u/Anti-Owl

A seldom seen but often deadly mold that attacks people’s brains seems to be causing more trouble as of late.

Scientists at the University of Washington and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied lab-confirmed reports of the fungus Cladophialophora bantiana. There has been a noticeable increase in detected cases over the past decade, the researchers found, particularly since 2023. Though these infections still appear to be rare, there is very little we clearly understand about the fungus, the researchers say, including how prevalent it truly is or even how it infects people in the first place.

“Reasons for the apparent increase are unknown,” the authors wrote in their paper, published late last week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Human fungal infections are relatively uncommon compared to bacterial and viral ones, and brain infections are much rarer still. These life-threatening infections tend to be disseminated, meaning the fungi only invade the brain (and other parts of the body) after an initial infection elsewhere. Brain and other severe fungal infections also predominantly occur in people with already weakened immune systems.

C. bantiana is a strange, moldy exception to these rules. When inside the human body, it seems to prefer infecting the brain, typically causing abscesses (pockets of pus containing the fungus, the immune cells trying to fight it off, and other tissues). C. bantiana is also highly deadly when it causes illness, with a mortality rate ranging between 60% and 70% even with treatment. And it’s not picky about its victims either, according to study author Joshua Lieberman.

“It is capable of infecting apparently healthy people, not just immunocompromised patients in whom we normally worry about invasive fungal disease,” Lieberman, a microbiologist and associate professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at UW, told Gizmodo. Roughly half of infections are found in people with healthy immune systems, according to the authors.

The one saving grace is that cases are rarely documented in the U.S. That said, there is no routine national surveillance of C. bantiana, and doctors are not obligated to report suspected or confirmed cases to their health departments. [...]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it is monitoring reports of a suspected pneumonic plague case in Russia and says it is prepared for any threat that emerges.

We are working across the U.S. government to assess developments as additional information becomes available," the CDC said in an X post Tuesday.

"At this time, there is no indication of a broader threat to the United States, but CDC and our interagency partners are prepared and will continue to monitor the situation closely."

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Other Updates:

Beacon Report: Russia reports anti-plague institute researcher died from pneumonia of unknown etiology, unrelated to lab work; WHO comments on situation.

> The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on 06 Oct 2026 that it is closely monitoring the death of a laboratory worker in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, amid unconfirmed reports that pneumonic plague may have caused her death.

> WHO received information on the situation on 2 Oct 2026 and formally sought information from Russian authorities on 03 Oct 2026 under the International Health Regulations.

> Per Russian authorities, test results to date have not identified any dangerous pathogens in the deceased patient or any of her contacts.

> On 06 Oct 2026, unverified media reports are claiming that there is a second death in a contact. As of the time of this report, the quality of these reports is assessed as unreliable.

> The scale and speed of the institutional response (emergency commission, isolation of institute staff, multi-hospital quarantine), is disproportionate to a routine community-acquired pneumonia and is consistent with a precautionary response to a suspected high-consequence pathogen exposure.

> The absence of reported secondary cases to date is the strongest indicator of containment, but the lack of transparency regarding the unresolved etiology sustain moderate residual uncertainty.

CNN: Checklists, masks and mystery: What we know about the plague scare in Russia

> CNN has learned that a local maternity hospital is subjecting patients to comprehensive health checks and requiring them to fill out questionnaires about suspicious symptoms related to “plague” and other infectious diseases. [...]

> Staff did not mention plague, she said, telling her only that there was an unidentified “new virus” and that extra precautions were needed to protect the babies.

> “They’re telling everyone that it wasn’t the plague but pneumonia. Yet hospitals are still under quarantine, and ambulance doctors are driving around in full Covid protective suits.”

> Another local resident, who identified herself only as Ekaterina, said life there was continuing as normal. [...]

> Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have implemented quarantine controls at state border crossing points. Uzbekistan said it has “increased the readiness” of authorities to deal with highly infectious diseases.

