirmed cases has risen to 188. The virus has spread to 13 of the country's 16 federal states.
2020 Mar 3, India, the world's main supplier of generic drugs, said it has restricted the export of 26 pharmaceutical ingredients and the medicines made from them, including paracetamol, as the coronavirus outbreak plays havoc with supply chains. The government said it had detected "high viral load" in six people who had been in contact with a patient who contracted the coronavirus in the capital New Delhi. 24 people who had come in contact with the Italian tourist have been moved to a separate facility for testing. They included 21 Italians and three Indians.
2020 Mar 3, Infections rose again in Iran, where more officials were diagnosed. Iran reported 835 new confirmed cases, taking the total to 2,336. The death toll climbed to 77 from 66, while 435 patients have recovered. Eight percent of Iran's parliament, 23 out of 290 members, has been infected with the coronavirus. At least seven government officials also have it, including one of Iran's vice presidents.
(Bloomberg, 3/3/20)(Business Insider, 3/3/20)
2020 Mar 3, Japan's tally of coronavirus cases approached the 1,000 mark.
2020 Mar 3, South Korea's health ministry reported 374 more cases of the novel coronavirus, taking the country's tally to 5,186.
2020 Mar 3, Spain's tally of coronavirus rose 32% to 150.
2020 Mar 3, Sweden said it has nine new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, taking the total to 24.
2020 Mar 3, The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the last patient being treated for Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo was discharged today, bringing the 19-month-old outbreak closer than ever to an end.
2020 Mar 4, US federal health officials announced new testing criteria for coronavirus, requiring only a doctor's agreement. But it's unclear whether there are enough tests for everybody who'll want one.
2020 Mar 4, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the COVID-19 virus, opening the way for federal aid, after the death of a man in Placer County, near Sacramento, who had been on an earlier sailing of the ship in February. This was the nation's first coronavirus death outside of Washington state and brought the US death toll to 11. California now had 53 confirmed cases.
(AP, 3/5/20)(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, New York's Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the four new cases of coronavirus, bringing the state's total number of confirmed cases to six, were all linked to a Westchester County-based lawyer.
2020 Mar 4, Tennessee reported its first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.
(Good Morning America, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, Texas confirmed its first case of the novel coronavirus man in a man who recently traveled abroad.
2020 Mar 4, In Britain the number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 85 in the biggest daily jump since it was first detected in the country.
2020 Mar 4, China reported 139 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of cases to 80,409. The death toll reached 2,981.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)(Reuters, 3/5/20)
2020 Mar 4, China said it has approved the use of Swiss drugmaker Roche's anti-inflammation drug Actemra for patients who develop severe complications from the coronavirus as it urgently hunts for new ways to combat the deadly infection that is spreading worldwide.
2020 Mar 4, Germany-based Lufthansa said it has cut its flight capacity in a move equivalent to grounding almost a fifth of its fleet, response to the coronavirus epidemic.
2020 Mar 4, Iran reported 15 new deaths from COVID-19 and 586 additional cases, bringing the overall toll to 92 dead and 2,922 infected.. President Hassan Rouhani dismissed a US offer to help the Islamic republic fight its coronavirus outbreak, charging that "vicious" American sanctions are depriving the country of medicine. Iran canceled Friday prayers in major cities.
2020 Mar 4, Iraq said a Muslim cleric (70) died today from the novel coronavirus, the first death from the outbreak in a country where 31 people have been infected.
2020 Mar 4, Israel ordered travelers arriving from Germany, France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland to go into home quarantine over coronavirus concerns. The Health Ministry also ordered all international conferences in Israel cancelled and banned gatherings of more than 5,000 participants.
2020 Mar 4, The death toll in Italy soared to 79, with more than 2,500 people infected. A government source said Italy is to close all schools and universities starting March 5 to try to contain its worsening coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Mar 4, Lebanon has 15 cases confirmed since Feb. 21 after infected travelers arrived from Iran. The outbreak was expected to grow, challenging hard-hit medical facilities.
2020 Mar 4, Saudi Arabia banned its citizens and other residents of the kingdom from performing the pilgrimage in Mecca due to the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 4, South Korea reported 516 new coronavirus cases. It now had had more than 5,600 cases and 32 deaths.
(Business Insider, 3/4/20)
2020 Mar 4, In Sweden 16 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Stockholm, taking the total number of cases in Sweden to 52.
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that six US military individuals in South Korea have tested positive for COVID-19.
2020 Mar 5, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom said a ship with suspected links to two coronavirus cases, one fatal, was being held off the coast of San Francisco until everyone on board could be tested. At least 21 people on the ship had symptoms. The cases included guests who were on the previous Grand Princess voyage from Feb. 11 to 21.
2020 Mar 5, New Jersey confirmed its first case of coronavirus, a man (32) who had been hospitalized just across the Hudson River from New York City.
2020 Mar 5, New York officials reported 11 new positive cases of coronavirus in Westchester County, bringing the state's total count to 24, with 21 of those in in Westchester County and four in New York City.
2020 Mar 5, Houston officials confirmed the first three cases of coronavirus in Harris County, the nation's third-largest county.
2020 Mar 5, In Washington state at least 39 new coronavirus cases have been reported in the Seattle area. A man in his 60s died, the ninth fatality associated with the outbreak at a Seattle area nursing home.
(AP, 3/5/20)(AP, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 5, Brazil confirmed eight cases of the new coronavirus.
2020 Mar 5, Britain's HSBC sent more than 100 staff home after a worker tested positive for coronavirus, the first known case at a major company in London. Britain counted 90 cases.
2020 Mar 5, Bulgaria declared a nationwide influenza epidemic to deal with the rapid rise of type B flu cases. All schools in the Black Sea state of 7 million were closed to March 11.
2020 Mar 5, Scientists in China studying the outbreak say they have found that two main strains of the virus are circulating in humans and causing infections.
2020 Mar 5, It was reported that France has 377 confirmed cases of coronavirus and reported two more deaths, bringing the total to six.
2020 Mar 5, Germany's new coronavirus cases jumped by 109 in a day, to 349.
2020 Mar 5, Iran reported 15 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, raising the national toll to 107, and said it would keep schools and universities closed until early April. 3513 people in Iran have now been infected with the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 5, Iran announced it would put checkpoints in place to limit travel between major cities, hoping to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Hossein Sheikholeslam, an adviser to Iran's foreign minister, died from coronavirus.
2020 Mar 5, In Italy the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of a nationwide contagion, has risen over the past day to 98 from 73.
2020 Mar 5, In Japan confirmed infections of coronavirus rose to 1,036.
2020 Mar 5, South Africa confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 5, South Korea reported 760 new coronavirus cases. South Korea confirmed 6,088 coronavirus cases, with a death toll of 37.
2020 Mar 5, Spanish health authorities said they had identified as many as 193 coronavirus cases, including three children. Spain reported its first death two days earlier from the outbreak in Valencia.
2020 Mar 5, In Switzerland a woman (74) became the first local person to die from the novel coronavirus.
2020 Mar 5, Thailand reported four new cases of coronavirus, bringing its total to 47 since January.
2020 Mar 5, The UN said a British UN employee is one of the four people who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Senegal.
2020 Mar 6, Pres. Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion measure to help tackle the coronavirus outbreak that has killed 14 people in the US and infected more than 200.
(AP, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, The Grand Princess cruise ship, with 3,500 aboard, remained docked 70 miles off the coast of San Francisco as health officials await results from dozens of coronavirus tests. Samples were collected from 45 people currently on board who were showing symptoms. At least 19 passengers and two crew members on Carnival Corp.'s Grand Princess, currently off the coast of California, have tested positive for the coronavirus virus.
