SNAPDATE: Ebola virus disease numbers to 24MAY2018
The latest numbers from the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are in. They show a small rise in cases and in confirmed infections. This week Read More …
Author: Ian M Mackay, PhD (EIC)
HTLV-1 in Australia: Don’t test, don’t find, can’t understand
UPDATES: #1 The presence of HTLV-1 in Australian Aboriginal people is not new and it has not been hidden from those best suited to do something constructive to contain its Read More …
What’s new Influ2day…?
Annoying things I read in the Australian online news media today… Not too late to get the flu shot. No. It sure isn’t. I was…surprised to read this since the flu Read More …
Mapping Ebola in the hobbyist zone…
One of the most important parts of an early understanding of the risks attached to an infectious disease outbreak is knowing where it is. Which country? What part of the Read More …
New Ebola virus disease case confirmed in a third DRC health zone
UPDATEÂ #1 The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Ministry of Health (MOH) today announced that 1 of 2 suspected EVD cases in the Wangata Health Zone has tested positive for Read More …
Human T-Lymphotropic Virus type 1 (HTLV-1): a primer
What is HTLV-1? HTLV-1 is a human delta retrovirus assigned to the genus Deltaretrovirus, species Primate T-lymphotropic virus 1 [5]. It was first described in 1980.[10] Soon thereafter Japanese researchers identified endemic virus, Read More …
SNAPDATE: Ebola virus numbers
Ebola virus disease (EVD) case numbers are very mobile at this stage. But working with what we have, we can see from the graph below that there has been a Read More …
Ebola numbers rise a little…
According to a new Situation Report from the World Health Organisation,[6] the case numbers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo outbreak are now…. Total suspected+probable+confirmed: 39 This includes: 2 Read More …
Early in an outbreak, everything is questions…
Nothing is clear during the early days of an outbreak of Ebola virus. Nothing is usually clear in the early days of an outbreak of any infectious disease. Numbers, the source of Read More …
Ebola virus: wild and domestic animals, plants and insects…
IMPORTED POST* Initial Ebola virus (EBOV) infection of humans is a rare zoonotic spillover event. Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti and Myonycteris torquatebats, all fruit-eating megabats of the family Pteropodidae, are considered to be important reservoir hosts, Read More …
Zooming in on the latest Ebola virus disease (EVD) hotzone…
UPDATE #1., #2 The image to the side is freely available to download from here or from figshare (CC BT 4.0 license and a DOI) alongside with yesterday’s images gets us a little Read More …
Behind the naming of an ebolavirus…
What’s in an ebolavirus name? IMPORTED POST* Virus taxonomy is the classification of viruses into groups based on similarities. Today classification is supported by viral gene and genome sequence information. Read More …
Ebola virus disease outbreak in the DRC
UPDATE #1, #2 The World Health Organization has reported that the Democratic Republic of the Congo (f. Zaire) has declared a new outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD). The announcement follows laboratory Read More …
A pile of TWADALs…
IMPORTED POST* During my time engaging with a gaggle of hardcore vaccine denialists, I developed a term and acronym…TWADAL TWADAL stands for “Those Who Are Decided Against Learning“. It came Read More …
Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)…a primer for virus detection
The reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is a cyclical enzyme-driven amplification technique for copying a chain of DNA into billions of new copies. IMPORTED POST* What it does well The Read More …