Zika in Florida: Lag Between Testing & Reporting of Local Cases (Mens et Manus) Those who follow me on Twitter know that I've been monitoring local transmission of Zika virus in Florida for the last couple of weeks. Recently, the case counts reported by Florida Department of Health have started to trend in a non-linear fashion, which (of course) has folks in a tizzy. Go to article

Low Risk of a Sexually-transmitted Zika Virus Outbreak (Lancet) Although Zika virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus, reports have begun to emerge of its possible sexual transmission. Isolation of infectious virus from semen lends credibility to these reports, and there is now concern that this alternative transmission route will expand the at-risk population beyond the tropical confines of the mosquito vectors and the current outbreak. Go to article

Hurricane Matthew Could Make Florida's Zika Problem Worse (The Atlantic) Heavy rainfall means more standing water--but tropical storms have other curious links to mosquito-borne illnesses, too. Go to article

Venezuela: Diphtheria Kills 22 Children in Bolivar State (Outbreak News Today) In a follow-up to a report last week about the resurgence of the vaccine-preventable disease, diphtheria, in Venezuela's Bolivar state, local media report some astounding information on how bad the situation has become. Go to article

Hurricane Matthew Forces Mass Exodus from Florida, South Carolina (CBS News) Outer rain bands have already arrived in Florida and a hurricane warning is in place for the state's Atlantic Coast and into Georgia. Up and down Florida's east coast, storm preparations are in full swing, reports CBS News correspondent Manuel Bojorquez. Go to article

Study Shows Health Improving Globally, but Progress Is Patchy (Reuters) The Global Burden of Disease study, which shows the key drivers of ill health, disability and death in individual countries, found that by 2015, the world population had gained more than a decade of life expectancy since 1980 - rising to 69.0 years in men and 74.8 years in women. Go to article

Pasteur Institute Breaches MERS Biosecurity Rule (Korea Times) The Institut Pasteur Korea committed serious biosecurity breaches, which could have resulted in the loss of many lives, and tried to cover it up, according to evidence obtained by The Korea Times. Go to article

Poverty and Prevalence of Antimicrobial Resistance in Invasive Isolates (International Journal of Infectious Diseases) Using 2013-2014 country-specific data from the ResistanceMap repository and the World Bank, we studied the association between the prevalence of AMR in invasive samples and the gross national income per capita through linear regression with robust standard errors. Go to article

Measles Elimination -- Using Outbreaks to Identify and Close Immunity Gaps (NEJM) The Americas are on the eve of being formally verified as having eliminated endemic measles after the successful interruption of the transmission of measles in Brazil. Go to article

DxTerity Wins Up-to-$150M BARDA Contract Toward Radiation Biodosimetry Test (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News) DxTerity Diagnostics said today it has been awarded an up-to-$150.1 million contract from the Biomedical BARDA toward development of its REDI-Dx® High Throughput Radiation Biodosimetry Test. REDI-Dx is designed to determine individualized levels of absorbed radiation from a blood sample. Go to article

Dramatic Twists Could Upend Patent Battle Over CRISPR Genome-Editing Method (ScienceInsider) Last week, attorneys for the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA, one of the research organizations vying for CRISPR rights, submitted motions that could let it win even if it loses. Go to article

Predicting Off-Target Effects for End-to-End CRISPR Guide Design (bioRxiv) To enable more effective guide design we have developed the first machine learning-based approach to assess CRISPR/Cas9 off-target effects. Our approach consistently and substantially outperformed the state-of the-art over multiple, independent data sets, yielding up to a 6-fold improvement in accuracy. Go to article

Why Haiti Is a 'Hub of Natural Disaster' (City Lab) Hurricane Matthew strikes a nation where poverty and poor planning have left urban residents at particular risk. Natural topography, environmental degradation, and urbanization along the areas near river outlets are all to blame for this disproportionate flooding. Go to article