News

A Biosafety coordination council has been established by member states within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). This new council will work to ensure biosafety by sharing experiences, developing protocols and measures to prevent threats to security in relation to biological factors. To read more, click the blue Read more button!

In the summer of 2020, a major disease outbreak in poultry came to an end. Newcastle Disease was responsible for killing over one million birds starting in 2018 in California. To read more about this outbreak and how it was eradicated, click the blue Read more box!

Two people in Fairbanks Alaska presented at an urgent care facility with lesions that look like orthopox, and further review indicated that the two cases appear to be unrelated, with no evidence that they had contact with one another or that they visited common locations, with the exception of wilderness areas surrounding their homes. Sequencing of this virus proved to be similar to Alaskapox sequences that occurred in the recent past.

As of July, when African swine fever (ASF) made its way to the Dominican Republic, the US has been working to create a Foreign Animal Disease Zone to prevent ASF from entering the United States. This protection zone includes Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Click the Blue button to learn more about how the US Department of Agriculture has been supporting this effort.

Taiwan Ministry of National Defense's Medical Affairs Bureau announced a new biosafety laboratory in New Taipei Cities Sansia District, a mountainous region near the Institute of Preventative Medicine. This laboratory has been underworks for several years and was not a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic. For more information, click the blue button for the news story.

A new plague vaccine, developed by the scientists who created the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, has been given to the first trial participants..

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has confirmed that African swine fever has been found in the Dominican Republic. This is the first detection of the disease in the Americas in about 40 years.

Scientists have identified the sex determination gene in Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, which has allowed them to genetically render female mosquitoes infertile. If the research is approved, this could assist with addressing malaria transmission.

France has issued a three month moratorium on laboratory prion research in response to a retired lab worker being diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In 2019, another lab worker died at age 33, 10 years after pricking her thumb during an experiment with prion-infected mice.

African swine fever is responsible for the death of numerous pigs in Sichuan, China, an area known for being a top-producing province of hogs. It appears small farmers, who do not follow biosecurity disease prevention, have been impacted most. For more information, click the blue button.