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A Canadian military officer who fears he was at the 'Ground Zero' of Covid two months before China officially acknowledged the virus has demanded an investigation into the suspicious outbreak of illness there. The long-serving officer, who cannot be named as he is still in the forces, was among the scores of athletes who fell sick with a debilitating illness after attending the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019. He said foreign competitors found the city of 11 million people 'like a ghost town', and so many cases of a mysterious virus afflicted the Canadian team that a...

Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York found people who have higher levels of certain acids on their skin are 100 times more attractive to the female Aedes aegypti, the type of mosquito responsible for spreading diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika. The findings, published Tuesday in the journal Cell, could lead to new products that could mask or alter certain human odors, making it harder for mosquitoes to find human blood and potentially curbing the spread of disease. SNIP Experts have found people seem to become more attractive to mosquitoes when they're pregnant or after they've...

A new outbreak of Zika virus is quite possible, warn researchers, with a single mutation potentially enough to trigger an explosive spread. The disease caused a global medical emergency in 2016, with thousands of babies born brain-damaged after their mums became infected while pregnant. US scientists say the world should be on the lookout for new mutations.Lab work, described in the journal Cell Reports, suggests the virus could easily shift, creating new variants.Recent infection studies suggest those variants may prove effective at transmitting the virus, even in countries which have built up immunity from previous outbreaks of Zika, say the...

Californians may not know it on sight, but there’s going to be something different about their mosquitoes this summer. An invasive species of the bite-prone insects has been genetically modified in an attempt at controlling disease spread. According to Smithsonian, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved plans by biotech firm Oxitec to release 2.4 billion male Aedes aegypti mosquitos in both California and Florida that have been altered so their genes can only participate in producing surviving male offspring. (Females will die before reaching adulthood.) The insects will be introduced as eggs, which will then hatch when exposed to...

The biotech firm Oxitec has released its genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys, with the goal of suppressing wild, disease-carrying mosquito populations in the region. This is the first time genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in the US. Oxitec previously released its modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Panama, and Malaysia, and the company reported that local A. aegypti populations fell by at least 90 percent in those locations, Live Science previously reported. A. aegypti can carry diseases such as Zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever, and releasing modified mosquitoes offers a way to control...

Latest Zika Info Lacking Balance Zika Panic Careened Out of Control Microcephaly Was Likely Caused by Broad Use of a Chemical Pesticice, Pyriproxyfen, in Drinking Water, a "Larvicide" Summary: Nobody should be careless about getting Zika. But allowing a panic to deflect attention from the most important issues is no help either.These are Microcephaly Kids. Disclaimer: Their Moms probably didn’t have Zika.As you can see, they’re terrific people. I want to be with them.If God were to send me one, I would probably learn to “wag more, bark less” from them.The most highly regarded American reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, reports that...

In the 1950s and '60s as scientists began to obtain high resolution images of viruses, they discovered the detailed structure of the capsid—an outer protective layer composed of multiple copies of the same protein—which protects the virus' genetic material. The majority of viruses have capsids that are typically quasi-spherical and display icosahedral symmetry—like a 20-sided dice for instance. The capsid shell is what protects them, and as scientists discovered their structure, they proposed that capsids could have different sizes and hold different amounts of genome, and therefore could infect hosts differently. [M]any viruses have essentially been misclassified for 60 years,...

As Zika virus raced through the Americas and the Caribbean in 2015 and 2016, it infected an estimated 800,000 people and left nearly 4000 newborns with serious brain damage. But by mid-2017, the virus had all but disappeared from the region—or so it seemed. A new analysis of Zika-infected travelers who returned to the United States or Europe in 2017 or 2018 has found that 98% had visited Cuba, which did not report any cases to world health officials at the time the country’s outbreak apparently peaked. “It was startling,” says Kristian Andersen, a genomic epidemiologist at Scripps Research in...

The Zika scare of 2016 could lead to a yellow fever panic this year if South Florida residents let down their guard when it comes to protecting themselves from disease-carrying mosquitoes. There hasn’t been a yellow fever outbreak in the United States in more than 100 years, but state health officials are concerned that a large outbreak in Brazil and others in South and Central America could lead to infected travelers bringing the disease to South Florida, which has the right mosquitoes and climate for it to spread. The disease is deadlier than the Zika virus. Zika raised alarms because...

