I’m focusing on antimicrobials this week since it’s World Antimicrobial Awareness Week, but this is a timely topic and there’s an antimicrobial twist.
A couple of recent reports about a canine pneumovirus outbreak in a shelter in Tacoma WA and a separate outbreak of canine pneumovirus in a shelter in Las Vegas NV have,
We already have an update on the Michigan dog disease outbreak that I wrote about yesterday which has attracted a lot of attention.
An update (August 24) from the Michigan State Veterinarian indicates this appears to be an outbreak of parvovirus. I’m not overly surprised. As I wrote yesterday:
An outbreak of our typical canine
I
’ve been holding off writing about this, hoping for more details, but my inbox has been flooded with questions about it so I figured I’d get the ball rolling. There’s been a bit of a media frenzy about an apparent outbreak of severe disease in dogs in northern Michigan.
What do we know?
We’ve come a long way in terms of medical diagnostic technology in recent years. It’s now cheap and easy to identify a wide range of viruses and bacteria, including some we’ve never seen before. However, our ability to find pathogens has outpaced our ability to understand the role they may (or may not) play in
Canine influenza is back in the news in the US, with close to 50 dogs infected with canine influenza at a dog rescue in Florida. The outbreak has been going on for over two weeks already. This is a “surprising but not surprising” scenario to me.
It’s a bit surprising because canine flu activity
As SARS-CoV-2 reminded everyone, there are lots of undiscovered viruses out there, and some of them can cause disease in humans, animals, or both. It’s not very hard to find a new virus, actually. Figuring out what it means is often the challenge, because simply finding a virus in a sick person or animal doesn’t
While the whole story hasn’t been sorted out, it seems pretty clear that one or more animal species at the Wuhan Seafood Market (which sold much more than just aquatic animals and their products) was the source of the novel coronavirus. Just like SARS.
Once again, this has raised concerns about markets where diverse live
The situation with this novel coronavirus in China is rapidly evolving, with more aggressive control measures locally and lots of planning elsewhere. Recently, snakes were suggested as the origin of this virus, which was surprising and contrary to the assumption that this would be traced back to bats.
Information (as well as speculation) now
The recent reports of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus that’s been identified in China certainly raise the stakes. While this virus still seems to be less transmissible and less virulent than its relative, the SARS coronavirus, it’s pretty early to have a lot of confidence in that. Lessons seem to have been learned
This is a smaller outbreak than the puppy outbreak from the previous post, probably in large part because fewer people have contact with geckos, but… Contact with reptiles such as geckos has been a known risk factor for human salmonellosis for years. That’s a big part of the reason for recommending that high risk