(AP, 3/6/20)(SFC, 3/6/20, p.A9)(Bloomberg, 3/7/20)
2020 Mar 6, In the SF Bay Area Santa Clara County reported 24 cases of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 6, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that the War Memorial and Performing Arts venues, including the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, will be closed for all public events for the next two weeks over fears of the rapid spread of the new coronavirus.
2020 Mar 6, Florida health officials confirmed the state's first two deaths from coronavirus as well the first pair of cases in the Miami metropolitan area.
2020 Mar 6, Kentucky reported its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 6, Nebraska reported its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 6, The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York doubled to 22. More than 2,700 people were isolated at home.
2020 Mar 6, Utah confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 6, In Washington state two Microsoft employees have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Facebook announced it is closing its Seattle office until March 9 after a contractor tested positive for the virus.
2020 Mar 6, In the US the number of cases passed 230 people scattered across 18 states. The new coronavirus hit a milestone, infecting more than 100,000 people worldwide as it wove itself deeper into the daily lives of millions, infecting the powerful, the unprotected poor and the vast masses in between.
2020 Mar 6, US drugmaker Biogen Inc said three of its employees tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a meeting in Boston last week, and that their condition was improving under medical care.
2020 Mar 6, In Belgium the number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus more than doubled to 109 after 59 new patients tested positive.
2020 Mar 6, An American tourist became the 1st confirmed case in Bhutan.
2020 Mar 6, Cameroon announced its first coronavirus infection.
2020 Mar 6, China reported 143 new cases, the same as a day earlier and about one-third what the country was seeing a week ago. Health authorities said the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu has confirmed 17 new coronavirus cases imported from Iran, bringing the total imported cases to 28.
2020 Mar 6, Egyptian officials said 12 people from a Nile cruise ship have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
2020 Mar 6, Four cases of the coronavirus have been identified in Hungary thus far, including a pair of Iranian students who recently visited their homeland.
2020 Mar 6, India braced for a potential explosion of coronavirus cases as authorities rushed to trace, test and quarantine contacts of 31 people confirmed to have the disease.
2020 Mar 6, Iran announced that the new coronavirus has killed 124 people amid 4,747 confirmed cases. The virus now was in all of Iran's 31 provinces.
2020 Mar 6, In Ireland more than 60 staff at a hospital were asked to self-isolate after the country's first community transmission of coronavirus was found there.
2020 Mar 6, In Italy at least 3,296 people have been infected with the coronavirus. The death reached at least 148.
(Good Morning America, 3/6/20)(Reuters, 3/6/20)
2020 Mar 6, In Japan confirmed coronavirus infections rose to 1,057.
2020 Mar 6, The Netherlands reported its first coronavirus death.
2020 Mar 6, Peru announced its first coronavirus infection.
2020 Mar 6, Serbia announced its first coronavirus infection.
2020 Mar 6, Slovakia announced its first coronavirus infection.
2020 Mar 6, South Korea reported 505 additional cases, down from a high of 851 on March 3. The US military confirmed its seventh case among those stationed there.
2020 Mar 6, Spain confirmed its fifth coronavirus death, with 365 confirmed cases.
2020 Mar 6, Switzerland reported 130 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the national total to 210.
2020 Mar 6, Togo confirmed its first case of coronavirus, bringing the number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa hit by the epidemic to five.
2020 Mar 6, Vatican City confirmed its first coronavirus case, but did not say who was infected.
2020 Mar 7, The number of Americans diagnosed with novel coronavirus is now at least 424, according to a case count by Johns Hopkins Univ. At least 19 people have died in the US in Washington state, California and Florida. There were now more than 101,000 infected worldwide and more than 3,400 deaths.
2020 Mar 7, A US Navy sailor stationed at the Naval Support Activity Naples tested positive for novel coronavirus, marking the first positive cause of a US service member in Europe.
2020 Mar 7, Grand Princess Capt. John Smith told passengers that the ship hit by the new coronavirus is headed to the port of Oakland, Ca. The ship carrying more than 3,500 people from 54 countries was expected to dock on March 9.
2020 Mar 7, Hawaii Gov. David Ige said a patient who had traveled aboard a Grand Princess cruise ship in early February became Hawaii's first case of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, Argentina's Ministry of Health said a 64-year-old man has died as a result of the new coronavirus, the first such death in Latin America.
2020 Mar 7, Chile said it now had seven confirmed coronavirus cases, up from five.
2020 Mar 7, In China about 70 people were trapped in a collapsed hotel in the city of Quanzhou, in southeastern Fujian Province. The collapsed hotel was used for coronavirus quarantine. 23 people were reported rescued. 23 remained trapped after the collapse of the hotel. 20 people died in the collapse. On March 9 a boy and his mother were rescued.
(Reuters, 3/7/20)(Reuters, 3/8/20)(SFC, 3/11/20, p.A2)
2020 Mar 7, Costa Rica's Health Ministry confirmed four new cases of coronavirus, in addition to that of a case involving an American woman announced a day earlier. Her husband was among the new cases.
2020 Mar 7, In Egypt about 150 tourists and local crew were quarantined on a cruise ship on the Nile river in the southern city of Luxor after 12 people tested positive for the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, In France a member of the lower house was diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized. The Health Ministry said that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the total death toll to 11 people. France has now 716 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, Georgia reported a total of 12 cases in the country, 10 linked to Italy, which has Europe's worst outbreak, and the other two linked to Iran. Georgia reported its first case of coronavirus in the end of February.
2020 Mar 7, Germany's confirmed coronavirus infections rose to 684 from 534 a day earlier.
2020 Mar 7, In Hungary the number of confirmed coronavirus patients increased to five since the first infections were announced on March 4. The government canceled a rally planned for the March 15 national holiday in central Budapest.
2020 Mar 7, In Iran lawmaker Fatemeh Rahbar (55) died from the coronavirus, the first fatality among 23 infected members of parliament. The death toll from the virus increased to 145 as the number of diagnosed cases grew to 5,823.
2020 Mar 7, People were not permitted to leave or enter Bethlehem, as per a decision made by Israeli and Palestinian authorities after 17 cases of novel coronavirus were confirmed in the city in the last 48 hours. 14 American citizens were being tested and have been quarantined in the Angles hotel in the city of Bethlehem for now.
2020 Mar 7, In Italy the number of fatalities due to the coronavirus were up 36 to 233, with infections growing to 8,883. Cases have now been confirmed in each of the country's 20 regions, with deaths recorded in eight of them.
2020 Mar 7, Kuwait recorded 3 new cases of the coronavirus, bringing its infection tally to 61.
2020 Mar 7, Malta reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, Mexico reported seven instances of coronavirus, up from six.
2020 Mar 7, Paraguay reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, Peru announced five new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the country's total to six.
2020 Mar 7, The Philippines health department reported the country's sixth infection. President Rodrigo Duterte agreed to declare a state of national public health emergency after a local transmission of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, Qatar reported its 12th case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 7, South Korea's coronavirus cases jumped above 7,000, up by 448 from the previous day. The death toll rose by two to 46.
2020 Mar 7, Spain identified 93 new coronavirus cases, bringing its total to 441.
2020 Mar 7, In the UAE The number of coronavirus cases rose to 45 from 30.
2020 Mar 7, In Vietnam all air crew and ground staff working on a Vietnam Airlines' flight from London to Hanoi on March 1 were being quarantined after a passenger tested positive for coronavirus. The Ministry of Health confirmed three new coronavirus cases, raising the number in the country to 20.