> The World Health Organization said it was in contact with Russian health authorities to “verify the event, its circumstances, the laboratory tests underway, and their results.” “Based on unofficial information available, the public health risk to the general population appears to be low,” it said.

Los Angeles County public health officials have launched an investigation after confirming the first rabies-positive raccoon detection in more than 50 years.

In a news release, the Department of Public Health said that the raccoon was found in the backyard of a home and that it "appeared sick but not aggressive towards people."

Officials said one dog was exposed to the raccoon, but it was up to date on rabies vaccination and has since been quarantined and is doing well. Four people were also possibly exposed and were receiving follow-up for rabies post-exposure prophylaxis.

According to LADPH, the last confirmed rabid raccoon in the county was detected in 1973 and had the skunk variant of rabies, which has not been detected since 1979. They also noted that the last animal that wasn't a bat to have confirmed rabies was a skunk that was infected with the bat variant in 2014. [...]

Flu cases are popping up across the province and some doctors say the season is ahead of schedule this year.

Toronto General Hospital infectious diseases specialist Isaac Bogoch says it’s nothing out of the ordinary, though Ontario has been seeing an uptick in cases ahead of Thanksgiving and Halloween weekends.

"It's an early rise but it absolutely is a rise," he told CBC Toronto Monday. "Flu season starts in the fall and it's the fall. Sometimes it's a little earlier in the fall, sometimes it's a little later … usually [it’s the] tail end of October, early November."

The strain circulating most commonly is H1N1 this year, which tends to be milder on those infected and on hospitals than the H3N2 subtype, Bogoch added.

"At an individual level, any flu … can still cause tremendous harm and people feel really, really crummy," he said.

The country saw a 3.7 per cent positivity rate in the week of Sept. 21 to Sept. 26, according to the Government of Canada respiratory virus surveillance report’s latest data. The positivity rate is the number of tests that come back positive, though it's unclear how many individuals seek out a test when they fall ill.

H1N1 was the dominant strain and detections were highest among those aged 65 or older, the data reveals. [...]

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See also: These provinces are seeing an early start to the flu season

While respiratory illnesses typically ramp up in the fall, particularly in October, health authorities on P.E.I. are already reporting confirmed cases and hospitalizations. Alberta, B.C. and southwestern Ontario are also reporting an earlier-than-usual rise in illnesses, with increases beginning as early as September. Farther west, Yukon’s chief medical officer said lab-confirmed cases of influenza A have been identified since mid-August.

Pennsylvania has reported its fifth measles-associated death of 2026 as the state’s ongoing outbreak climbs to 943 confirmed cases across 39 counties.

The Pennsylvania department of health said on Wednesday that an unvaccinated Lancaster county resident who tested positive for measles had died. Health officials did not release further information about the individual, citing privacy protections.

The death marks the fifth Pennsylvania resident to meet the state’s definition of a measles-associated death this year after a fourth death two weeks ago. Due to how the Trump administration has changed its method for reporting measles deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has not counted the Pennsylvania measles deaths in its national tally.

As of Monday 28 September, Pennsylvania had recorded 40 new positive cases. The outbreak has now reached 39 counties, with 943 cumulative confirmed cases, 176 hospitalizations and five confirmed measles-associated deaths.

Only four of those confirmed cases have involved vaccinated individuals, representing less than 1% of the state’s total cases [...]

HAVANA, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Cuban housewife Yuamilka Hechavarria was asleep last Tuesday when water rushed into the cistern of the crumbling tenement where she lives in old Havana.

She jumped from bed, scrambling in the darkness of a blackout to top off a bucketful before the ​tap went dry. It was the first time her building had seen water in two months.

This scenario plays out in neighborhoods ‌across Cuba's capital of Havana daily, where power outages exacerbated by a US oil blockade have crippled the already crumbling infrastructure that supplies water to the city's nearly two million people. Many regularly go without running water for days or weeks.

