If you're looking for new posts about viruses and virus-related stuff (which coudl be anything really!), from now on please go over to the new site with its easy-to-remember address... virologydownunder.com Hope to see you there! Cheers, -Ian© 2013-2017 Ian M. Mackay. PhD. This content was originally published at http://virologydownunder.blogspot.com.au/...

Back in April, a Spanish/Dutch collaborative study came out looking at whether pigs deliberately infected with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) might be able to transmit that virus to other pigs.[1] Turns out they can, but so weakly that the authors concluded pigs are unlikely to be a source of virus in the wild. Alpacas have...

https://theconversation.com/how-we-change-the-organisms-that-infect-us-74625?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterbutton#comment_1338853 We (Dr @kat_arden and I) were invited to contribute one part to a four-part series in The Conversation this week - and after a lot of no...yes/no/yes from yours truly (I do that a lot these days), we put this piece...

Another year, another outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) overcome in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the help of a mix of expert local skill and knowledge, isolation and rapid global response. The World Health Organization have summed up the end of an outbreak in which 4 died, 5 cases were lab confirmed and there were a total of 8 likely...

After 19 years, our furry family member had to leave us this Wednesday. His quality of life was decreasing and he had stopped eating - he made the call and he let us know. He is missed enormously and remembered daily by his human family, for many things. He saw two PhDs completed; he sat through the writing of 70+ papers, a book, 14 chapters, 11 reviews...

Sometimes, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is detected in a person who is not ill.  Weird huh?  Not really. This is the result of laboratory testing of contacts of a known and infected person during the process of containing a potential outbreak. For me personally, this is one big question about new or emerging viral infections...