Notes from the Field: Mpox Cluster Caused by Tecovirimat-Resistant Monkeypox Virus - Five States, October 2023-February 2024.

The antiviral drug tecovirimat* has been used extensively to treat U.S. mpox cases since the start of a global outbreak in 2022.

In-field detection and characterization of B/Victoria lineage deletion variant viruses causing early influenza activity and an outbreak in Louisiana, 2019.

Background: In 2019, the Louisiana Department of Health reported an early influenza B/Victoria (B/VIC) virus outbreak.

Method: As it was an atypically large outbreak, we deployed to Louisiana to investigate it using genomics and a triplex real-time RT-PCR assay to detect three antigenically distinct B/VIC lineage variant viruses.

Results: The investigation indicated that B/VIC V1A.

Extragenital Sexually Transmitted Infection Testing Among Louisiana Parish Health Units, 2016-2019.

Background: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that men who have sex with men (MSM) get tested annually for urethral and rectal chlamydia (CT) and gonorrhea (NG), and pharyngeal NG. There are no national recommendations to screen women and heterosexual men at extragenital sites. We assessed extragenital CT/NG screening among men and women at Louisiana's Parish Health Units (PHU).

Rapid Diagnostic Testing for Response to the Monkeypox Outbreak - Laboratory Response Network, United States, May 17-June 30, 2022.

As part of public health preparedness for infectious disease threats, CDC collaborates with other U.S. public health officials to ensure that the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) has diagnostic tools to detect Orthopoxviruses, the genus that includes Variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox.

Serial Laboratory Testing for SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Incarcerated and Detained Persons in a Correctional and Detention Facility - Louisiana, April-May 2020.

Transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), by asymptomatic and presymptomatic persons poses important challenges to controlling spread of the disease, particularly in congregate settings such as correctional and detention facilities (1). On March 29, 2020, a staff member in a correctional and detention facility in Louisiana developed symptoms and later had a positive test result for SARS-CoV-2. During April 2-May 7, two additional cases were detected among staff members, and 36 cases were detected among incarcerated and detained persons at the facility; these persons were removed from dormitories and isolated, and the five dormitories that they had resided in before diagnosis were quarantined.

Expanded Molecular Testing on Patients with Suspected West Nile Virus Disease.

Most diagnostic testing for West Nile virus (WNV) disease is accomplished using serologic testing, which is subject to cross-reactivity, may require cumbersome confirmatory testing, and may fail to detect infection in specimens collected early in the course of illness. The objective of this project was to determine whether a combination of molecular and serologic testing would increase detection of WNV disease cases in acute serum samples. A total of 380 serum specimens collected ≤7 days after onset of symptoms and submitted to four state public health laboratories for WNV diagnostic testing in 2014 and 2015 were tested.

Severe diarrhea caused by cholera toxin-producing vibrio cholerae serogroup O75 infections acquired in the southeastern United States.

Background: From 2003 through 2007, Vibrio cholerae serogroup O75 strains possessing the cholera toxin gene were isolated from 6 patients with severe diarrhea, including 3 in Georgia, 2 in Alabama, and 1 in South Carolina. These reports represent the first identification of V. cholerae O75 as a cause of illness in the United States.