Category Archives: Infectious Diseases

Coronavirus outbreak: China promises tougher crackdown to stop spread – as it happened

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Officials announce new measures to contain disease, including wildlife trade ban and bus suspensions, as confirmed death toll reaches 56

Jonathan Ashworth, the UK’s shadow health secretary, urged the government to reassure the public it is sufficiently prepared as the NHS is already struggling in the flu season.

He told the Guardian:

The NHS is currently under immense strain this winter with staff already working flat out and hospitals overcrowded. We need urgent reassurance from ministers they have a plan to ensure we have capacity in place to deal with Coronavirus should we need to,

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French cases show coronavirus has reached Europe

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Three cases have been discovered, two of them from the same family

France has identified three cases of the deadly new coronavirus from China, the first cases in Europe.

Two of the cases were announced by the health minister, Agnès Buzyn, on Friday evening. She said that both of those affected had travelled to China.

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Coronavirus: death toll reaches 41 in China with first cases in Europe

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Public transport suspended in at least 13 cities in China as death toll rises and France identifies Europe’s first cases

China has expanded an unprecedented lockdown during the country’s most important holiday to 13 cities and at least 36 million people, as efforts to contain the deadly new coronavirus were stepped up around the world and the first cases were reported in Europe.

Restrictions on movement were widened on Friday in China in an effort to stop the spread of the disease. Late on Friday, authorities confirmed a further 15 deaths and 180 new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of fatalities to 41 people and more than 1,000 affected.

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China steps up coronavirus clampdown as chaos hits hospitals – video

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After preventing travel from Wuhan, China has locked down several more cities as it attempts to contain the deadly coronavirus. Footage online reveals the quarantine measures the country is taking to prevent the spread

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Wuhan in lockdown as residents barred from leaving Chinese city stricken by coronavirus – video

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Authorities have shut down public transport and airports to prevent Wuhan's 11 million residents from leaving the city as they look to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Police have been seen patrolling railway stations and setting up roadblocks

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Coronavirus: China bars 11m residents from leaving city at centre of outbreak

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Government unveils new countermeasures as country prepares for lunar new year and death toll doubles to 17

Chinese authorities have suspended all outbound transport from Wuhan, the city at the centre of an outbreak of the mysterious Sars-like coronavirus, which has so far killed 17 people.

Bus, subway, ferry and long-distance passenger transportation networks from the city were suspended from 10am local time on Thursday, state media reported. The city’s airport and train stations were also closed to outgoing passengers.

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The Guardian view on the new coronavirus: be alert, not afraid | Editorial

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An outbreak of a pneumonia-causing virus in China is creating alarm. It is sensible to be concerned, but an overreaction would be a mistake

Every so often, our vague awareness of our vulnerability as a species crystallises around a specific threat. At first, we note with unconcern a handful of cases of a new illness, somewhere far away. Soon it begins to spread. The deaths mount. We start to wonder whether we are being complacent rather than sensible, and whether we are living through the early montage in a disaster movie, in which families bicker over breakfast as news reports on the killer virus play unnoticed in the background. Could this be a new pandemic which will sweep the globe killing tens of millions, as Spanish flu once did?

The story of the new coronavirus, first reported in Wuhan, China, last month, now seems to be reaching the point where public indifference tips into worry and even fear. It causes pneumonia; Beijing says six people have died and 300 have been infected as it has spread. On Monday, officials confirmed that there was human-to-human transmission. Sales of face masks have soared. Cases have been reported in Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and elsewhere, though all confirmed incidents involve patients who had been in China. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization will hold an emergency meeting.

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Coronavirus: Australia to screen passengers on flights from China for potentially fatal illness

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Sars-like virus can be transmitted by human contact and has infected more than 200 and killed three

Australia will begin screening passengers on high-risk flights from China for signs of a new Sars-like coronavirus following confirmation from the Chinese health authorities that the virus has begun spreading from human to human.

The outbreak was first reported in Wuhan City in China on New Year’s Eve and tied to a seafood market, but officials have since confirmed that it has spread to other humans who had not frequented the market, as well as to health workers.

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China confirms human-to-human transmission of coronavirus

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Authorities on alert ahead of lunar new year holiday as 139 new cases of strain detected

China’s National Health Commission has confirmed human-to-human transmission of a mysterious Sars-like virus that has spread across the country and fuelled anxiety about the prospect of a major outbreak as millions begin travelling for lunar new year celebrations.

Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and head of the health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected, China’s official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

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Coronavirus: China reports 17 new cases of Sars-like mystery virus

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Three of the new cases are severe, with experts worried about the disease’s spread ahead of lunar new year

China reported 17 new cases of the mysterious Sars-like virus on Sunday, including three in a severe condition, heightening fears ahead of China’s lunar new year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people move around the country.

