In a stark and urgent COVID-19 risk assessment update today, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said that, in a few weeks or even days, other countries in the region may face huge surges that mirror those of China and Italy. It advised countries to quickly shift to mitigation strategies to protect vulnerable people [...]
A basic reproduction number, R0, of about 2 was estimated for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, China, early in the outbreak. However, this value only captures the average dynamics of transmission; a crucial question for control is whether specific situations and settings might be driving the outbreak. The secondary attack rate [...]
Abstract Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra (Ultra) detects Mycobacterium tuberculosis and rifampicin resistance. Follow-on drug susceptibility testing (DST) requires additional sputum. Extract from the diamond-shaped chamber of the cartridge (dCE) of Ultra’s predecessor, Xpert MTB/RIF (Xpert), is useful for MTBDRsl-based DST but this is unexplored with Ultra. Furthermore, whether CE from non-diamond compartments is useful, the performance of FluoroType MTBDR [...]
Abstract It is relevant to evaluate MDR-tuberculosis in prisons and its impact on the global epidemiology of this disease. However, systematic molecular epidemiology programs in prisons are lacking. A health-screening program performed on arrival for inmates transferred from Peruvian prisons to Spain led to the diagnosis of five MDR-TB cases from one of the biggest [...]
Abstract Background Xpert MTB/RIF (Xpert) is an automated molecular test recommended by World Health Organization (WHO) for diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). This study evaluated the effect of Xpert implementation on the detection of pulmonary TB (PTB) and rifampicin-resistant TB (RR-TB) cases in Shanghai, China. Methods Xpert was routinely implemented in 2018 for all presumptive PTB [...]
Abstract Background Atypical Beijing genotype Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains are widespread in South Africa and have acquired resistance to up to 13 drugs on multiple occasions. It is puzzling that these strains have retained fitness and transmissibility despite the potential fitness cost associated with drug resistance mutations. Methods We conducted Illumina sequencing of 211 Beijing genotype M. tuberculosis isolates to [...]
Dr. Brosseau is a national expert on respiratory protection and infectious diseases and professor (retired), University of Illinois at Chicago. Many experts in public health have, for very good reason, voiced frustration at the lack of science-based information they read regarding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is compounded by sometimes conflicting recommendations by the World [...]
In a coronavirus briefing today at the White House President Trump warned that the COVID-19 outbreak could last until July or August, and said the virus was “really bad,” a noted change in tone from the president’s earlier remarks on the virus. “We’re announcing new guidelines for every American to follow over the next 15 [...]
France today became the third European country to go on lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, while in Spain, the number of new cases nudged the country ahead of South Korea as the world’s fourth hardest-hit country. Other European countries saw no let-up in cases, and more African countries detected their first cases. With [...]
Hospital systems everywhere should activate emergency intensive care unit (ICU) networks and reserve beds to prepare for a “massive” increase in COVID-19 patients, doctors in hard-hit Lombardy, Italy, said in a commentary published on Mar 13 in JAMA. The Milan-based authors used data gathered since Mar 7 to create linear and exponential models to project regional ICU demand [...]