Hygiene is among the first casualties of the situation, explains Hechavarria, a healthcare worker, who for weeks had ​been forced to buy water from street vendors or scavenge it from nearby broken pipes.

Diarrhea has run rampant throughout her building, she ​says, as tenants struggle to keep even tiny apartments clean.

“There's no one in this building who hasn't gotten sick," ⁠said Hechavarria, adding that she too was recovering from a recent bout of fever and diarrhea.

Officials in both the United States and Cuba have begun ​to sound the alarm.

Health authorities in Cuba have warned in recent days of the spread of viruses, including a strain of viral hepatitis, as power ​and water increasingly fail. And a US health alert earlier this month warned travelers and residents of a "significant increase in diarrheal illness across Cuba, associated with the continuing degradation of the water and energy infrastructure." [...]

The U.S. Forest Service is moving ahead with plans to spray the controversial herbicide glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup, on thousands of acres devastated by the Caldor Fire, including in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The plans have sparked growing public opposition and have come under scrutiny from local residents, wellness and organic food advocates and environmentalists after an investigation published by Mother Jones this spring showed the federal government is spraying the herbicide at “record levels” across California forests.

Glyphosate is an effective, if potent, weed killer, approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and it’s been widely used by the agricultural industry since Monsanto began selling it as Roundup in 1974. The extensive use of glyphosate on crops has long been controversial: It is known to destroy habitat for monarch butterflies and bees. And in 2015, the World Health Organization’s cancer research division said that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” That opened the door for more than 100,000 lawsuits to be filed against Monsanto by people who had been diagnosed with cancer including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after using Roundup. Now, the Supreme Court is weighing a case about whether Monsanto is liable for not including a cancer warning on its product.

The agricultural industry isn’t the only industry spraying the chemical. The Mother Jones investigation analyzed millions of spraying reports and discovered that the Forest Service sprayed 266,000 pounds of glyphosate in California forests in 2023, the most recent year that the data was available, which is about five times the amount used two decades ago. [...]

Flu season is upon us, and millions will catch the virus. Last year, at least 32 million Americans got influenza, leading to almost 400,000 hospitalizations and at least 24,000 deaths.

But a bout of flu doesn’t always end after the coughing, fever and runny nose. Some people may develop “long flu,” with persistent symptoms affecting not only the respiratory system, where the influenza virus first strikes, but other body organs, including the brain.

A large 2024 study published in the journal the Lancet Infectious Diseases found that the long-lasting health consequences of flu eclipse by a large degree the symptoms when you first catch it, said Ziyad Al-Aly, a senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the study.

Before the pandemic and the rise of long covid, most people — including doctors like Al-Aly — believed that getting the flu meant being out of commission for a few weeks at most.

But looking at what happens after the flu in their own data, it was eye-opening, Al-Aly said.

In the study, Al-Aly and his colleagues analyzed medical records of over 80,000 people hospitalized for covid and over 10,000 people hospitalized for seasonal flu.

The researchers found that people in both groups still reported health problems up to 18 months after their infection. Long flu is particularly hard on the lungs compared with covid and was associated with a larger increase in risk of chest pain, rapid heart rate, cough, low blood oxygen, shortness of breath and Type 1 diabetes. (Viral infections like covid and the flu can increase the risk of autoimmune diseases like Type 1 diabetes in both adults and children.)

While not as severe on the other organ systems as long covid, the long-term effects of flu still outweighed its short-term harms on almost every organ system evaluated, including the brain, heart and kidney.

Like long covid, which is estimated to affect up to 1 in 6 people who get the coronavirus, long flu also had notable psychiatric and neurological impacts. Mental health diagnoses affected 59 out of 100 people, while neurological symptoms, such as cognitive impairment, memory problems and sleepiness, affected more than half of people in the Lancet Infectious Diseases study. (For covid, 63 out of 100 people had mental health symptoms and 57 out of 100 people had neurological symptoms.)