2020 Mar 8, In the SF Bay Area ten new coronavirus cases were reported, five each in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. This brought the total in Santa clara to 37.
2020 Mar 8, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said three cases of COVID-19 have been identified in the state.
2020 Mar 8, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the number of people in his state to test positive for coronavirus has increased to 105.
2020 Mar 8, Vermont announced its first presumptive case of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 8, Bangladesh reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 8, Bulgaria reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 8, Belgium's health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases in the country had reached 200. It said the virus had started to circulate locally among the Belgian population.
2020 Mar 8, China reported 40 new confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, down from 44 cases a day earlier, and the lowest number since the health authority started publishing nationwide data on January 20.
2020 Mar 8, Hong Kong recorded its third coronavirus death.
2020 Mar 8, Indonesia confirmed that two more people had tested positive for the coronavirus, taking the total of confirmed cases in the country to six.
2020 Mar 8, Iran said 194 people had died from coronavirus and 6,566 were now infected. IranAir stopped all flights to European destinations.
2020 Mar 8, Italy imposed a virtual lockdown across a swathe of its wealthy north, including the financial capital Milan, in a drastic new attempt to try to contain the coronavirus outbreak. Deaths due to the infectious virus risen, by 36 to 233. Of the 5,883 Italians originally infected, 589 have fully recovered.
2020 Mar 8, Tensions in Italy's overcrowded prisons erupted over new coronavirus containment measures, with riots in at least two dozen lock-ups and the deaths of six inmates who broke into an infirmary and overdosed on methadone. With 7,375 infected and 366 deaths, Italy has more virus cases than any country outside Asia.
2020 Mar 8, The Maldives reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 8, Moldova reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 8, Moscow city authorities threatened prison terms of up to five years for people failing to self-isolate in their homes for two weeks after visiting countries hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.
2020 Mar 8, Saudi Arabia said it has imposed a temporary lockdown on the eastern Qatif province, an oil-producing region and home to a large Shi'ite Muslim population, to prevent the spread of coronavirus after 11 people there were infected.
2020 Mar 8, South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 272 new coronavirus cases, for a total of 7,313 in the country. Two further deaths took the toll to 50.
2020 Mar 8, Vietnam's coronavirus cases jumped to 29.
2020 Mar 9, President Trump attempted to dismiss coronavirus fears with a misleading tweet comparing the virus causing the global health crisis to the seasonal flu. His tweet came after trading on the New York Stock Exchange was temporarily halted as stocks plunged more than 2,000 points, a 7 percent drop that triggered an automatic pause.
2020 Mar 9, The US Department of Health and Human Services said it would contribute $699,000 to speed up Hologic Inc's development of a coronavirus diagnostic test.
2020 Mar 9, In the US 554 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed, with 21 reported deaths. Worldwide more than 110,000 people have tested positive for the disease and more than 3,800 people with the virus have died, most of them in China.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Benzinga, 3/9/20)
2020 Mar 9, Federal and state officials in California prepared to receive thousands of people from a cruise ship that has been idling off the coast of San Francisco with at least 21 people aboard infected with the coronavirus. Fences were installed at an 11-acre site at the Port of Oakland as authorities readied flights and buses to whisk the passengers aboard the ship to military bases or their home countries for a 14-day quarantine. Officials in Santa Clara imposed a ban on mass gatherings of more than 1,000 people for the next three weeks to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 9, The Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States said it had no kits to test 65 employees showing symptoms of the respiratory illness that has killed at least 13 patients at the long-term care center.
2020 Mar 9, Belgium's health ministry said the number of coronavirus cases in the country had reached 239, while it decided to limit tests to seriously ill patients and healthcare professionals due to shortages of reagents.
2020 Mar 9, In Britain a sixth person in the UK has died from coronavirus. There were 319 confirmed cases.
(Reuters, 3/9/20)(AP, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, Canada recorded its first coronavirus death.
2020 Mar 9, Mainland China reported 19 new cases as of today, down from 40 cases a day earlier. Total confirmed cases in mainland China stood at 80,754. Hubei province, center of the outbreak, reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases for a second day.
(AP, 3/9/20)(Reuters, 3/10/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Egypt there were 59 confirmed coronavirus cases, including one fatality.
2020 Mar 9, An EU spokeswoman said a first case of coronavirus has been detected among staff at the European Commission.
2020 Mar 9, Germany reported its first two deaths due to the coronavirus. The number of cases in Germany more than doubled to over 1,100 in the last few days, putting pressure on the government to act.
2020 Mar 9, Iran reported 43 new deaths from the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall toll to 237 dead. 595 new cases were confirmed across the country, bringing the overall number of confirmed cases to 7,161. Iran temporarily released about 70,000 prisoners because of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 9, In the Netherlands the number of people infected with the new coronavirus increased to 321, up from 264 a day earlier.
2020 Mar 9, Panama confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 9, Saudi Arabia's health ministry said it has detected five new cases, bringing the total to 20.
2020 Mar 9, South Korea reported 165 new coronavirus cases, bringing the national tally to 7,478, while the death toll rose by one to 51.
2020 Mar 9, South Korea-based Daily NK reported that around 200 North Korean soldiers from several branches of the military have died from symptoms that may have been caused by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
(https://tinyurl.com/r85wkr7)(Daily NK, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 9, In Spain schools were closed in the town of Labastida near Vitoria in the Basque country after nearly 150 cases of coronavirus were identified in the region. The country has reported 999 cases in all, most of them in two areas around Madrid and around Vitoria.
2020 Mar 9, Sweden's Stockholm region reported a jump in confirmed coronavirus cases to 207, an increase of 60 since yesterday.
2020 Mar 10, In the US a total of 761 confirmed cases of the coronavirus were confirmed nationwide as well as 27 deaths. The number of people infected with the coronavirus topped 116,000 across the world as the outbreak spread to more countries, causing greater economic damage.
2020 Mar 10, Iowa health officials announced that five more eastern Iowa residents have tested positive for new coronavirus. The new cases brought the total number of Iowa infections to 13.
2020 Mar 10, Australia's coronavirus cases rose overnight to 100 from 80.
2020 Mar 10, Bosnia's autonomous Serb region said it will shut all schools and universities and ban large public gatherings from March 11 until March 30 to help stem the spread of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 10, Brunei said six people had tested positive a day after it reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 10, China's President Xi Jinping' made his first trip to the COVID-19 epicenter of Wuhan as parts of the nation appeared to be returning to normal.
2020 Mar 10, Congo DRC reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 10, The Czech Republic, which has reported 40 cases of coronavirus, said it will suspend schools other than universities from March 11, and ban events hosting more than 100 people.
2020 Mar 10, In India Hindus threw colored powder and sprayed water in massive celebrations of the festival of Holi, but the enthusiasm was subdued compared to previous years because of fears of the new virus. The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country rose to 47.
2020 Mar 10, In Iran the coronavirus outbreak killed 54 more people and pushed the nation's death toll to 291. This was an 18% increase in deaths from the day before and 12% more confirmed cases. Health ministry spokesperson Kianoush Jahanpour said there were 8,042 confirmed cases. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said doctors and nurses who die combating the new coronavirus will be recognized as "martyrs" like slain soldiers. State-run media said a rumor circulating in Iran that alcohol can treat coronavirus has so far led to 37 deaths and sent 270 people to the hospital after being poisoned by bootleg alcohol.
2020 Mar 10, It was reported that the coronavirus outbreak in Israel, largely contained, began to gain pace in recent days, with a total of 58 cases diagnosed as of today. 26 confirmed cases have been reported in the Palestinian Territories.
