faulker024

Since November 2016, more than 460 human cases of H7N9 have been reported or imported from China. To put this number in perspective, confirmed cases of H7N9 were first reported in March 2013, four years ago. Of all the cases of human H7N9 infections reported to date, more than one-third (about 36%), have occurred in the last four months. This raises a concern that H7N9 is not only causing outbreaks in China but could lead to epidemics and perhaps even a pandemic. It is difficult to tabulate exactly how many H7N9 cases have occurred since November 1 of 2016, because case reporting and enumeration seem to vary among various public health reporting agencies. Media and blog reports have interpreted variation among these counts of H7N9 cases as a failure of public health officials in China to accurately track H7N9 cases, often leading to exaggerated claims of the rates of infection in China. It is possible to arrive at a close approximation of the actual number of recent cases by using dif...

The most recent, cumulative World Health Organization (WHO) table of human H5N1 cases was published on March 3, 2015.[1] This table notes a total of 88 human H5N1 cases in Egypt through March 3, 2015. As I noted previously [2] the tabulation of counts based on the line list of cases published in the monthly risk summaries only totals 82 cases for Egypt in 2015 based on onset dates in reports of 2015. To understand the confusion in the Egyptian case counts in the WHO table, it is necessary to consider the 2014 totals provided by WHO. The current WHO cumulative table reports 46 cases of H5N1 in 2014 with 31 cases from Egypt.[1] However, individual enumeration of WHO-confirmed H5N1 cases based on line lists in the monthly risk assessments shows a total of 52 H5N1 cases in 2014 (based on onset dates), with 37 of these reported from Egypt.[3] The table below identifies the distribution of WHO-confirmed H5N1 from Egypt by each of the monthly summaries for 2014 through the most recent asse...

Previously, I discussed discrepancies between the MERS case counts for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) ( link ). The WHO case count differed from the number posted on the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health website by 15 cases. At least 12 cases previously announced by the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health had not yet been posted in Disease Outbreak News by the WHO through October 21, 2014. Yesterday the WHO reported in aggregate 12 new MERS cases from Saudi Arabia from the period October 18 to October 26, 2014 ( link ). These 12 cases do not equate to the 12-case differential noted in my previous post. The most recent WHO report regarding cases from Saudi Arabia ( October 16 link ) only enumerates cases through October 11, 2014. However, between October 12 and October 16, the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health website announced five additional MERS cases, Taif (3), Riyadh (1), and Al Karj (1). Hopefully, the WHO will repor...

Through October   12, 2014, the World Health Organization   (WHO) has reported more than   8900 cases of Ebola since this epidemic began   ( link ).   The outbreak is currently out of control in three countries in West Africa, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.   The graph below depicts the timeline of the growth of the   cumulative number of total cases reported by   each of these countries.     The overall cumulative Ebola case total time series can be fitted to an exponential growth curve to project the total number of cases going into the future. The WHO data indicate that by January   2015 there will be almost 45,000 Ebola cases as shown in the graph below.   There is no doubt now that this outbreak will not be contained in West Africa by the end of December.   How many future cases of Ebola will there be is difficult to predict. WHO has noted on several occasions that the officially reported numbers under represent...

Slightly more than 100 cases of Middle East Respiratory Coronavirus   (MERS-CoV) infections have been reported from around the world. Despite these few numbers, the actual count of cases is uncertain as is the geographic distribution of the cases.   The case count varies from 94 to 104 as noted in the table below compiled from several sources. [1,2,3,4]  A review of these reports indicates that the variability in the counts results from several factors. First, some reports such as those from the World Health Organization (WHO) are not current and up-to-date. The fact that WHO is not stating the count by individual member states indicates uncertainty about how to report the geolocations of individual cases (see discussion below). Second, some agencies such as WHO only count officially confirmed cases, while other case lists seem to include probable and suspected cases as well. Third, compounding the enumeration problem is that sometimes asymptomatic cases that test positi...