We don’t know how prevalent long flu is because it’s an emerging area of research, though Al-Aly suspected about 3 to 5 percent of people who get the flu may develop long-term symptoms, given the data he’s collected.

But history shows that phenomena like long flu and long covid are not new.

There have been multiple flu pandemics that caused a wave of chronic illness and disability. During and after the 1918 flu pandemic, people complained of symptoms that sounded similar to the “brain fog” associated with long covid, including lethargy, forgetfulness and hazy thinking. Years after, there was a rise in Parkinson’s-like symptoms tied to the flu, as well as a coinciding epidemic of sleeping sickness, or encephalitis lethargica, which could cause extreme sleepiness and movement difficulties and may have been linked to the flu.

Similar long-lasting symptoms, known as post-acute infection syndromes, followed in the wake of other illnesses, such as respiratory viruses SARS and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and Ebola, Lyme disease and dengue.

The more we understand what acute infections are doing, the more we understand their long-term consequences, Al-Aly said. “It sort of eats something. It may eat some functional reserve.”

[...] How to prevent long flu

When there’s potential for viruses to cause neuronal damage, then “we have to prevent getting infected as much as possible,” Hosseini said. Thankfully, the flu vaccine helps prime your immune system to fight off the virus, reducing short- and long-term health consequences. “Getting vaccinated is really the right thing to do here,” Al-Aly said, adding that it can help protect against a serious infection as well as reduce your risk for long flu. It remains unclear how much vaccination protects against long flu. But research has shown that the flu vaccine is linked to a reduced heart disease risk — by 20 to 50 percent. It is also associated with lowered dementia risk. The flu vaccine is recommended for adults and children older than six months. And according to the American Academy of Family Physicians, October is the best time to get it.

Full article: https://archive.is/FLSpV

TOPEKA (KSNT) – State health officials have recorded over 200 cases of tuberculosis in Kansas so far this year following a major outbreak.

Staff with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) are reporting a total of 211 cases of tuberculosis statewide in 2026 as of Sept. 23. This follows a major tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas, primarily in the Kansas City area, that lasted from January 2024 to November 2025.

KDHE personnel track tuberculosis by making a distinction between ‘active‘ and ‘latent‘ infections. People who have a latent tuberculosis infection are infected with tuberculosis bacteria, but they don’t have the disease and can’t spread it to other people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People who have an active case of tuberculosis can spread the disease to others and may display symptoms. [...]

KDHE staff reported a total of 772 latent cases and 116 active cases of tuberculosis in 2024, followed by 63 active cases and 429 latent cases over the course of 2025.

So far this year, health officials have recorded 55 active cases and 156 latent cases. Similar to the recent outbreak, KDHE staff are recording the majority of infections in the Kansas City area, with scattered cases throughout the rest of Kansas.

Active tuberculosis cases – 55

Kansas City Metro – 38

Northeast Kansas – four

Southeast Kansas – none

North Central Kansas – one

South Central Kansas – 11

Northwest Kansas – none

Southwest Kansas – one

Latent tuberculosis cases – 156

Kansas City Metro – 131

Northeast Kansas – four

Southeast Kansas – six

North Central Kansas – one

South Central Kansas – four

Northwest Kansas – six

Southwest Kansas – four

Previous thread: Kansas tuberculosis outbreak is now America's largest in recorded history

An outbreak of jaw-swelling mumps at Southern California’s San Diego State University has been linked to several students athletes -- but it seems to be contained for now.

Three cases of the contagious disease were confirmed, and two other probable cases were reported, though the university did not identify the patients or the sport that had been affected.

“Importantly, the students are no longer considered contagious,” Dr. Tanushree Ghosh, the medical director for the school’s student health services, wrote in a letter published online Friday. She said the school was working with the county to respond to the outbreak.

Mumps is caused by a virus that affects the salivary glands and is often characterized by puffy cheeks and a swollen jaw — but severe cases can lead to brain, testicle and ovary inflammation that causes sterility. [...]