2020 Mar 10, Italy entered its first day under a nationwide lockdown after a government decree extended restrictions on movement from the hard-hit north to the rest of the country. Italy counted 9,172 cases and 463 deaths. The number of dead from riots in Italy's overcrowded prisons over measures imposed to contain the coronavirus rose to 12.
2020 Mar 10, Kosovo's government approved the 2020 budget after the small Balkan country held a snap election in October and elected the government after months of negotiations.
2020 Mar 10, Lebanon reported its first death due to coronavirus.
2020 Mar 10, Mongolia reported its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 10, Morocco's health ministry confirmed the country's first death from coronavirus in Casablanca, as its overall number of new infections rose to three.
2020 Mar 10, Dutch health authorities took action to contain an outbreak of the coronavirus in a southern province, where a large group of employees at hospitals tested positive for the illness. The number of confirmed coronavirus cases had risen by 61 to 382. One more person had died, taking the number of deaths so far to four.
2020 Mar 10, Norway-based Equinor reported the oil industry's first coronavirus infection on an offshore installation, highlighting the challenge in preventing contamination for thousands of workers living in the close quarters on rigs and platforms.
2020 Mar 10, Poland has reported 17 coronavirus cases so far and has announced the cancellation of all large-scale events.
2020 Mar 10, Singapore started charging visitors for coronavirus treatment after it reported new imported cases from neighboring Indonesia.
2020 Mar 10, The Spanish parliament's lower house canceled its activities for a week after a far-right Vox party member tested positive as coronavirus cases in the country surged to 1,600. Health authorities said known coronavirus cases in the capital region had risen to 1,024 from 782. Authorities have reported 47 deaths, 31 of them in Madrid.
2020 Mar 10, Taiwan began to airlift almost 500 of its residents from Wuhan. Another 500 Taiwanese will for now remain stuck in the central Chinese city.
2020 Mar 11, The US reported 1,039 cases of confirmed coronavirus, the eighth-highest in the world. The death toll reached 31. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed that three of its officers who work at the Mineta San Jose International Airport have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the virus outbreak in the US was only going to get worse. A new report said the new coronavirus can live in the air for several hours and on some surfaces for as long as two to three days. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 987 cases of the coronavirus, an increase of 291 from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 4 to 29. The CDC figures did not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.
(Good Morning America, 3/11/20)(AP, 3/11/20)(Reuters, 3/11/20)
2020 Mar 11, The US state of Georgia has 23 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus so far.
2020 Mar 11, Albania announced its first virus-related death.
2020 Mar 11, Bahrain authorities said their number of confirmed cases have spiked by nearly 70% to 189 confirmed cases. The 77 new cases were all on a returning flight of Bahraini evacuees from Iran.
2020 Mar 11, Belgium announced its first virus-related death.
2020 Mar 11, Bulgaria announced its first virus-related death.
2020 Mar 11, China announced that key companies can resume work in coronavirus-hit Wuhan. The coronavirus has now killed over 3,100 and infected nearly 81,000 in the country. Beijing ordered people arriving in the city from any country to go into 14-day quarantine as China reported an increase in imported coronavirus cases, threatening its progress against the epidemic.
2020 Mar 11, Germany reported 1,622 confirmed cases of coronavirus, making it the seventh-highest national total in the global outbreak. Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that up to 70 percent of the country's population, roughly 58 million people, could contract the virus.
2020 Mar 11, India suspended most visas in a bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 11, In Iran the death toll in the Islamic Republic from the outbreak rose by 62 to 354. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and two other Cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus.
2020 Mar 11, Italy's PM Giuseppe Conte earmarked $28.3 billion to ease the economic impact from the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 11, Kuwait reported over 70 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus and announced that it would close down all work and business for two weeks beginning March 12.
2020 Mar 11, Lebanon suspended flights from countries hit hardest by the novel coronavirus after announcing its second death from the pandemic in two days.
2020 Mar 11, Malta banned travel with Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Malta so far had six confirmed virus cases, all involving people who had visited Italy.
2020 Mar 11, Poland, which has confirmed 25 coronavirus cases, shut schools, banned large social events and closed cinemas, museums and other cultural sites, following similar measures by other countries in the region including the Czech Republic and Romania.
2020 Mar 11, Qatar said it has recorded 238 new coronavirus cases among individuals already under quarantine in one residential compound, taking the country's total tally to 262.
2020 Mar 11, Serbia canceled campaign events for the country's April 26 parliamentary election in an effort to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus after the number of cases in the Balkan state more than doubled overnight to 12.
2020 Mar 11, South Korea confirmed a total of 114 coronavirus infections, taking the country's total to 7,869.
2020 Mar 11, In Spain, the number of coronavirus cases surged past the 2,000-mark.
2020 Mar 11, Sweden announced its first virus-related death.
2020 Mar 11, The World Health Organization declared the virus a pandemic, a term that it had avoided using for fear that countries would give up on containment efforts.
2020 Mar 12, The US now had at least 1,323 cases of coronavirus, the eighth-highest number of cases worldwide. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 1,260 US coronavirus illnesses. The number trailed independent researchers, who are adding reports from individual states more quickly. Globally, there have been over 126,000 confirmed cases with over 4,600 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
(Good Morning America, 3/12/20)(AP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 12, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new restrictions on public gatherings, saying that they must now be limited to no more than 250 people, while smaller events can proceed only if the organizers can implement social distancing of 6 feet per person.
2020 Mar 12, In New York City a female diplomat from the Philippines mission to the United Nations tested positive for coronavirus.
2020 Mar 12, The national guard arrived in New Rochelle, New York, to maintain a containment zone just 25 miles outside of New York City.
2020 Mar 12, Algeria's president ordered all schools closed immediately after the North African country saw its first death from the virus. Algeria has 25 cases so far.
2020 Mar 12, Azerbaijan reported its first death from the coronavirus outbreak, an Azeri woman who was quarantined after returning from Iran.
2020 Mar 12, Canadian authorities confirmed that PM Justin Trudeau's wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau has tested positive for the COVID-19, following her visit to the United Kingdom. At least 117 cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Canada with one death.
(Benzinga, 3/12/20)
2020 Mar 12, Gabon confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 12, Ghana confirmed their first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 12, Iran said it had asked last week for an emergency $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help fight the spread of a new virus that's swept across the country, infecting more than 10,000 people and killing hundreds. The Health Ministry said 75 people had died in the past 24 hours and more than 1,000 new cases of infection had been confirmed, pushing the death toll to 429 and confirmed cases to 10,075.
2020 Mar 12, Italy's Premier Giuseppe Conte ordered restaurants, cafes and retail shops closed after imposing a nationwide lockdown on personal movement. Jewelry and clothing shops that on Tuesday and Wednesday had posted signs urging customers to queue up out the door a meter (3.3 feet) apart were closed until further notice. Supermarkets, pharmacies and outdoor markets were still open.
2020 Mar 12, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced strict immigration curbs and a halt on domestic land, sea and air travel to and from Manila, in what he called a "lockdown" of the capital to arrest the spread of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 12, South Africa reported 17 confirmed coronavirus infections, including its first transmitted locally. Across Africa, 12 of the continent's 54 countries have registered COVID-19 cases, the most recent being Ivory Coast announcing one case.
2020 Mar 12, South Korea reported fewer than 120 new coronavirus cases, but authorities warned that a new cluster in Seoul could see the infection spread in the capital.
2020 Mar 12, Sudan's first death from the coronavirus was of a man who had visited the United Arab Emirates in the first week of March.
