Octopus Overlords

Also, don't bite people (without consent).

Peru's embattled health minister announced her resignation late on Thursday during a speech in Congress, in the midst of a dengue outbreak already responsible for record-breaking deaths and infections.

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The death toll from the viral outbreak has risen to 248, while reported cases have surpassed 146,000, according to official data.

Over the past week, deaths are up 24%, as cases jumped by more than 12%.

The outbreak is likely to worsen as torrential rains from El Nino climate phenomenon lead to surging populations of mosquitoes, which transmit dengue.

South Africa's recent electricity woes - with regular lengthy scheduled blackouts - have had a knock-on effect on the supply of water.

"All of our stations, they need electricity, they need power. You have to pump water everywhere where it is needed," says Sipho Mosai, the head of state-owned Rand Water, one of the country's main water providers.
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The lack of electricity has exacerbated issues created by poorly maintained infrastructure, which has led to vast leaks as well as sewage problems, and a supply of water that cannot meet demand.
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This has also meant that sewage plants are not cleaning the water in the way that they should.
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In just a few weeks in Hammanskraal, a township outside Pretoria, 29 people were killed by cholera that had been found in the water supply there. The outbreak has been linked to substandard water purification practices.
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But not having clean drinking water is not unique to Hammanskraal - a recent report by the department of water affairs and sanitation found that of the 155 treatment systems sampled, 41% came back showing bad microbial water quality compliance.

The problem can be found across the country. In the Eastern Cape's quaint arts town of Makhanda, formerly known as Grahamstown, residents have for years been forced to contend with unsafe drinking water, with recurring bouts of E.coli contamination.

AT LEAST FOUR people in Florida and one in Texas have been diagnosed with malaria that they must have caught near where they live—because, according to health officials, none of them traveled outside the US or their own states. The very unusual discovery has left infectious disease specialists wondering: Who else might be ill, and will local doctors recognize what’s wrong?

Malaria isn’t completely unprecedented in the US: About 2,000 residents contract it every year, but almost always because they traveled to a place where it’s endemic, were bitten by an infected mosquito there, and fell ill once they came home. Locally acquired malaria is extremely rare. It arises from a chain of transmission that probably starts with a US mosquito biting a tourist, migrant, or refugee who has been in an endemic country and is carrying the infection in their blood. Then the insect passes it along by biting someone else. That hasn’t occurred in the US since 2003.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reducing funding to states for child vaccination programs, according to an agency email obtained by KFF Health News.

The funding cut “is a significant change to your budget,” said the email to immunization managers, dated June 27 and signed by two CDC officials.
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The immunization managers who received the message are public health officials who direct state, territorial, and local programs to promote vaccinations against a variety of infectious diseases, such as measles and chickenpox.

The reduction comes from a federal immunization grant — totaling about $680 million in the latest year — that supports vaccination programs for children, according to the Association of Immunization Managers.

“There will be no easy solution for this,” said the CDC email. “We know that this change will require some tough decisions.”

The Florida Department of Health has reported two more locally acquired cases of malaria in Sarasota County.

The two additional cases were reported the week of June 25 to July 1, according to a report released on Thursday. Sarasota County’s total is now at six locally acquired cases.

Malaria is transmitted through infected mosquitoes. Both Sarasota and Manatee counties have been under a mosquito-borne illness alert since June 19.

Residents throughout the state should take precautions by applying bug spray, avoiding areas with high mosquito populations and wearing long pants and shirts when possible - especially during sunrise and sunset when mosquitos are most active.

Ontario's top doctor expects to see a growing number of cases of three types of tick-borne illness in the province, in addition to Lyme disease — a spread he says is directly linked to climate change.

A new regulation that takes effect this weekend requires health-care providers in Ontario to report cases of anaplasmosis, babesiosis and Powassan virus to their local medical officers of health.

There have been anecdotal reports and publications about the three illnesses being found in Ontario in recent years, but the province now needs to start formally tracking them, said Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore.

"We can now count and track when these illnesses are occurring, map it for a risk map and be able to inform the public when these diseases become more prevalent," he said in an interview.

"It's absolutely expected that we'll have greater incidence over the next several years because this is a known wave of infections that we've seen migrate up the coastline of northeast North America and anticipate them affecting Ontarians."

Those looking for a place to swim that isn't the equivalent to taking a dip in a public toilet should head to South Padre, the report said.
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In 2022, 55 of 61 Texas beaches tested by environmental regulators were found to be unsafe due to high levels of fecal contamination in the water on at least one occasion, according to Safe for Swimming?, an annual report issued by the Environment Texas Research and Policy Center.

