[...] Siberia’s vast wilderness harbors natural reservoirs of pathogens, from fleas that spread plague found in marmots and squirrels to ticks bearing encephalitis to the ancient pathogens frozen in the layer of permafrost.

The Russian institute where the lab technician worked was set up in the 1930s as a plague prevention station to curb outbreaks of the deadly bacterial disease that periodically affected local populations as well as people in neighboring Mongolia and China’s Manchuria region. The disease, for which early antibiotic treatments were pioneered that decade, could be spread through contact with marmots, which were hunted for meat and sometimes eaten undercooked or even raw, like in a 2019 case of a Mongolian couple.

The settlement of Siberia, which had a 19th-century gold rush and served as a place of exile for criminals under the Russian Empire, connected the remote region to the western parts of the empire and raised the risk of plague spreading farther west, much as epidemic diseases from European Russia, such as cholera and typhus, easily reached Siberia through migrating workers and because of the near-total absence of medical care.

A study published this year suggested that the bands of hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Lake Baikal region were the victims of the earliest known plague outbreak, about 5,500 years ago. To this day, plague remains endemic in parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East, where the bacterium persists naturally among wild rodents.

Human cases in Russia are rare, however. The country’s last recorded human infection was in 2016, when a 10-year-old boy in the Altai region contracted plague after contact with a marmot.

The threat of dangerous disease comes not only from wildlife but also from the millennia-old microbes and viruses stored in the permafrost that underlies the vast majority of the region.

About a decade ago, a group of researchers isolated “zombie viruses” from Siberian permafrost, raising fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered by a disease from the distant past.

The permafrost, a dark, cold, oxygenless mass, is a perfect storage container for biological material, and scientists believe that at its deepest levels it may contain viruses up to a million years old, far older than Homo sapiens, the modern human species.

In 2023, the researchers — led by Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University in France — published a landmark study in the journal Viruses documenting the revival of ancient viruses from the Siberian permafrost.

The report warned that accelerating permafrost thaw caused by climate change poses a potential public health threat by releasing dormant pathogens. Claverie’s team isolated 13 ancient viruses taken from locations across Siberia, belonging to five new viral groups. The oldest, a Pandoravirus yedoma, had been frozen solid beneath an underground lake for 48,500 years, while other, younger strains (around 27,000 years old) were extracted from the remains of a woolly mammoth’s stomach and from mammoth wool.

Other researchers have noted that although the revived viruses were able to infect amoebas in lab conditions, it is unclear whether such viruses could infect animals or humans, or find a host outside a controlled laboratory.

Claverie and his team cautioned at the time that unknowns remain buried in the permafrost, and a warming climate, which would also open previously untouched lands to deeper development, could expose people to pathogens that affect humans.

In 2016, climate change played a role in unleashing anthrax in the remote Yamalo-Nenets region of Siberia, experts said at the time. Unusually high temperatures that summer, soaring to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, melted permafrost, and according to one hypothesis, exposed an infected reindeer carcass. The pathogen spread to living reindeer and eventually to a community of nomadic herders, where a 12-year-old boy died. [...]

Measles is sometimes dismissed as an unserious disease or ‘just a rash.’ But the highly contagious virus can cause serious illness not just during initial infection but years later, after patients appear to have made a full recovery.

This delayed complication, a rare, almost invariably fatal brain disease known as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), is highlighted in a new report published yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.

For the report, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 20 children from the Philippines, where measles outbreaks occurred in 2010–11, 2013, and 2018-19. The most recent outbreak was the largest in the World Health Organization Western Pacific Region. All children in the report were admitted to the pediatric hospital in Quezon City from 2007 through 2022.

Larger wave of SSPE may be on horizon

All four children with estimated measles infection dates corresponding to the 2018-19 outbreak were hospitalized between 2020 and 2022, two to three years after their initial infections. Because SSPE is latent for years after initial infection, those cases “most likely represent the leading edge of a postoutbreak wave,” notes the report, and “additional cases might emerge over the coming years.”

Ten of the 19 children in the study with an estimable infection age contracted measles before they were old enough for routine vaccination at nine months (when the Philippines schedules its first routine dose). The median age at hospital admission for SSPE was 6.2 years.