2020 Mar 12, Vietnam's coronavirus cases rose to 44.
2020 Mar 13, Pres. Donald Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency, freeing up money and resources to fight it, and threw his support behind a congressional aid package. Trump said "I don't take responsibility at all" for the slow rollout of testing. Trump said that major cruise lines including Royal Caribbean would suspend cruises for 30 days at his request after repeated transmission of coronavirus among passengers at sea.
2020 Mar 13, President Donald Trump's administration announced it is awarding $1.3 million to two companies trying to develop rapid COVID-19 tests that could detect whether a person is positive for the new coronavirus within an hour. The Department of Health and Human Services said it is awarding $679,000 to DiaSorin Molecular, of Cypress, California, and $598,000 to QIAGEN, of Germantown, Maryland, to accelerate development of their tests.
2020 Mar 13, US officials said inmates at all 122 federal correctional facilities across the country will no longer be allowed visits from family, friends or attorneys for the next 30 days, in response to the threat of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc's coronavirus test, which would allow the firm to increase capacity to 1.4 million tests a week.
2020 Mar 13, The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that the New York State Department of Health can authorize certain laboratories to begin testing for the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, New York state opened its first drive-through coronavirus test site, following a similar experiment in Seattle.
2020 Mar 13, More than 134,500 people have been infected globally by the coronavirus and over 4,900 have died, according to a Reuters tally of government announcements.
2020 Mar 13, Australia warned citizens the coronavirus pandemic is now so widespread that they should reconsider all foreign travel, as the government stepped up measures to slow the spread of the disease.
2020 Mar 13, Austria said will introduce border checks with Switzerland and ban flight connections with France, Spain and Switzerland from March 16 to slow the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, Belarus said it has recorded 27 people infected with coronavirus, six more than a day before.
2020 Mar 13, Britain's number of confirmed cases rose to 590. Ten people have died.
2020 Mar 13, The Bulgarian parliament voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency until April 13 as the number of confirmed cases in the country more than tripled to 23.
2020 Mar 13, Cambodia recorded two new cases of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, China reported its lowest tally from the coronavirus since January, with eight new infections confirmed in the past 24 hours and seven deaths. Wuhan city reported five new cases. About 81,000 people have been diagnosed and about 64,000 have recovered. The death toll touched 3,176.
(NY Times, 3/13/20)(AP, 3/13/20)(Reuters, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Chinese billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma said he will donate 500,000 coronavirus testing kits and 1 million masks to the United States and urged international cooperation to fight the health crisis.
2020 Mar 13, Costa Rica, which has reported 22 cases, ordered all university classes suspended.
2020 Mar 13, Ethiopia confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, In France the death toll from coronavirus rose to 61.
2020 Mar 13, Germany recorded 3,062 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with five deaths. The German government unleashed the biggest economic aid package in the country's post-war history, offering companies "unlimited" credit to keep them afloat during the coronavirus crisis.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)(AFP, 3/13/20)
2020 Mar 13, Greece said it will close all its museums and archaeological sites, including the entire Acropolis that looms over Athens, until the end of the month due to the impact of the coronavirus. Greece had 117 confirmed cases and one fatality.
2020 Mar 13, In Hong Kong a man (80) became the fourth patient to die from coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, The Icelandic government said it would ban public gatherings of 100 or more people and that secondary schools and universities would close for four weeks to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. So far, 117 cases of coronavirus infections have been confirmed in the country.
2020 Mar 13, Two Indian states ordered the closure of public buildings, malls, cinemas and bars in several major cities, with Mumbai and Bengaluru subject to differing restrictions, after the country reported its first death from the coronavirus. India had 74 confirmed cases of the virus.
2020 Mar 13, Iran announced that the new coronavirus has claimed another 85 lives, the highest single-day death toll in one of the world's worst affected countries. This brought to 514 the overall number of deaths in the country. The total number of patients has reached 11,364 cases.
2020 Mar 13, Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland's government called for the closure of schools to mirror measures across the border in the Republic of Ireland, putting them at odds with their pro-British power-sharing partners. Northern Ireland currently has 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 compared with 70 in the Republic of Ireland, where the population is around two and a half times bigger.
2020 Mar 13, In Israel 126 cases of the disease have been reported and another 35 in the occupied West Bank. Muslims gathered in smaller-than-usual numbers at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem after religious authorities decided to keep Islam's third holiest site open for prayers but enact health measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 13, Italy's death toll from the coronavirus epidemic shot past 1,000 as the economic impact worsened. The total number of infections rose to 15,113.
2020 Mar 13, In Japan total coronavirus infections rose to 1,380.
2020 Mar 13, Kazakhstan confirmed first coronavirus cases.
2020 Mar 13, Kenya confirmed East Africa's first case of coronavirus, a woman who had returned to the capital Nairobi from the United States.
2020 Mar 13, Mexico has so far confirmed 15 cases of coronavirus with no deaths. Deputy health secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said Mexico would consider mechanisms to control the flow of people entering Mexico from the US in an effort to limit coronavirus, if necessary.
2020 Mar 13, In the Netherlands new coronavirus infections reached 804, with 10 deaths. Dutch shoppers stockpiled toilet paper, pasta and canned goods as worries about the coronavirus outbreak spread.
2020 Mar 13, Pakistan said it will shut all land borders and limit international flights for 15 days to halt the spread of coronavirus. Pakistan has reported 21 cases of the virus but no deaths.
2020 Mar 13, Poland reported its first death from coronavirus. So far, 47 cases have been confirmed in the country.
2020 Mar 13, Saudi Arabia detected 17 new coronavirus cases, 11 of whom were Egyptians.
2020 Mar 13, South Korea recorded 110 new coronavirus cases, compared with 114 a day earlier, taking the national tally to 7,979, with the death toll rising by five to 72 as of late today.
2020 Mar 13, In Spain the number of coronavirus cases jumped to 4,209 from 3,004 a day earlier, as the disease spread mostly in Madrid, the Basque Country and La Rioja regions. The death toll from the epidemic has increased to 120 from 84 the previous day. In the Madrid region said the number of cases rose to 2,078.
2020 Mar 13, Thailand reported five new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 75.
2020 Mar 13, Turkey said a second patient has been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 14, Vice President Mike Pence said that new US travel bans would be implemented on the United Kingdom and Ireland as the novel coronavirus pandemic spreads.
(The Daily Beast, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, In the SF Bay Area 27 new coronavirus cases were reported, with 12 in Santa Clara County, 6 in San Mateo County, 5 in SF and 4 in Contra costa County. SF banned al most all hospital visitors as part of tis effort to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
2020 Mar 14, New York state reported 100 new cases, pushing the total to 524,. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said accelerated testing will lead to a rapid rise in total infections. Nationwide, more than 2,000 people have been infected and 48 have died. A Reuters count said some 145,594 people have been infected by the coronavirus across the world and 5,419 have died.
(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)(Reuters, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 14, New York City reported its first fatality from the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 14, The Central African Republic confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 14, The Dominican Republic said it will suspend all flights from Europe and the arrival of all cruise ships for a month in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus. So far 11 cases of coronavirus have been detected.
2020 Mar 14, Egypt said it will suspend schools and universities for two weeks starting March 15 amid to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The country has so far registered 93 cases of the new coronavirus, with two fatalities.
