Yesterday the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) diagnostic test kit for the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) that originated in Wuhan, China, paving the way for the CDC to distribute the tests, as officials confirmed Wisconsin’s first case. “This continues to be an [...]
Today both the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published initial clinical guidelines, which aim to help US healthcare providers identify and correctly handle suspected cases involving the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). 2019-nCoV was first identified in Wuhan, China, the country that continues to [...]
A paper published on 30 January in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) about the first four people in Germany infected with a novel coronavirus made many headlines because it seemed to confirm what public health experts feared: that someone who has no symptoms from infection with the virus, named 2019-nCoV, can still transmit it to others. That [...]
With the new coronavirus spreading from person to person (possibly including from people without symptoms), reaching four continents, and traveling faster than SARS, driving it out of existence is looking increasingly unlikely. It’s still possible that quarantines and travel bans will first halt the outbreak and then eradicate the microbe, and the world will never see 2019-nCoV again, as [...]
Most of the world’s supply of masks and respirators comes from China, and a supply chain gap poses a risk to everyday health care beyond the viral epidemic. It’s been less than two weeks since the Chinese government quarantined 35 million people in the city of Wuhan and surrounding regions to control the fast-spreading coronavirus, but the [...]
Abstract Through air inhalation, dust ingestion and dermal exposure, the indoor environment plays an important role in controlling human chemical exposure. Indoor emissions and chemistry can also have direct impacts on the quality of outdoor air. And so, it is important to have a strong fundamental knowledge of the chemical processes that occur in indoor [...]
Abstract Background Studies on various Gram-negative bacteria suggest that resistance to carbapenem antibiotics is responsible for increased mortality in patients; however, results are not conclusive. We first assessed the 28-day in-hospital all-cause mortality in patients with Verona Integron-encoded Metallo-β-lactamase-positive Pseudomonas aeruginosa (VIM-PA) bacteremia compared to patients with VIM-negative, carbapenem-susceptible P. aeruginosa (CS-PA) bacteremia. Second, we identified determinants for mortality [...]
ABSTRACT Aspergillus fumigatus is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that can cause life-threatening invasive lung infections in immunodeficient patients. The cellular and molecular processes of infection during onset, establishment, and progression of A. fumigatus infections are highly complex and depend on both fungal attributes and the immune status of the host. Therefore, preclinical animal models are of paramount importance [...]
Abstract Background Mass transit environments, such as subways, are uniquely important for transmission of microbes among humans and built environments, and for their ability to spread pathogens and impact large numbers of people. In order to gain a deeper understanding of microbiome dynamics in subways, we must identify variables that affect microbial composition and those [...]
One of the key questions in the fast-growing novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak has been the possibility that asymptomatic people transmit the virus to others, and German researchers yesterday who described a workplace illness cluster suggest that it probably played a role in virus spread. The report involves Germany’s first patient, whose illness was announced on [...]