The number of Americans sickened each year by bites from infected mosquitoes, ticks or fleas tripled from 2004 through 2016, with infection rates spiking sharply in 2016 as a result of a Zika outbreak, U.S. health officials said on Tuesday. Infections in 2016 went up 73 percent from 2015, reflecting the emergence of Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause severe birth defects. Zika was the most common disease borne by ticks, mosquitoes and fleas reported in 2016, with 41,680 cases reported, followed by Lyme disease, with 36,429 cases, almost double the number in 2004.

"The Zika Virus Grew Deadlier With a Small Mutation, Study Suggests The mutation, called S139N, first arose in an Asian strain of the Zika virus in 2013, just before a small outbreak in French Polynesia — the first linked to an increase in babies born with microcephaly. The researchers noted that strains of the virus without the S139N mutation caused some mice to develop mild microcephaly, meaning that the mutation, which occurs on a protein involved in making the virus’s protective coating, is likely only a piece of the puzzle. “That was a surprise to us, that it was just...

Mosquito bites are bothersome enough, but when you consider risks, like getting sick with Zika, dengue, or chikungunya, it’s important that you choose an insect repellent that works well and that you feel comfortable regularly using. Protect yourself when traveling: Learn about country-specific travel advice, health risks, and how to stay safe by visiting CDC Travelers’ Health website. Use insect repellent: Use an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellent with one of the following active ingredients. When used as directed, EPA-registered insect repellents are proven safe and effective, even for pregnant and breastfeeding women.DEETPicaridin, also known as KBR 3023, Bayrepel,...

Estimated range of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus in the United States, 2017* Prevention of mosquito bites is the best defense. Geographically, the 75% of the range includes approximately 85% of the U.S. population. CDC has updated the estimated range maps for Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus mosquitoes by using a model that predicts possible geographic ranges for these mosquitoes in the contiguous United States. The model used county-level records, historical records, and suitable climate variables to predict the likelihood (very low, low, moderate, or high) that these mosquitoes could survive and reproduce if introduced to an area during the...

"We take a virus, learn how it works and then we leverage it," said Dr. Michael Diamond, a professor of molecular microbiology, pathology and immunology. "Let's take advantage of what it's good at, use it to eradicate cells we don't want. Take viruses that would normally do some damage and make them do some good." Researcher Zhe Zhu thought that glioblastoma stem cells, which stubbornly resist chemotherapy and radiation to regrow in most patients, looked a lot like the stem cells in a fast growing fetal brain. Since the Zika virus kills those fetal cells, maybe it would do the...

NEW DELHI (AP) -- India has reported three cases of the Zika virus for the first time, including two pregnant women who delivered healthy babies. Health Ministry officials said Sunday that the three patients in western Gujarat state had recovered. "There is no need to panic," Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, a top health ministry official, told reporters. The World Health Organization said in a statement released Friday that the three cases that India reported to the WHO on May 15 were detected through routine blood surveillance in a hospital in Ahmadabad, Gujarat's capital. Two cases were detected in February and November...

Donald J. Trump told the American people during his presidential campaign, “This country is being drained of its jobs and its money because we have stupid people making bad deals.” He promised to make better deals, ones in which we would win so much we “may even get tired of winning.” Now his administration, through the Army, is on the brink of making a bad deal, giving a French pharmaceutical company, Sanofi, the exclusive license to patents and thus a monopoly to sell a vaccine against the Zika virus. If Mr. Trump allows this deal, Sanofi will be able to...

The mosquito-borne Zika virus doesn’t only lead to birth defects, it could also lead to fertility problems in males. Well, in male mice, at least. A Yale University study found the virus reduced the size of testes — a condition known as testicular atrophy — in infected mice for up to 21 days. This can allow for sexual transmission of the virus and may impair male fertility. This builds on information that’s already known about how Zika affects sperm, said Ryuta Uraki, the study’s first author and a postdoctoral associate at the Yale School of Medicine. The team of researchers...

District health officials mishandled Zika testing for hundreds of residents last year, including two pregnant women who were incorrectly told they did not have the virus when in fact they were infected. The mistakes, made public Thursday by city officials, have prompted retesting for the Zika virus of specimens from more than 400 people, including nearly 300 pregnant women who may have mistakenly been told they didn’t have the mosquito-borne viral infection. ... Smith said she could not say if those women or any of the others whose tests were botched have given birth.

About 40 potential vaccines for the Zika virus are being tested, but none are likely to be available for women of childbearing age before 2020, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. WHO director Margaret Chan said the virus, linked to deformations in babies’ heads and brains, remained “firmly entrenched” in large parts of the world. Although progress toward effective prevention has been made, with some drugs now in clinical trials, “a vaccine judged safe enough for use in women of childbearing age may not be fully licensed before 2020,” Chan said. …