Most of the contaminated beaches were located in the Corpus Christi and Galveston areas, according to the analysis.

To determine which beaches were awash with excrement, Environment Texas checked how often fecal bacteria levels at various beaches exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Beach Action Value,” associated with an estimated illness rate of 32 out of 1,000 swimmers.
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Those high contamination levels in ocean water are largely caused by polluted runoff — think cow poop flowing into streams and rivers following heavy rain — and by sewage overflows from aging waterworks. As of press time, both Houston and Corpus Christi are under federal decrees to upgrade their sewer systems due to thousands of clean water violations since 2016, according to the report.

The deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has crossed the species barrier to infect large numbers of domestic cats for the first time, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

On Monday the Geneva based health watchdog, which has been monitoring the spread of H5N1 around the world in recent months, said it had confirmed that 29 cats in Poland had tested positive for the virus.

“This is the first report of high numbers of cats infected with avian influenza A(H5N1) spread over a wide geographical area within any country”, said the WHO.

Fourteen cats are reported to have been euthanised, and a further 11 died.

“Some cats developed severe symptoms including difficulty in breathing, bloody diarrhoea, and neurological signs, with rapid deterioration and death in some cases.

“In total, 20 cats had neurological signs, 19 had respiratory signs, and 17 had both neurological and respiratory signs”.

The World Organisation for Animal Health said that the wide geographical distribution of cases suggests that the primary mode of spread in these cases is not cat-to-cat transmission but instead linked to a common source.

However, experts have also highlighted that the virus extracted from the cats in Poland exhibits two mutations that facilitate better transmission in mammals.

Media reports from Poland cite the director of the National Veterinary Institute in Puławy stating that, “they have detected two mutations that indicate that the A(H5N1) virus is evolving to multiply more easily in mammals”.

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Beyfortus (nirsevimab-alip) for the prevention of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) lower respiratory tract disease in neonates and infants born during or entering their first RSV season, and in children up to 24 months of age who remain vulnerable to severe RSV disease through their second RSV season.
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Beyfortus is a monoclonal antibody with activity against RSV. Monoclonal antibodies are laboratory-made proteins that mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off harmful pathogens such as viruses. One dose of Beyfortus, administered as a single intramuscular injection prior to or during RSV season, may provide protection during the RSV season.

stessier wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2023 5:47 pm They prescribed Amoxicillan for a cold??? Egads!

In April, the US released its latest data on sexually transmitted infections (STI). Cases of syphilis saw the largest increase, with cases surging 32% between 2020 and 2021 to reach the highest number of reported incidences in 70 years. The epidemic is also showing no signs of slowing, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned. And it has pointed to some "alarming" new trends driving this sudden spike in the disease.

Congenital syphilis – where a mother passes the infection to her child during pregnancy, often after contracting it from their partner – has risen particularly sharply, with cases soaring in the US by 32% between 2020-2021. The disease can cause stillbirths, infant deaths and life-long health problems.
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And it is not something just happening in the US. There were 7.1 million new cases of syphilis globally in 2020 according to World Health Organization data. In 2022, the UK saw syphilis cases reach their highest level since 1948.

Even as the nation is faced with blistering heat waves this summer, Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is already thinking ahead to cold and flu season this winter.

“We’re going to have three bugs out there, three viruses: Covid, of course, flu and RSV,” Cohen said in an interview. “We need to make sure the American people understand all three and what they can do to protect themselves.”

Spread of all three respiratory viruses is currently low, but the CDC has begun to detect slight increases in positive Covid tests and Covid-related emergency department visits. And the decline in Covid hospitalizations has stalled.

A single flea bite has caused a Houston man to contract a serious disease that led to the amputation of both of his hands, and parts of his feet.

Michael Kohlhof, a handyman and pet-sitter, was in San Antonio helping his mother recuperate from a surgery when he woke up with numbness in his feet.

“We thought it was the flu,” his mother, J’Leene Hardaway, explains in a GoFundMe set up to help pay for her son’s expenses.

Once at the hospital, Kohlhof’s condition quickly deteriorated: The 35-year-old man went into septic shock, and by the next day, was on a ventilator, dialysis, antibiotics, beta-blockers, and more medications as his mother writes “his organs were failing.”

Smoove_B wrote: Sat Jul 22, 2023 4:06 pm
Also, if you want to see why I am the way I am, just scroll down to the bottom of the People article and view the "Related Article" titles...

Isgrimnur wrote: Sat Jul 22, 2023 4:09 pm Helps if you actually told us it was typhus.

While no human illnesses are associated with the current Fremont County situation, the WDH reported a human case of pneumonic plague in a Fremont County individual with exposure to sick pet cats in September 2021.