Through a national surveillance system for unexplained pneumonia, a severe case of influenza A(H7N9) in a man in his mid-30s was identified in Zhejiang Province, China on 14 October 2013. Epidemiological and clinical findings were consistent with the patterns reported during the outbreak in spring 2013, and laboratory findings showed that the virus had 99.6% identity with earlier H7N9 viruses identified in humans in the spring except for five mutations in the NA gene.
Ebolavirus disease (EVD) outbreaks have been occurring sporadically in Central Africa since 1976. In 2014, the first outbreak in West Africa was reported in Guinea. Subsequent outbreaks then appeared in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The study of environmental factors underlying EVD epidemiology may provide useful insights into when and where EVD outbreaks are more likely to occur. In this paper, we aimed to investigate the association between climatic factors and onset of EVD outbreaks in humans. Our results suggest lower temperature and higher absolute humidity are associated with EVD outbreak onset in the previous EVD outbreaks in Africa during 1976 to 2014. Potential mechanisms through which climate may have an influence on ebolavirus infection in the natural host, intermediate hosts and humans are discussed. Current and future surveillance efforts should be supported to further understand ebolavirus transmission events between and within species.
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AbstractBackground: An outbreak of COVID-19 occurred on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in January and February 2020. We analysed information about cases to infer transmission dynamics and potential modes of transmission.
Methods:We collected the daily number of 197 symptomatic cases, and that of the 146 passenger cases in two categories, i.e. those who stayed and did not stay in the same stateroom. We retrieved the quarantine details and the ship's 14-day itinerary. We searched the websites of national/local health authority along the cruise routes and local news using Google for locally confirmed cases associated with the ship. We obtained the design of air conditioning and sewage treatment of the ship from literature. We back-calculated the dates of infection from the epidemic curve and compared with the start of on-board quarantine.
We read with interest the recent rapid communication by Stein-Zamir et al. analysing a major outbreak in an Israeli high school, which has been attributed to crowded conditions in classrooms and exemption from wearing face masks [1]. We would like to share our perspective from Hong Kong, where cases among school-aged children have been reported but did not lead to school outbreaks. August Secondary school cluster Case 4 and Case 9 had team sport activity together without wearing a face mask; Case 4 and Case 10 are classmates, and would have contact after school. Tutorial centre cluster Adult household member of Case 10 Case 15
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