What was meant to be a fun family event filled with baby goats and pony rides ended with about 30 people needing rabies shots.

Two weeks after Tatiana Villatoro’s family and friends spent an Aug. 16 gathering in Durham, N.C., feeding and playing with goats from a mobile petting zoo, she says health officials confirmed the goats at their event had rabies.

“I never imagined something like this could happen,” Villatoro tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Honestly, before this experience, I didn’t know much about rabies or how serious a potential exposure could be.”

Villatoro found Farm Adventures on Facebook Marketplace while searching for something fun for the kids and adults attending the private gathering. The mobile petting zoo offered several animals and pony rides, and she says nothing about the goats seemed unusual when they arrived.

Children and adults spent the event feeding the goats and interacting with them up close. “The children, my family and guests and myself were all over the goats,” Villatoro recalls, adding that no one knew at the time there was anything to worry about.

That changed on Sunday, Aug. 30, when a family friend came across a news report about a rabies investigation involving goats from Farm Adventures. The friend sent Villatoro the link, thinking she had probably already heard about the situation.

She hadn’t. Villatoro says neither the farm nor the health department had contacted her before she received the article, which advised people who had interacted with goats from Farm Adventures between late July and late August to contact health officials.

“I’m so glad she did,” Villatoro says of her friend. After reading the report, she immediately knew her family and guests had been in close contact with the goats involved.

The health department was closed that Sunday, but Villatoro didn’t want to wait until the next day to act. She called an urgent care center to ask whether it provided rabies treatment and says she was directed to the emergency room because the facility only offered boosters.

She also had more than 30 guests to worry about, many of whom ultimately needed rabies post-exposure treatment, Villatoro says, meaning she and her husband had to start breaking the news to relatives and friends who had spent the day with them.

“The most stressful part was communicating with every one of my guests and breaking the news to them and urging them to please seek treatment,” she says.

Knowing that she and her husband had hired the petting zoo also weighed on her. Villatoro says she felt guilty about putting family and friends in the situation, even though they had no idea the goats had been exposed to rabies and couldn’t have known beforehand.

“We were just trying to give our guests and children a great time,” she says. Instead, the family was suddenly dealing with rabies treatment and trying to make sure everyone who had attended knew what had happened.

Villatoro says her local health department eventually contacted her and specifically told her that the goats at her Aug. 16 event had rabies. She provided officials with the names and phone numbers of her guests, and says the department took over contacting them and providing additional information about the case. [...]

The small Pacific nation of Fiji has declared a national HIV emergency as it grapples with surging case numbers, partly driven by a growing methamphetamine problem.

One in every 60 adults in the archipelago of less than a million people are now estimated to have Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) –– bucking a global trend of falling rates of the incurable, but treatable, virus.

A tourism hotspot famed for its friendly culture, white-sand beaches and teeming coral reefs, Fiji first declared an outbreak of the virus in January 2025 and ramped up testing, revealing the scale of the spiraling public health crisis.

Declaring the emergency on Tuesday, Health Minister Dr. Atonio Lalabalavu said the country had 2,060 new diagnoses of HIV in 2025, calling it a sign of the “seriousness of the epidemic and the urgent, coordinated response our country now needs.”

The epidemic has reached the country’s newborns, with a two-month-old baby becoming the youngest identified patient living with both HIV and tuberculosis (TB), Save the Children Fiji said this week. HIV attacks the immune system and makes it easier to contract TB. Last year, 59 babies acquired HIV from their mother, the organization said. [...]

A Chatham County woman says she is grateful to be alive after a sudden illness left her hospitalized with sepsis, hearing loss and questions about whether a tick-borne infection played a role.

Ronnie Dunn said she has lived in the country for years and finding a tick was never unusual.

“I’m from the country. I’ve been bit by ticks so many times,” Dunn said.