Eighty-five percent of the children had received at least one measles-containing vaccine, but the report emphasizes that SSPE results from naturally circulating measles that spreads between people, not from the weakened measles virus used in vaccines.

First-dose vaccine coverage in the Philippines declined from 92% in 2004-07 to 64% in 2021. Reported measles cases climbed from 2,428 in 2017 to 48,525 in 2019.

All 20 children admitted to the hospital for SSPE had worsening brain and nervous system function. All 17 screened for measles antibodies in their cerebrospinal fluid tested positive, and all 13 screened for measles antibodies in their blood tested positive. [...]

Still, the findings underscore the need for stronger measles and SSPE surveillance and sustained two-dose vaccination coverage, including supplementary immunization during outbreaks, the authors conclude.

Measles infections make people miserable for up to two long weeks, commonly causing dangerously high fevers, a painful sensitivity to light and, of course, a tell-tale red rash.

Sufferers who escape without developing pneumonia, brain swelling, or other serious complications may believe the worst is over. 

Yet the measles virus has only gotten started.

The virus also damages the immune system, leaving people vulnerable to other infections for up to five years.

“The rash and the fever, that’s the tip of the iceberg,” Michael J. Mina, MD, PhD, coauthor of two seminal studies in Science on the effect of measles on the immune system, told CIDRAP News. “The majority of the damage being done is under the surface.”

The measles virus hijacks the immune system, using specialized memory cells to make copies of itself before blowing them up, Mina said. By deleting the body’s memory of earlier infections, measles causes a condition called “immune amnesia.”

Without those memory cells, the body essentially forgets how to fight off infections it defeated before. That leaves people newly vulnerable to bacteria and viruses against which they were once protected, either through infection or vaccination.

The grandfather and grandmother died at their home in the commune of Andranolalina, and the grandson died at the hospital in Midongy Atsimo. Three members of the same family who, according to initial reports, died from pneumonic plague. As soon as the cases were reported, health authorities mobilized teams in the commune to carry out response activities, including disinfection and pest control. Nearly 200 people who had been in contact with suspected or confirmed cases are also receiving prophylactic treatment.

According to information provided by a local health official, three patients arrived at the Midongy Atsimo hospital on October 9. One of them, a man in his twenties, died, while the other two remain hospitalized and are continuing their treatment. The other two deaths occurred within the same family in the community toward the end of September. In total, five cases of pneumonic plague have been recorded in this commune.

Community mobilization, however, still faces a challenge. Despite awareness campaigns, some people delay seeking medical attention and only go to the hospital when symptoms become severe, our source laments. To limit the spread of the disease, a team from the local Joint Planning Body visited the area to raise awareness among residents.

Around fifteen homes were also sprayed with disinfectant. Contact tracing and outreach efforts are continuing. Health authorities also indicate that surveillance has been stepped up, especially since Midongy Atsimo is one of the country's plague hotspots, particularly between September and December.

Vigilance is also being maintained in Iakora, where a suspected case of bubonic plague has been reported. As in Midongy Atsimo, rapid diagnostic tests performed on patients in Iakora have come back positive, in addition to samples sent to the Pasteur Institute of Madagascar. Laboratory results are awaited to confirm the diagnosis. In the meantime, response activities are already underway on the ground to limit the risk of further spread.

Oct 15 (Reuters) - The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention ​and Control (ECDC) said on Thursday that as ‌of early October, 18 European countries had reported 1,855 people being infected by the West Nile virus ​since the beginning of 2026, including 141 ​deaths.

"In 2026, WNV has reached record levels ⁠in Europe, with the number of human ​cases and animal outbreaks surpassing historical records," Giusi ​Amore, Scientific Officer in EFSA’s Biological Hazards and Animal Health & Welfare unit, told Reuters.

The number of human cases ​in Europe increased by 769 since the ​previous report in September

The number of cases reported in the ‌EU/EEA, ⁠at 1,715, is well above the average of 693 cases over the past decade, the report says

Greece and France reported their highest numbers ​of human ​cases ever, ⁠at 445 and 144 respectively, while Italy remains the most affected European ​country with 748 cases

Fifteen European countries ​reported ⁠511 outbreaks in animals from the horse family and 595 outbreaks among birds

Transmission season of the ⁠mosquito-borne ​virus is nearing its end, ​but low-level transmission may continue in the coming weeks...