2020 Mar 14, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a small African nation on South Africa's eastern border, confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 14, The French government published an official decree banning all non-essential gatherings, but hundreds of protesters, some wearing protective masks, began convening outside the Montparnasse train station, chanting anti-Macron slogans. Thousands of security forces fanned out across central Paris as anti-government "Yellow Vest" protesters defied a ban on mass gatherings aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 14, Greece said it would suspend all flights that were still operating to and from Italy, after reporting two more fatalities from a coronavirus infection, raising the total number of deaths in the country to three. Greece had 190 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
2020 Mar 14, Indonesia reported that Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi has been hospitalized in Jakarta after he contracted coronavirus. Indonesia reported 27 more coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of confirmed infection to 96 with five deaths.
2020 Mar 14, Iran said the coronavirus outbreak has killed another 97 people, pushing the death toll in the country to 611. Iran has reported 12,729 cases in total.
2020 Mar 14, Authorities in Iraq's northern Kurdish region imposed a 48-hour curfew in the cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah that began overnight. The region has reported 27 cases, including one fatality from the COVID-19 illness caused by the virus.
2020 Mar 14, Italy reported more than 21,000 cases of coronavirus and 1,441 deaths, the second most heavily affected country after China.
2020 Mar 14, It was reported that 9 players in Italy's top soccer league, Serie A, have tested positive for the coronavirus. Games have been suspended until at least April 3. Italian supercar maker Ferrari said it will suspend production at the Maranello and Modena plants until March 27. Volkswagen AG's Lamborghini has also suspended production in Italy until March 25.
2020 Mar 14, In Kuwait, four more people have been infected with the virus, bringing the number of coronavirus cases to 104.
2020 Mar 14, Malaysia reported 41 new infections, the biggest one-day jump so far, for a total of 238. The new cases bring the total number of infected people in the country to 238.
2020 Mar 14, Mauritania, in northwest Africa, confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 14, Morocco confirmed 9 new coronavirus cases bringing the total number of infected people to 17. Morocco has suspended all football matches, closed all schools, halted flights with 9 countries and cancelled gatherings of more than 50 people.
2020 Mar 14, Dutch health authorities said the number of confirmed coronavirus infections in the Netherlands has risen by 155 to 959. The number of deaths rose by 2 to a total of 12.
2020 Mar 14, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern said that everyone entering the country from midnight March 15 must self isolate for 14 days in an effort to contain the spread of the new coronavirus. New Zealand had six confirmed cases and no recorded deaths.
2020 Mar 14, Russia's PM Mikhail Mishustin signed orders to close the land borders with Poland and Norway for most foreign citizens from March 15.
2020 Mar 14, Rwanda reported its first coronavirus case becoming the 19th African nation to report the presence of the virus.
2020 Mar 14, Saudi Arabia said it would halt all flights to the kingdom for two weeks beginning March 15.
2020 Mar 14, Seychelles confirmed its first coronavirus case.
2020 Mar 14, Spain recorded 5,753 coronavirus cases, up by a third from a day earlier. Spain said it will impose a nationwide lockdown beginning March 16 for two weeks as part of a state of emergency due to the virus. Car production at a Renault-Nissan plant in Barcelona has been stopped because of supply-chain disruptions due to the virus.
(Reuters, 3/14/20)(Bloomberg, 3/14/20)
2020 Mar 15, US officials recorded nearly 3,000 cases of coronavirus with 63 deaths, up from 58 a day earlier. Globally more than 162,000 were infected and over 6,400 have died. The US Navy said a sailor aboard a warship ship has tested positive for the coronavirus for the first time. The only state not reporting cases is West Virginia. Cases neared 160,000 worldwide, as deaths top 6,000. Several countries cautioned that fewer tests are being performed as more people fall ill. A US Army soldier tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the first US Army case in Europe.
(NY Times, 3/15/20)(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, New Jersey reported its second death from the coronavirus, The state has 69 positive tests, up from 50 the day before.
2020 Mar 15, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo said two state Assembly members , Helene Weinstein and Charles Barron, have tested positive for Covid-19. The state reported 729 confirmed cases, an increase of 69. There have been three deaths.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(The Independent, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, US sportswear giant Nike Inc said it is closing all of its stores in the United States and several other countries to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 15, Several African countries closed borders, canceled flights and imposed strict entry and quarantine requirements to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, which has a foothold in 26 nations including Burkina Faso, Congo Brazzaville and Equatorial Guinea.
2020 Mar 15, In Australia's New South Wales, the country's most populous state, reported 22 new cases taking the totally tally to 134. Eight new cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the state of Victoria, bringing the total number of cases in that state to 57. Australia said it will impose 14-day self-isolation on international travelers arriving from midnight and ban cruise ships from foreign ports for 30 days.
2020 Mar 15, In Austria the number of confirmed coronavirus cases jumped to 800, from 602 a day earlier.
2020 Mar 15, Belgium's health ministry reported 197 new cases, bringing the total of confirmed infections to 886.
2020 Mar 15, The British government announced England will join a growing list of countries offering HIV-prevention pill to all those at high risk of catching the virus. More than 100,000 people were estimated to be living with HIV in the UK in 2018.
2020 Mar 15, PM Boyko Borissov said Bulgaria will raise the salaries of all medics involved in treating coronavirus patients by 1000 levs ($566) per month as it steps up measures to contain the fast-spreading infection. Confirmed cases had almost doubled to 43 with two deaths.
2020 Mar 15, Cambodia said French national travelling from Paris via Singapore to Phnom Penh has been infected with the coronavirus, bringing the country's tally of cases to eight.
2020 Mar 15, China reported 16 new confirmed cases of coronavirus bringing its total to 80,860. Beijing said it will quarantine all travelers from overseas, including Chinese citizens, at designated locations for 14 days as the government shifts its focus to limiting imported coronavirus cases.
2020 Mar 15, Denmark's government told private companies struggling with drastic measures to curb the spread of coronavirus that it would cover 75% of employees' salaries, if they promised not to cut staff.
2020 Mar 15, Ethiopia has now recorded four coronavirus cases.
2020 Mar 15, Finland had a total of 240 coronavirus cases.
2020 Mar 15, Georgia's government said it will temporarily shut its border with Russia for travelers from March 16 in a bid to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Georgia had 30 cases of coronavirus, the highest number in the South Caucasus region.
2020 Mar 15, Germany's Health Ministry confirmed a report in newspaper Welt am Sonntag, which said President Donald Trump had offered funds to lure the company CureVac to the United States, and the German government was making counter-offers to tempt it to stay.
2020 Mar 15, India reported that the number of coronavirus infections had risen to 107, an increase of 23 from the day before.
2020 Mar 15, Indonesia reported 21 new coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 117.
2020 Mar 15, Iran's Health Ministry added another 113 deaths and 1,209 new confirmed cases of the COVID-19 infection. It said the outbreak has claimed 724. Some 13,938 people have been infected across the country.
(AFP, 3/15/20)(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Japan the number of coronavirus infections rose to 1,484, increasing by a faster pace than the previous day. The total number of infections included 697 from the Diamond Princess cruise ship and 14 returnees on charter flights from China.
2020 Mar 15, Kenya has now recorded three coronavirus cases.
2020 Mar 15, Lebanon's Health Ministry said that it had recorded 99 cases of coronavirus. Pres. Michel Aoun called for citizens to work from home and avoid socializing to prevent the spread of the virus.
2020 Mar 15, Malaysia confirmed 190 new coronavirus cases, pushing its overall total to 428, the most in Southeast Asia.
2020 Mar 15, In the Netherlands the number of deaths rose by eight to 20, while confirmed cases increased by 176 to 1,135.
2020 Mar 15, The Philippines recorded 4 additional coronavirus deaths and 29 new cases, bringing the domestic tally of infections to 140, as authorities placed the entire capital Manila under "community quarantine" for about a month.