That changed in August, when Dunn said she found a large, engorged tick attached to the top of her head.

“It was fat. It made me so mad that I had missed it,” Dunn said.

About a week and a half later, she became severely ill.

“I was just so sick. I didn’t even get out the bed all day, except to throw up and drink water and throw up,” Dunn recalled.

By the following day, Dunn said every joint in her body hurt and she was very fatigued. She went to work but felt so sick that she left and went to the emergency room, where she had a 103-degree fever.

“I can barely walk, like I'm stumbling,” Dunn said. “They had to give me a wheelchair.”

Dunn said she also pointed out a rash that had been spreading all over her body. She said she was initially discharged and told her symptoms may be due to an allergy.

When she didn’t start to improve, Dunn said she returned to the emergency room. This time, she said a doctor asked whether she had recently been bitten by a tick.

“I had these splotches all over me,” Dunn said. “It looked like somebody took a little pen and just poked little dots in my leg.”

Dunn said her platelet count had fallen to 17 and her sodium was so low doctors were concerned she could have a seizure. Other tests showed she was septic.

“When you almost die, it honestly changes you,” Dunn said. “If I wouldn’t have went back to the emergency room, then life would have probably been a lot different.”

As for what exactly caused her illness, Dunn said doctors explained that her symptoms lined up with a possible case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever, or RMSF, is a potentially deadly bacterial disease transmitted through the bite of an infected tick. Fever, headache and rash are among its most common symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Ross Boyce, a UNC Health infectious diseases specialist who studies tick-borne illnesses, said Rocky Mountain spotted fever is caused by Rickettsia rickettsii, one of several related Rickettsia bacteria that can be transmitted by ticks in North Carolina.

“Rocky Mountain spotted fever is by far the most lethal tick-borne disease really in North America,” Boyce said.

Boyce said RMSF can be complicated to differentiate from other related Rickettsia, which can cause less severe disease.

Many tick-borne bacteria do not grow well using traditional laboratory culture methods, so doctors often rely on antibody tests that measure the body’s immune response to an infection.

“The antibody test can’t tell the difference between the different types of spotted fever bacteria,” Boyce said. “They all cross-react and will return positive.”

Boyce said another disadvantage is that antibodies can still show up on tests long after an infection. [...]

Dunn provided WRAL with bloodwork showing antibodies reactive to Ehrlichia chaffeensis, a bacterium associated with ehrlichiosis.

Boyce said ehrlichiosis deserves more attention in North Carolina because it is transmitted by the Lone Star tick and can cause severe disease.

“Most of the cases of patients that I see in the hospital with a tick-borne disease have ehrlichiosis,” Boyce said. “I think it’s under-recognized.”

Dunn said additional testing was still underway to help determine what role, if any, a tick-borne infection played in her illness.

And a tick may not be the only thing that made her sick.

Dunn also provided WRAL with results showing Capnocytophaga canimorsus was detected in her blood.

The bacteria is commonly found in the mouths of dogs and can, in rare cases, cause serious bloodstream infections. Dunn believes exposure to dog saliva may have played a role.

As she searches for answers, Dunn described the combination of findings and symptoms as a “very traumatic experience.” [...]

Local authorities confirmed that Congo’s record-breaking Ebola outbreak has expanded into a seventh province, with the rapid spread showing no indication of slowing down.

According to Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, testing by Congo’s national research institute identified the rare Bundibugyo virus strain responsible for the ongoing surge.

Released on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, the official statement said that the positive sample originated in Sud-Ubangi’s Bulu health district, though details regarding the source of infection remain undisclosed.

On Thursday, local lawmaker and former health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani posted on social platform X that a 23-year-old man had died from the virus in the Sud-Ubangi town of Gwaka.

Mbungani stated that over three weeks, the deceased individual completed an extensive journey, departing South Kivu province—where confirmed Ebola cases had been logged—and traveling through Rwanda and Uganda before arriving in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak.

