The first human parechoviruses (HPeVs) were initially called Human echovirus 22 (HPeV-1) and Human echovirus 23 (HPeV-2).[11,12] These guys were discovered in the summer of 1956, but they weren’t officially Read More …
Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) was first described by van den Hoogen et al in 2001.[1] It had been isolated from young children with respiratory tract disease, and studies of old serum samples found that Read More …
The very steep rises in Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases seen in the graph below are not due to overwhelming numbers of new exposures to infected camels. Those upwards inclines Read More …
No new cases reported in 8 days and the most recent known date of illness onset now 10 days ago, are good indications that the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus Read More …
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR, described here) works mainly because of two components – a heat-stable DNA polymerase enzyme (adds new nucleotides to a chain of nucleotides) and a pair Read More …
This builds on my smaller page of MERS-CoV themed wannabe memes found here. These were all made by me but feel free to use if they suit a purpose (a link/reference Read More …
For an organism or a virus, to grow or replicate, it must make new pieces of itself and assemble those pieces into something functional. Let’s take a short walk through Read More …
More than 100 serologically distinct types (serotypes) and another 50 or more genotypically defined and distinct types (genotypes) of human rhinovirus (RV; Greek rhin = nose) exist within the genus Enterovirus. Read More …
To make it a little easier for me to keep up, I thought an index of  my key posts – some of which address your most pressing concerns about Ebola virus, ebolaviruses Read More …
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This is a static page – the internet address won’t change, just the charts as I add new numbers and update them. The page will present Middle East respiratory syndrome Read More …
Maia Majumder has posted a nice, concise comment on her blog. In her latest post [1], she notes that we shouldn’t be too surprised that the number of Ebola virus disease (EVD) cases Read More …
A list of the viruses we can and do detect in the (mostly upper) human respiratory tract. The standard testing panel/diagnostic menu comprises the influenza A and B viruses, parainfluenza Read More …
With HPeV infections generally around during summer (see specific earlier story arising from cases in babies from New South Wales), it’s well worth mirroring the advice from NSW health on parechovirus Read More …
The parechoviruses (HPeVs; par -echo-virus) don’t make the headlines too often. I’m not sure why, but I expect it is mostly because they are (a) not frequently sought and (b) not frequently found. That Read More …