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Bioengineered bird flu souped up via gain-of-function lab work could be developed in a shockingly short period of time, former CDC Director Robert Redfield told News Nation recently: I think it puts our world at great risk. We have the risk of natural spillover, but there is a species barrier. I’m obviously most worried about bird flu. Right now, it takes five amino acid change for it to be effectively infecting humans. That’s a pretty heavy species barrier but this virus is already now in 26 mammal species, as you saw most recently in cattle. But in the laboratory, I...

A dog in Paris has caught monkeypox after sharing the bed with its gay owners who were infected with the disease. The two Parisians developed symptoms at the beginning of June before they developed the lesions showing a monkeypox infection. The two men aged 44 and 27, who live together in a non-monogamous relationship, developed sores a week after having sex with other men. … Their Italian greyhound had also developed ulcerations and pustules on its stomach. A PCR test confirmed the canine had also come down with monkeypox, confirming the first case of a domestic pet contracting the virus....

Squirrel breeding is a real job—and apparently a very dangerous one if you're dealing with the wrong kind of squirrel. After the mysterious deaths of three German men who all worked as breeders of variegated squirrels—a kind of squirrel native to Central America that's sometimes kept as an exotic pet—researchers have identified a new virus that had apparently jumped from the squirrels to the men, LiveScience reports. The men, who were in their 60s and regularly socialized together, died between 2011 and 2013 from inflammation of the brain, and researchers say at least two of them had been scratched or...

For Immediate ReleaseTuesday, October 5, 2021Office of Press Relationspress@usaid.govToday, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is launching an ambitious new project that will work with partner countries and the global community to build better preparedness for future global health threats. Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens - Viral Zoonoses (DEEP VZN), a five-year, approximately $125 million project (pending availability of funds), will strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people’s lives and...

The French government has been notably restrained in their criticism of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for unleashing a pandemic upon the world.  One possible reason for their reticence is a single, highly embarrassing fact: They essentially built the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s P4 lab in which the coronavirus now sweeping the world was being researched, and from which it escaped.  That the French delivered the turn-key, high-containment biolab to China has long been public knowledge, but now a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has added riveting details to the story.  The insider information comes from interviews with French...

SHOULD WE BE READY FOR THE REEMERGENCE OF SARS? Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination (375), which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored. SARS-CoV is highly capable of jumping interspecies barriers and is an excellent candidate as an emerging or reemerging pathogen.