Centers For Disease Control And Prevention | featured news

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday warned state and local health officials about potential infections from a deadly virus previously unseen in humans that has now sickened 14 people and killed 8.

Hospitals need to take action against the spread of a deadly, antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The bacteria kill up to half of patients who are infected.

Influenza has officially reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with 7.3 percent of deaths last week caused by pneumonia and the flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. That is just above the epidemic threshold of 7.2 percent. Nine of the 10 U.S. regions had "elevated" flu activity, confirming that seasonal flu has spread across the country and reached high levels several weeks before the usual time of late January or February. The other region, the Southwest and California, had "normal" flu activity last week.

Flu season in the United States is having its earliest start in nearly a decade and health officials say this season could be a bad one. Although flu is always unpredictable, the early nature of the cases and the predominant type circulating this year could make this a severe flu season, said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of low-income preschoolers who qualify as obese or "extremely obese" has dropped over the last decade, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.

Seven more people have been diagnosed with fungal meningitis linked to possibly tainted vials of a steroid medication, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday, bringing the total number of cases to 205 in 14 states.

Two more people have died from fungal meningitis linked to steroid injections, bringing the total to 14 deaths since the outbreak began last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said on Thursday.

Some 8 in 10 sexually active teen boys reported using a condom the first time they had sex, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds.

Fifteen people have now died after consuming cantaloupe contaminated with the listeria monocytogenes bacteria, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. At least 84 people in 19 states have become ill with the bacteria, the agency said. And the number of illnesses could still grow, added the CDC, citing reporting lags and how the disease can develop slowly in some people.

Young adults, long the group most likely to be uninsured, are gaining health coverage faster than expected since the 2010 health law began allowing parents to cover them as dependents on family policies. Three new surveys, including two released on Wednesday, show that adults under 26 made significant and unique gains in insurance coverage in 2010 and the first half of 2011. One of them, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that in the first quarter of 2011 there were 900,000 fewer uninsured adults in the 19-to-25 age bracket than in 2010.