2020 Mar 15, Poland's coronavirus cases rose to 111 cases with three deaths. The count was rising as the nation is now testing all those who are in quarantine.
2020 Mar 15, Singapore confirmed 14 new cases of the novel coronavirus, marking the biggest daily increase of the infection in the city-state. Nine of the cases were imported. Singapore has confirmed a total 226 cases of the virus so far, with 105 having fully recovered.
2020 Mar 15, Slovakia reported 54 coronavirus cases, an increase of 10.
2020 Mar 15, South Korea reported 76 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, an all-time low since Feb. 20, when the country saw a surge of over 500 in four days. The country's total tally stands at 8,162 with a total of 75 deaths.
2020 Mar 15, Spain's diagnosed cases of the coronavirus jumped 35% to 7,753 and the death toll rose by 152 to 288. Ford Motors said it would shut its Spanish plant in the eastern region of Valencia for one week starting tomorrow after three employees tested positive for coronavirus.
(Bloomberg, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/15/20)(Reuters, 3/16/20)
2020 Mar 15, In Switzerland coronavirus infections jumped by nearly 1,000 cases in 24 hours to 2,200 and 14 deaths were recorded from the virus across the country.
2020 Mar 15, Thailand reported 32 new cases of the coronavirus in the largest daily jump in infections since the outbreak began, bringing its total tally to 114.
2020 Mar 15, Turkey said thousands of Muslims returning to home from a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia were being taken into quarantine due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus.
2020 Mar 15, Vietnam's health ministry said all passengers coming from or through China, South Korea, the UK and Schengen countries will be quarantined and tested for coronavirus. Vietnam reported 37 new coronavirus cases over the past week, taking the tally to 53.
For more on COVID-19 see http://timelines.ws/subjects/COVID-19.HTML
2020 Mar 16, In the Philippines the farm minister said an outbreak of avian flu has been detected in a quail farm in the northern Nueva Ecija province. Tests showed the presence of the highly infectious H5N6 subtype of the influenza A virus.
2020 Mar 20, GlaxoSmithKline's HIV treatments division said it has received approval for its long-acting HIV injection from Canada's healthcare regulator, in a major win for the British drugmaker after a US rejection late last year.
2020 Mar 27, It was reported that scientists in Germany have discovered a strain of bacteria, the first of its kind, that can degrade the harmful compounds in polyurethane products -- a positive step toward reducing the amount of plastic pollution in the environment.
(https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00404)
2020 Apr 10, The Democratic Republic of the Congo said that the first person to contract Ebola in more than 50 days, a 26-year-old man, has died. The disease has killed more than 2,200 people in the DRC.
2020 Apr 12, The World Health Organization said Democratic Republic of Congo has recorded a second Ebola death in days following more than seven weeks without a new case.
2020 Apr 17, The WHO said five new Ebola infections have been recorded in eastern Congo since last week in a new flare-up just as the government was about to declare an end to the deadly epidemic.
2020 Apr 21, China's agriculture ministry said it had detected the deadly African swine fever virus in pigs transported to the southwestern province of Sichuan, the latest in a dozen such cases in the last two months.
2020 Apr 25, Today marked World Malaria Day, a disease which the WHO said could kill around 770,000 this year, or "twice as much as in 2018".
2020 Apr 27, America cut funding for a group conducting broader research into how bat coronaviruses jump to humans, seemingly because of its collaboration with scientists in Wuhan, China.
2020 Apr 29, It was reported that Niger has been struck by a new outbreak of polio, following the suspension of immunization activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across Africa, 14 other countries struggled to contain their polio epidemics, which have also been caused by a rare mutation of the virus in the oral vaccine.
2020 May 18, The results of a global trial showed that injection of the drug cabotegravir is highly effective at blocking HIV.
2020 May 19, Namibia said it has lifted restrictions that halted the trade and movement of cattle from Kabbe North Constituency in the north east of the country after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in August 2019.
2020 May 29, A panel of the European health regulator recommended approving Johnson & Johnson's two-dose experimental vaccine for Ebola in the European Union.
2020 Jun 1, The World Health Organization said officials have confirmed a second Ebola outbreak in Congo. Congolese health authorities have identified six cases in the north near Mbandaka in Equateur province, including four fatalities. Congo has also confirmed 611 cases of COVID-19, including 20 deaths, and the number was rising.
2020 Jun 10, China's official Xinhua news agency said a Chinese vaccine against African swine fever appears to be safe in clinical trials now underway, a step closer to preventing one of the world's most devastating livestock diseases.
2020 Jun 10, It was reported that an outbreak of African swine fever in Nigeria's largest pig farm co-operative in the south-west of the country has been confirmed and that some 300,000 pigs have been killed.
(BBC, 6/10/20)
2020 Jun 15, Medical authorities said the Democratic Republic of Congo has recorded up to 17 Ebola cases in a new outbreak of the deadly virus in the western province of Equateur, and 11 of those infected have died.
2020 Jun 25, Eastern Congo marked an official end to the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which killed 2,280 people over nearly two years, as armed rebels and community mistrust undermined the promise of new vaccines. No new cases of the disease have been reported in the north-east of the country, where dozens of armed groups operate, since 27 April. However, DR Congo is dealing a fresh Ebola outbreak in the north-west of the country.
(AP, 6/25/20)(BBC, 6/25/20)
2020 Jun 29, A new study said a strain of the H1N1 swine flu, known as G4 EA H1N1, has been spreading silently among workers on pig farms in China since 2016. In 2009 H1N1 spread around the world killing about 285,000 people.
2020 Jul 5, Authorities in a city in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia issued a warning, one day after a hospital reported a case of suspected bubonic plague. The warning followed four reported cases of plague in people from Inner Mongolia last November, including two of pneumonic plague, a deadlier variant of plague.
2020 Jul 7, Doctors reported that a Brazilian man infected with the AIDS virus has shown no sign of it for more than a year since he stopped HIV medicines after an intense experimental drug therapy aimed at purging hidden, dormant virus from his body.
2020 Jul 8, The WHO said Sri Lanka and Maldives have become the first two countries in the World Health Organization's South-East Asia region to eliminate both measles and rubella ahead of a 2023 target.
2020 Jul 15, China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said China is facing outbreaks of a debilitating virus in cattle that causes a condition called 'lumpy skin disease', following an incident on a farm in the eastern province of Zhejiang this week. Taiwan also reported its first case of the disease this month on Kinmen Island. The disease does not affect people and is thought to be spread by flies or mosquitoes.
2020 Jul 15, Mongolia's health ministry said a boy (15) has died of bubonic plague after eating an infected marmot in Gobi-Altai province.
2020 Jul 16, The Rijksmuseum Boerhaave museum in the Dutch city of Leiden finally opened an exhibition on contagious diseases through the ages after a long delay caused by the disease currently sweeping the world — COVID-19.
2020 Jul 21, The World Health Organization said it is facing a "serious funding gap" to battle the new outbreak of Ebola in remote corners of northern Equateur province amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Already there have been 20 confirmed deaths since the outbreak was declared on June 1.
2020 Jul 28, Scientists reported that they have succeeded in reviving microbes retrieved from sediment deep under the seafloor in the heart of the South Pacific that had survived in a dormant state for 101.5 million years in research illustrating the resiliency of life on Earth.
2020 Jul 29, The Philippines said it had slaughtered nearly 39,000 chickens in a poultry farm north of the capital Manila to curb a bird flu outbreak, more than four months after detecting H5N6 infections in a nearby province.
2020 Jul 31, The US FDA said a salmonella outbreak has infected nearly 400 people in more than 30 states and was likely linked to red onions coming from Thomson International Inc. of Bakersfield, Ca. The company said it was recalling all varieties of onions that could have come in contact with the contaminated red onions.
