Helen Branswell covers issues broadly related to infectious diseases, including outbreaks, preparedness, research, and vaccine development. Follow her on Mastodon and Bluesky. You can reach Helen on ...

Five years removed from the onset of Covid-19's global sweep, research into another subset of the coronavirus has scientists worried about another possible pandemic. This virus originated in bats, as ...

Bird Flu News: After battling the deadly pandemic-causing COVID-19 virus for over 5 years, the United States is now grappling with the highly transmissible H5N1 virus or bird flu virus. In a recent ...

Helen Branswell covers issues broadly related to infectious diseases, including outbreaks, preparedness, research, and vaccine development. Follow her on Mastodon and Bluesky. You can reach Helen on ...

Scientists have discovered that a rapidly-mutating, species-jumping virus is contributing to mass honeybee deaths that are threatening the U.S.'s multi-billion-dollar agricultural industry, honey ...

Any time a person catches H5N1, or bird flu, their infection is a chance for the virus to mutate in the wrong direction. When someone dies from the bird flu—as an elderly Louisiana man did on Jan. 6, ...

The bird flu virus strain that is rampant among dairy cows in the U.S. may only need one mutation for it to be able to spread among humans, according to a study published this week. Scientists said ...

The virus that causes COVID-19 is accumulating genetic mutations, one of which may have made it more contagious. The number of virus strains present in each zip code in Houston during the second wave ...

BEIJING, April 22 -- Chinese scientists have deciphered the genetic code of a number of samples of the SARS virus and say their research could provide important clues as to whether the microbe will ...