West Nile virus is spread by mosquitoes. About 80 per cent of infected people have no symptoms, but the virus can cause encephalitis and can be life-threatening.
(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
West Nile virus arrived in North America in 1999 and spread across the continent by 2005. Here’s what you need to know about this mosquito-borne pathogen.
Floods are often followed by waves of diseases because pathogens shed by animals can survive in flood waters for days, raising the risk of infection for humans.
Over 800 sites across the US report coronavirus data from sewage to the CDC. Here’s how this kind of surveillance system works and what it can and can’t tell you.
A man sprays the walls of a house with insecticide against mosquitoes.
Cristina Aldehuela/AFP via Getty Images
Shüné Oliver, National Institute for Communicable Diseases; Basil Brooke, University of the Witwatersrand, and Givemore Munhenga, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Insecticide resistance is a growing threat to malaria control efforts globally. It is, thus, important to keep a close eye on vector mosquito populations in affected areas.
States are using 2 main school testing strategies: testing everyone regularly, known as surveillance, having close contacts test daily for 7 days and come to school if negative, known as test to stay.
A child gets a dose of the oral polio vaccine.
Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images
Policymakers need to make sense of the data so as to predict and manage what’s happening. To address this need, we developed a visualisation tool to track and predict country-level COVID-19 cases.
Sustained surveillance for disease outbreaks at global hot spots may be the key to preventing the next pandemic.
MR.Cole_Photographer/Getty Images
A more coordinated effort by scientists, stakeholders and community members will be required to stop the next deadly virus that’s already circulating in our midst.
Sequencing the genetic code of virus samples taken from COVID-19 patients reveals how SARS-CoV-2 is spreading and changing.
Nate Langer/UPMC
The US lags in testing coronavirus samples from COVID-19 patients, which can help track the spread of the virus and the emergence of new variants. But labs are ramping up this crucial surveillance.
You can have this STI without knowing it, or have symptoms, it can affect men and women, and it can be treated with antibiotics. Left untreated, it may cause complications.
The WHO recommends that TB prevalence surveys be done in high burden countries.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Emily B. Wong, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) and Alison Grant, Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI)
South Africa’s long-awaited TB prevalence survey results were recently released. They reveal that the country has a much higher burden of TB than previously thought.
Sewage samples mixed with magnetic beads and loaded onto the liquid-handling robot for viral concentration.
C. H. Sheikhzadeh @ HOMA Photographic Art
A community’s wastewater can predict coronavirus cases that haven’t yet been diagnosed. The quicker that information is known, the better.
Stacked disasters – like a winter storm that damages a water system during a pandemic – can provide lessons for the next time around.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Shoring up surveillance and response systems and learning lessons from how the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded will help the world be ready the next time around.
Moose, a mixed-breed dog from the Nebraska Humane Society, trains in odor-detection work.
Bill Cotton/CSU
Cheryl Cohen, National Institute for Communicable Diseases and Sibongile Walaza, University of the Witwatersrand
Digital participatory surveillance allows the community to share in the responsibility of disease surveillance and contribute to the control and prevention of respiratory disease outbreaks.
The polio eradication programme in Africa directly combated a severe debilitating disease.
Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP via Getty Images
The polio eradication programme in Africa directly combated a severe debilitating disease. But it also provided a platform for broader healthcare services on the continent.