2020 Aug 6, A study, published in Nature, found that a drug-resistant strain of the parasites that cause malaria were able to resist treatment by artemisinin - a frontline drug in the fight against the disease. Researchers warned that this "would pose a major public health threat" in Africa.
2020 Aug 9, A salmonella outbreak linked to onions has expanded to 43 states and Canada, prompting a recall from a producer in California and various grocery chains.
2020 Aug 13, Spain's regional government of Andalusia said 12 out of 19 people suffering from meningitis in the southern province of Seville have tested positive for Nile fever, with the remaining seven samples still pending results. Greece has reported 10 cases of Nile fever and one death so far this summer.
2020 Aug 21, Spain reported that the death toll in an outbreak of West Nile virus in the southern region of Andalusia has risen to two, after an 85-year old woman died in hospital.
2020 Aug 25, The Africa Regional Certification Commission announced that Africa has been declared free from wild polio. The disease is now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
2020 Aug 25, The Democratic Republic of Congo said it has ended the world's largest measles outbreak that has killed more than 7,000 children since it was declared 14 months ago.
2020 Aug 31, The WHO warned that the risk of further spread of the vaccine-derived polio across central Africa and the Horn of Africa was "high," noting the large-scale population movements in the region. A new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad. More than a dozen African countries are currently battling outbreaks of polio caused by the virus, including Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Zambia. Last week the UN health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus.
2020 Sep 2, It was reported that Congo is seeing an upsurge in cases of the plague, as the vast Central African nation also battles outbreaks of COVID-19 and Ebola. Since June, Congo has recorded at least 65 cases of the plague, including at least 10 deaths, in the eastern Ituri province.
2020 Sep 10, The east German state of Brandenburg, where a case of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed in a wild boar, said it will impose a 15-km quarantine zone around the area where the case was discovered. The German farmers' association DBV called for a corridor free of wild boar to be created along Germany's border with Poland.
2020 Sep 11, Japan suspended imports of pork and live pigs from Germany after a case of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed in a wild boar in eastern Germany.
2020 Sep 17, The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said it had ramped up nighttime aerial anti-mosquito spraying in high-risk areas of western Michigan after announcing it suspects that 28 horses and one human have contracted Eastern equine encephalitis in 11 counties in the state.
2020 Sep 17, Germany's federal agriculture ministry said one more case of African swine fever (ASF) has been confirmed in a wild boar in the eastern German state of Brandenburg.
2020 Sep 18, Germany's federal agriculture ministry confirmed another six cases of African swine fever (ASF) in wild boars in the eastern state of Brandenburg.
2020 Sep 21, Wildlife officials said a total of 330 elephants in Botswana are now known to have died from ingesting cyanobacteria, a toxic bacteria which can occur naturally in standing water and sometimes grow into large blooms known as blue-green algae.
2020 Sep 25, The eastern German state of Brandenburg confirmed another two cases of African swine fever (ASF) in wild boars. The new discoveries bring total confirmed cases to 34 since the first one on Sept. 10, all in wild animals, with no farm pigs affected.
2020 Sep 26, The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality lifted a water quality warning for all but one Houston-area community. Lake Jackson remained under warning of possible contamination of its water supply by Naegleria fowleri, a deadly brain-eating microbe. The brain-eating amoeba detected in the water supply led to the death of a boy (6) earlier this month.
(SSFC, 9/27/20, p.A10)(Reuters, 9/28/20)
2020 Sep 28, Germany confirmed one more case of African swine fever (ASF) in a wild boar in the eastern state of Brandenburg. There have been 36 confirmed cases since the first one on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 1, In Germany two more cases of African swine fever (ASF) have been confirmed in wild boars in the eastern state of Brandenburg. The new discoveries bring the total number of confirmed cases to 40 since the first one on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 5, Germany's federal agriculture ministry confirmed three more cases of African swine fever (ASF) in wild boars in the eastern state of Brandenburg.
2020 Oct 8, Germany reported three more cases of African swine fever (ASF) in wild boar the eastern state of Brandenburg. The new discoveries bring the total number of confirmed cases to 53 since the first one on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 9, China's agriculture ministry confirmed African Swine Fever in piglets illegally transported to the southwestern city of Chongqing, the first reported outbreak since July 25.
2020 Oct 14, Germany confirmed four more cases of African swine fever (ASF) in wild boar in the eastern state of Brandenburg. The new discoveries bring the total number of confirmed cases to 69 since the first on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 16, Germany said one more case of African swine fever (ASF) has been found in the wild boar population in Brandenburg. That brings the number of confirmed cases to 70 since the first on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 20, Germany's federal agriculture ministry said one more case of African swine fever (ASF) has been confirmed in a wild boar in the eastern region of Brandenburg. This brings the total number of confirmed cases to 71 since the first one on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 21, Germany's agriculture ministry said nine more cases of African swine fever (ASF) have been confirmed in wild boars in the eastern region of Brandenburg.
2020 Oct 22, Russia's agriculture safety watchdog said it had found traces of African swine fever in pork products in several regions earlier this year, urging producers to step up controls and make sure they don't use ill or infected pigs for production.
2020 Oct 23, Germany's federal agriculture ministry said five more cases of African swine fever have been confirmed in wild boars in the eastern region of Brandenburg. The new discoveries bring the total number of confirmed cases to 91 since the first one on Sept. 10.
2020 Oct 23, Dutch poultry farmers were keeping their birds indoors to comply with a government order after a highly contagious form of the H5N8 bird flu was found in two dead swans this week.
2020 Oct 27, Peru reported its first case of diphtheria after 20 years following warnings by international health organizations that the coronavirus pandemic would hamper routine vaccination programs, particularly for children.
2020 Oct 29, The Dutch government said animal health authorities will cull 35,700 broiler chickens after a highly contagious strain of bird flu was found on a farm in the central Netherlands. The discovery came just days after a pair of wild swans tested positive for the H5N8 virus.
2020 Oct 31, In Germany a first case of African swine fever (ASF) was reported found in a wild boar in the eastern region of Saxony. This brought the total number of confirmed cases to 117 since the first one on Sept. 10.
2020 Nov 2, Britain said it confirmed H5N8 bird flu at a chicken farm near Frodsham in Cheshire, England, but said the risk to public safety from the virus was "very low."
2020 Nov 4, Government officials said Japan's Kagawa prefecture will cull 330,000 chickens at a farm after the country's first bird flu outbreak in poultry in more than two years.
2020 Nov 5, It was reported that more than 6,000 people in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province in northwest China, have tested positive for a bacterial disease called brucellosis, in an outbreak caused by a leak at a vaccine plant over a year ago. A factory had used expired disinfectants during July to August 2019 to manufacture brucellosis vaccines, leaving the bacteria in its polluted waste gas. Humans get brucellosis with flu-like symptoms through direct contact with infected animals, by eating or drinking contaminated animal products, or by inhaling airborne agents.
2020 Nov 5, It was reported that bird flu of the type H5N8 has been found on a poultry farm in Germany's northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, after it has already spread among the wild bird population in the region.
2020 Nov 5, The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture ordered the culling of 200,000 chickens after highly pathogenic bird flu was found at a farm in the eastern town of Puiflijk.
2020 Ghana officially registered only about 25% of total deaths. Tuberculosis in Ghana kills over 15,000 people per year, accounting for about 5% of the country's deaths.
(Econ., 5/9/20, p.34)(Econ., 9/19/20, p.46)
End of file

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl