There are currently 108 confirmed cases of MERS-CoV infection in South Korea, with 9 deaths. The youngest person that has died to date is a 57-year-old woman hospitalised at St. Mary’s Hospital at Pyeongtaek, whereas the eldest is an 82-year-old man at Kon Yang University Hospital. Transmission has been reported at a 7th healthcare institution […]
As of early this morning (presumably including cases up to Sunday 7th June), there are now 87 cases of MERS-CoV infection in South Korea, with 6 deaths. The updated list of cases is at the Flutrackers forum here. There is also a list of 24 hospitals that is managing or had been visited by patients with MERS, […]
The MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea has expanded to 50 cases with 4 deaths as of 5th June 2015. I have not included a transmission tree this time as the details of 7 of the 9 cases reported yesterday are not available. The Ministry of Health Singapore had announced on 3rd June 2015 that patients […]
Other than the WHO statements, there are a number of English websites tracking the South Korean MERS-CoV outbreak, the most updated ones being Avian Flu Diary and the Flutrackers forum. CIDRAP also provides fairly detailed coverage. The case count is now apparently at 35 (as of 3rd June 2015) with 2 deaths, and I have […]
The evolving outbreak of the Middle-East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in South Korea is the largest to date outside the Middle Eastern countries, involving 12 persons to date (including one that had – ignoring the advice of South Korean health officials – flown to Hong Kong on 26th May and then to Huizhou via Shenzhen […]
Measles has been in the news (even in the Straits Times) lately, because of the U.S. outbreak that originated from Disneyland in California. To briefly recap, at least 40 visitors/workers at Disneyland, California were exposed to measles in December last year and have developed the disease. The index case (or cases) has not been identified, […]
I have not commented on the Ebola epidemic for a while. But things are finally looking up. The number of new cases reported each week has continued to fall in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, while Mali has now been declared free of Ebola after 42 days without a new case of Ebola reported. The […]
For the week ending 3rd January 2015, influenza activity in the US remained above epidemic levels, defined by the pneumonia and influenza mortality surveillance that was above the epidemic threshold of 6.9% for that week. The laboratory confirmed influenza hospitalisation rates have also gone up in all age groups, alarmingly so for those who are […]
A new year has begun. What were the major infectious diseases events of the past year? The following two are my personal picks, reflecting on what I have read or experienced in 2014: Ebola outbreak in West Africa. This is the Ebola outbreak that dwarfs all previous outbreaks combined, and is still ongoing in Sierra […]
The Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) journal – flagship journal of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) – has just published online a letter describing the outbreak of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) among patrons of several LAN gaming centers in Singapore in 2012 (COI: I was involved at the laboratory end of investigations and am an […]
MIPHIDIC 