virus

The city of Ushuaia in Argentina, which bills itself as the "end of the world," has found itself at the center of a global media storm involving a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a cruise that departed from its port. Tourism operators and officials are scrambling to stem fallout from the nautical nightmare that they fear could cause foreigners to reconsider their Antarctic cruise plans.

Officials and experts in Argentina are scrambling to figure out if their country is the source of a deadly hantavirus outbreak that has gripped an Atlantic cruise. Argentina is consistently ranked by the World Health Organization as having the highest incidence of the rare, rat-borne disease in Latin America.

A case of hantavirus on a cruise ship is puzzling, said William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University professor of preventive medicine. Here’s what we know about hantavirus and its transmission.

The Florida Department of Health has recorded 30 cases in the state this year, all by patients who had been in Cuba. The disease is transmitted to humans by flies called midges and some types of mosquitoes.

In Guatemala's mosquito-plagued lowlands, researchers use a novel tool — they call it an "insectazooka" — to suck up mosquitoes. Then they peer at the blood meal, searching for unknown pathogens.

Reports of flu are already high in 17 states, and the hospitalization rate hasn’t been this high this early since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, according to the CDC.

Early fears of an escalating outbreak have not come to pass. Scientists are finding that the virus needs a very particular set of circumstances to spread effectively.

Monkeypox has been a developing problem for decades and the current global outbreak was avoidable, but the looming threat was largely ignored, according to a leading expert on the virus.

The nationwide monkeypox outbreak continues to grow. Dozens of those cases have been detected in South Florida — mostly in Broward County — and those numbers are believed to be an undercount.

People in South Florida affected by the Parkland school shooting are reacting to the tragedy that unfolded at an elementary school in Texas. Two possible monkeypox cases are being investigated in Broward. Plus, in honor of our Sundial book club, we learn about the real-life cocaine cowboys who shaped Miami.

Although monkeypox's recent spread has caused concern, its similarities to smallpox have given the public health world a head start on combating it.

For the past couple of months, a virus has afflicted many dogs in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.