From the northeast of the country, the man then moved to the northwest, traveling through the provinces of Tshopo, Mongala, and Sud-Ubangi, according to Mbungani.

This development makes Sud-Ubangi the seventh affected province and the first in western Congo, marking a concerning outward expansion from what was previously concentrated in the east. Although a case linked to eastern travel was detected in Kinshasa in May, the capital—located more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the epicenter—was not designated as an affected province. [...]

Playing on bouncy castles has been linked to the largest ever recorded outbreak of a common superbug in Ireland last year.

A new medical report has revealed that four children were hospitalised after an outbreak of a rare and aggressive strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - better known as MRSA - swept through a large group who had been playing on bouncy castles.

The study detailed how 48 children and adolescents developed skin and soft tissue infections after a gathering in the east of Ireland, including 15 who sought treatment in hospital.

Doctors claim it is the first time that such a large outbreak of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been linked to playing on bouncy castles as the mechanism had "not been described before in the scientific literature."

While outbreaks of community-acquired MRSA are associated with close physical contact and crowded settings, most previous large outbreaks have been found in sporting activities, prisons and childcare facilities.

The report concluded that the outbreak occurred due to close physical contact among children and adolescents playing on three bouncy castles on a green area in a suburb in the HSE Dublin and Midlands region last autumn.

Conditions on the day were humid, warm and showery with parents recalling that the children were noticeably wet and engaging in "rough-and-tumble" play on crowded bouncy castles.

All but one of the 48 patients had attended the event with many spending a substantial amount of time on the bouncy castles, including 19 who estimated they had spent at least four hours on the equipment.

The outbreak was declared over 40 days after the event when two maximum incubation periods had passed without any new case.

The first case was a 12-year-old boy who was diagnosed with MRSA folliculitis – an infection of hair follicles that causes small red pimples filled with pus – and required hospitalisation.

He provided a history of having attended a social gathering nine days earlier.

The report, which is published in Eurosurveillance, a medical journal on infectious diseases, noted that an outbreak control team was urgently convened when doctors subsequently became aware of the outbreak after a cluster of 25 other children who had attended the same event sought treatment with unusual skin infections. [...]

The number of confirmed US cases of measles has reached 3,294, fully 1,000 more than all of last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted in its weekly update today.

The total includes 160 new cases, most of them in Pennsylvania, the nation’s measles hot spot. The country has now seen five straight weeks of triple-digit increases.

Of note, the CDC still has not recorded any deaths for 2026, instead indicating with an asterisk, “The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause.” This despite the coroner in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a week ago confirming that measles caused a death in an infant. Earlier, he had said the death of another baby infected with the disease in the county was “measles-related.”

Last year, the CDC confirmed that three people, including two children, died of measles, one of the most transmissible diseases known.

The CDC noted 38 outbreaks, the same as the prior week. Last year saw 48 measles outbreaks, defined as three or more related cases. Total cases for all of 2025 reached 2,289, which was the most since 1991 until the country surpassed that level in July.

All but 16 of this year’s cases have been locally acquired, with the rest tied to international travel. Cases have been confirmed in 45 states plus New York City and Washington, DC.

Of the 2026 cases, 18% involve children younger than 5 years, and 63% involve kids and teens. Eight percent of patients have been hospitalized, compared with 11% in 2025. Among all measles patients, 95% are unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status. [...]

On Thursday, the New York City Health Department announced its investigation into a new Legionnaires’ cluster impacting parts of the South Bronx, where one person died and at least five others are diagnoses with the disease.

Officials shared that the impacted zip codes include 10451 and 10456, affecting parts of the Melrose and Morrisania sections of the Bronx.

“Our disease investigators have confirmed five cases of Legionnaires’ disease and are working quickly to identify and confirm any additional cases in the area. Sadly, one person has died, and our deepest condolences are with their loved ones,” NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Alister F. Martin said.

