US health officials monitor 27 people for Ebola amid fears they contracted it in West Africa

Four people in Oregon and 23 in Washington are being monitored for the Ebola virus after returning to the US from West Africa, the Oregon Health Authority said on Thursday. The individuals had returned from Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where small outbreaks of Ebola have been recorded.  The state health authority said … Read more

Inside Porton Down: Scientists working in Britain’s secretive lab admit to Covid -19 ‘trepidation’

Scientists who handle some of the most deadly substances in the world have described the ‘trepidation’ they felt when starting to research coronavirus. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at the secretive Porton Down, near Salisbury, has been helping in the fight against the disease ever since the pandemic began. Founded in 1916, the … Read more

Inside Porton Down: Scientists working in Britain’s secretive lab admit to Covid -19 ‘trepidation’

Scientists who handle some of the most deadly substances in the world have described the ‘trepidation’ they felt when starting to research coronavirus. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at the secretive Porton Down, near Salisbury, has been helping in the fight against the disease ever since the pandemic began. Founded in 1916, the … Read more

Charles Kenny details a history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease

Vaccines? The Chinese got there first… Charles Kenny details a history of mankind’s battles with infectious disease Infectious disease has always been with us and arguably always will be  Charles Kenny’s book is a lively survey of our millennia-long struggle to defeat it  He looks back at the plagues that have gone before including the Black … Read more

Climate change ‘may have driven emergence of coronavirus’

Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, a new study claims. UK researchers say global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have driven growth of forest habitat favoured by bats.  This has made southern China, in particular the Chinese Yunnan province, a ‘global hotspot’ for bat-borne coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2.  … Read more

Convalescent plasma does NOT work: Doctors pause trial of drug because no proof it works

Convalescent plasma has been used to treat infections for at least a century, dating back to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.   It was also trialed during the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza virus pandemic, 2003 SARS epidemic, and the 2012 MERS epidemic.  Convalescent plasma was used as a last resort to improve the survival rate of patients … Read more

Doctor who discovered Ebola warns new deadly viruses set to hit mankind as medics fear new Disease X

Doctor who discovered Ebola warns that world could be hit by new deadly ‘Disease X’ that is as fast-spreading as Covid and as deadly as the African virus Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum helped discover Ebola virus in 1976  He said new potentially fatal viruses emerge from Africa’s tropical rainforests ‘Disease X’, which stands for unexpected, … Read more

Doctor who discovered Ebola warns new deadly viruses set to hit mankind as medics fear new Disease X

Doctor who discovered Ebola warns that world could be hit by new deadly ‘Disease X’ that is as fast-spreading as Covid and as deadly as the African virus Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum helped discover Ebola virus in 1976  He said new potentially fatal viruses emerge from Africa’s tropical rainforests ‘Disease X’, which stands for unexpected, … Read more

Russia ‘researching how to weaponise deadly Ebola virus as part of a catastrophic doomsday project’

Russia ‘is researching how to weaponise deadly Ebola virus as part of a catastrophic doomsday project’, experts fear Unit of the FSB spy agency is believed to be researching Ebola and Marburg virus Diseases lead to organ failure and internal bleeding and have caused outbreaks Ex-intelligence insider fears Moscow could be going beyond studying diseases … Read more

Russia ‘researching how to weaponise deadly Ebola virus as part of a catastrophic doomsday project’

Russia ‘is researching how to weaponise deadly Ebola virus as part of a catastrophic doomsday project’, experts fear Unit of the FSB spy agency is believed to be researching Ebola and Marburg virus Diseases lead to organ failure and internal bleeding and have caused outbreaks Ex-intelligence insider fears Moscow could be going beyond studying diseases … Read more