Archive for July, 2019
CDC: The year’s total number of measles cases = 1,109
Tuesday, July 9th, 20192010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Measles Cases | 63 | 220 | 55 | 187 | 667 | 188 | 86 | 120 | 372 | 1109 |
“…..The states that have reported cases to CDC are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington.…”
Chinese researchers are undertaking a mass drug administration, or MDA, which involves giving antimalarial pills to every man, woman, and child in Kenya all at once.
Monday, July 8th, 2019“…..But MDA is controversial for reasons of both science and ethics. There are concerns that it could lead to increased drug resistance, which could see malaria rise to levels not seen in decades. Others believe it’s unethical to give antimalarials to people who may not even have the disease—or who don’t wish to take them—though such qualms are dismissed in Kenya and elsewhere……”
Pakistan is short of at least 800,000 doses of rabies vaccine
Monday, July 8th, 2019“…….Health officials in the province of Sindh said doctors in the city of Karachi were seeing as many as 150 dog bite cases a day and 11 people have died so far this year……
The shortage was disclosed amid similar shortfalls in neighbouring India…….
Rabies kills around 60,000 people a year and is present in more than 150 countries, but is considered a neglected disease mainly affecting the rural poor…..”
7/7/2005: Suicide bombs are detonated in three crowded London subways and one bus during the peak of the city’s rush hour killing 56 and wounding approximately 700.
Sunday, July 7th, 2019A Taliban car bomb targeting the provincial facility of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency in Ghazni killed at least 12 and wounding up to 90 more
Sunday, July 7th, 2019California: When will The Big One come?
Sunday, July 7th, 2019Tectonic Summary
The July 6th, 2019, 03:19 UTC (July 5th 20:19 locally) Mw 7.1 earthquake in eastern California, southwest of Searles Valley, occurred as the result of shallow strike slip faulting in the crust of the North America plate. Focal mechanism solutions for the earthquake indicate rupture occurred on a steeply dipping fault as the result of either right lateral slip on a plane striking NW-SE, or as left lateral slip on a plane striking SW-NE. At the location of this earthquake, approximately 150 km northeast of San Andreas Fault – the major plate boundary in the region – the Pacific plate moves to the northwest with respect to the North America plate at a rate of approximately 48 mm/yr. The location of the earthquake falls within the Eastern California shear zone, a region of distributed faulting associated with motion across the Pacific:North America plate boundary, and an area of high seismic hazard. More detailed studies will be required to precisely identify the causative fault associated with this event, though seismic activity over the past 2 days has been occurring on two conjugate fault structures in the Airport Lake Fault Zone.
This earthquake occurs approximately 34 hours after and 11 km northwest of a M 6.4 event in the same region, on July 4th, 2019, at 17:33 UTC. The July 4th event was preceded by a short series of small foreshocks (including a M4.0 earthquake 30 minutes prior), and was followed by a robust sequence of aftershocks, including almost 250 M 2.5+ earthquakes (up until the M 7.1 event). Those events aligned with both nodal planes (NE-SW and NW-SE) of the focal mechanism solution of the M 6.4 event, which was very similar in faulting style to today’s M 7.1 earthquake. The sequence includes two other M5+ earthquakes, one of which occurred 20 seconds before the M 7.1 event. The M 7.1 earthquake occurred at the NW extension of the prior sequence.
While commonly plotted as points on maps, earthquakes of this size are more appropriately described as slip over a larger fault area. Strike-slip-faulting events of the size of the July 6, 2019, earthquake are typically about 70×15 km (length x width).
This region of eastern California has hosted numerous moderate sized earthquakes. Over the past 40 years, prior to the July 4th event, 8 other M5+ earthquakes have occurred within 50 km of the July 6th, 2019 earthquake. The largest of these was a M 5.8 event on September 20, 1995, just 3 km to the west of today’s event, which was felt strongly in the China Lake-Ridgecrest area, and more broadly from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
“Zika has completely fallen off the radar, but the lack of media attention doesn’t mean it’s disappeared,” said Dr. Karin Nielson, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at U.C.L.A.
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019Document:
Countries and territories with established Aedes aegypti mosquito vectors, but no known cases of Zika virus transmission:
AFRO
Benin; Botswana; Chad; Comoros; Congo; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Gambia; Ghana; Guinea; Kenya; Liberia; Madagascar; Malawi; Mali; Mauritius; Mayotte; Mozambique; Namibia; Niger; Réunion; Rwanda; Sao Tome and Principe; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; South Africa; South Sudan; Togo; United Republic of Tanzania; Zambia; Zimbabwe
32
AMRO/PAHO Uruguay 1 EMRO Djibouti; Egypt; Oman; Pakistan; Saudi Arabia; Somalia; Sudan; Yemen 8 EURO Georgia; Região Autónoma da Madeira – Portugal; Russian Federation; Turkey 4 SEARO Bhutan; Nepal; Sri Lanka; Timor-Leste 4
WPRO
Australia; Brunei Darussalam; China; Christmas Island; Guam; Kiribati; Nauru; Niue; Northern Mariana Islands (Commonwealth of the); Tokelau; Tuvalu; Wallis and Futuna
12
61
The humanitarian crisis in Yemen continues
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019“The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said….that essential services in Yemen are on the verge of total collapse as the war enters its fifth year. It added that only 51 per cent of the country’s health facilities are still working in full, although they suffer from a severe shortage of medicines, equipment and staff.
“As the conflict in Yemen enters its fifth year, the salaries of more than 1.25 million government employees, including doctors, social workers and other public sector workers, have been suspended for more than two and a half years” the organization said in a report, explaining that the suspension has led to the closure or reduction of working hours of vital facilities such as health facilities, schools, water and sanitation facilities and other essential social services…..”