“I understand that New Yorkers may have heightened concerns following the recent Upper East Side cluster. We are taking immediate action. Water ecologists have sampled all cooling towers in the affected area. Any cooling tower that tests positive will be directed to undergo full cleaning and disinfection immediately. Community health workers will be canvassing the neighborhood. Anyone who lives, works, or has visited the affected area since late August and is experiencing flu-like symptoms should contact a health care provider as soon as possible.” [...]

A spike in rabies cases among animals this summer has led to a rise in human exposures across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Thursday.

In a new health advisory, the CDC urged doctors to be on the lookout for possible exposures and to administer vaccines and treatments as needed. The agency also warned the public to avoid contact with wildlife and sick mammals, and to seek medical care if someone is bitten or scratched.

The CDC sent the advisory through its Health Alert Network, the primary communication channel the agency uses to disseminate urgent public health information to doctors, hospital networks and health officials.

Rabies is a rare but potentially fatal viral disease that must be treated before symptoms start. It spreads primarily through bites or scratches from an infected animal. Wildlife such as raccoons, skunks, bats and foxes are the most common carriers in the U.S.

The CDC’s warning comes less than two weeks after North Carolina officials announced that three baby goats at a mobile petting zoo had tested positive for rabies, potentially exposing hundreds of people. [...]

https://archive.is/j6rq6

In a report describing misuses of its A.I. models, Anthropic said it could not determine whether the research served a legitimate or nefarious purpose because valid biological inquiry — the kind that can lead to breakthroughs like vaccines — can also help engineer dangerous pathogens. In the face of that uncertainty, Anthropic said it erred on the side of caution because the consequences of missing malicious activity could be severe.

“You are not seeing someone in a comic book kind of way say, ‘Hey, I want to build a biological weapon to kill everybody,’” Jacob Klein, the head of threat intelligence at Anthropic, said in an interview. “It’s an incredibly nuanced situation.”

The potential for cutting-edge A.I. models to facilitate the development of known or entirely new biological pathogens is among the gravest concerns experts have about a technology that is developing so rapidly that even its leading architects doubt whether humans will be able to fully control it.

Compared with the threat of catastrophic cyberattacks or A.I. agents that fail to align with human intentions, biological misuse has gained less attention as an existential risk of A.I., in part because past examples have generally been shown only in research settings rather than in the real world.

Andrew Weber, a senior fellow on the Council on Strategic Risks who reviewed Anthropic’s report before its release, said the findings were “chilling examples of state-sponsored biological weapons developers tapping into the rapidly advancing capabilities” of leading A.I. models. [...]

But among all the categories of threats shared in the report, none may be as worrisome as the biological research cases. Anthropic did not disclose the names of researchers or institutions that it blocked, their countries of affiliation or the specific biological agents at issue, in part because of its uncertainty about their aims.

Still, Anthropic said the scientists circumvented its controls intended to prevent users from blocked regions from gaining access to its A.I. models and worked to “obfuscate the purpose of their research to evade our safeguards.” The company banned accounts associated with the research.

In one example from May, a scientist sought Claude’s help with writing a grant application for funding to conduct research intended to experiment on the chikungunya virus, a mosquito-borne malady that can lead to months of severe pain and other symptoms. Such research, known as gain of function, can be legitimate and lead to vaccine development, but it can also create superbug versions of viruses. In this instance, the scientist wanted to engineer mutations to the virus that would make it more harmful as it repeatedly infected live animals.

Anthropic said it believed the particular research was worrisome in part because it could discern that the work was intended to be performed at a military research institute.

“What we don’t know is if the research was meant to be weaponized,” Mr. Klein said. “But a military institution doing gain-of-function research is concerning.”

Anthropic said evaluations from last year of its older models demonstrated that they were not yet able to meaningfully assist in conducting dangerous biological research. Its current models are more able to complete complex scientific research, the company said, which spurred tighter safeguards intended to restrict access to a wide range of dual-use biological research queries. [...]