The new coronavirus strain has caused alarm because of its connection to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-03.

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China’s Sars-like illness worries health experts

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China’s viral pneumonia outbreak may have jumped species barrier, raising fears of pandemic

The finding that the outbreak of viral pneumonia in China that has struck 59 people may be caused by a coronavirus, the family of viruses behind Sars, which spread to 37 countries in 2003, causing global panic and killing more than 750 people, means that health authorities will be watching closely.

China says the illness is not Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome), nor Mers (Middle East respiratory syndrome), both of which are caused by coronaviruses, and so far it appears milder than both. Unlike Sars, it does not appear to spread easily between humans and unlike Mers, which has a mortality rate of about 35%, nobody has died.

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Mystery illness in Chinese city not Sars, say authorities

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Fears of new epidemic after people taken to hospital in Wuhan with viral pneumonia

A mysterious respiratory illness that has infected dozens of people in a central Chinese city is not Sars, local authorities have said.

The 2002-03 epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome started in southern China and killed more than 700 people. Fears of a recurrence arose this month after a number of people were taken to hospital with unexplained viral pneumonia in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.

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Asia’s hardest year for dengue fever – in pictures

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More than a million cases were reported in south-east Asia last year with poorer households most at risk

The global toll of dengue fever is becoming well known, with rising temperatures contributing to severe outbreaks that made 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.

In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390m infections each year

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Spike in Ebola cases alarms health officials in DRC

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Many cases blamed on a single individual who appears to have caught virus for second time

Health officials are investigating an alarming spike in Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with many blamed on a single individual who appears to have contracted the disease for a second time this year.

Amid the struggle to bring the 16-month outbreak under control, the World Health Organization noted an almost 300% increase in cases in the last three weeks, with 17 of 27 linked to a single chain of transmission.

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Samoa measles crisis: 100 new cases as anti-vaccination activist charged

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Nation lifts two-day curfew amid rise in mandatory vaccinations and arrest of ‘anti-vaxxer’

Samoa has said nearly 90% of eligible people have been vaccinated against measles as it lifted a two-day curfew imposed amid an outbreak that has killed 65 in recent weeks.

There were, however, 103 new cases of measles reported since Friday, Samoa’s health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

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Mosquitoes bring ‘mystery illness’ to the mountain villages of Nepal

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Rising temperatures linked to outbreaks of dengue fever high in the Kathmandu Valley, experts say

•Global heating behind record number of cases of the disease

Lilawati Awasthi is used to the risks that come from living in a remote mountainous district in the far west of Nepal. Floods, landslides and treacherous roads are a part of daily life. But this year she faced a new hazard: mosquitoes carrying a mystery illness.

When she began to feel sick in September she was not overly concerned at first. “I thought it was a simple fever, but it wouldn’t go away,” says the 50-year-old. “We went to the hospital and it turned out I was suffering from dengue.”

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Global heating driving spread of mosquito-borne dengue fever

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Record numbers across Asia and Americas infected as rising temperatures extend disease to places once seen as safe

Rising temperatures across Asia and the Americas have contributed to multiple severe outbreaks of dengue fever globally over the past six months, making 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.

In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390 million infections each year.

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‘There are no words’: Samoa buries its children as measles outbreak worsens

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In six weeks, a measles outbreak has infected 3,000 people out of a population of 200,000, killing 42, mostly children

Fa’aoso Tuivale sleeps on her children’s grave during the day, when she misses them most.

She and her husband, Tuivale Luamanuvae Puelua, are sitting on the newly-dried concrete that mark the graves of their three-year-old Itila and 13-month-old twins, Tamara and Sale, talking about the week that has passed since they buried them.

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Polio outbreaks in Africa caused by mutation of strain in vaccine

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New cases of highly infectious disease that should be ‘consigned to the history books’ reported in Nigeria, the DRC, CAR and Angola

New cases of polio linked to the oral vaccine have been reported in four African countries and more children are now being paralysed by vaccine-derived viruses than those infected by viruses in the wild, according to global health numbers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners identified nine new cases caused by the vaccine in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Angola last week. Along with seven other African countries with outbreaks, cases have also been reported in Asia. In Afghanistan and Pakistan polio remains endemic, and in Pakistan officials have been accused of covering up vaccine-related cases.

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Rabies breakthrough offers fresh hope in battle against deadly virus

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New research raises hopes of oral vaccine for dogs, the chief source of transmission to humans

Researchers have discovered a way to stop rabies from shutting down critical responses in the immune system, a breakthrough that could pave the way for new tools to fight the deadly disease.

Rabies kills almost 60,000 people each year, mostly affecting poor and rural communities.

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