Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences @livuni-ives.bsky.social · 6h

First evidence in the UK of breeding aegypti mosquito – the main spreader of dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

Dr Marcus Blagrove writes for The Conversation highlighting the need for enhanced mosquito surveillance and proactive strategies to mitigate future risks.

bit.ly/3KKlGQP

#TeamLivUni

A news title card that reads ’First evidence in the UK of breeding aegypti mosquito – the main spreader of dengue, chikungunya and Zika’ with an image of an aegypti mosquito on a person’s skin.

4 5

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 2d

The WHO has verified the elimination of both measles & rubella in all Pacific Island countries, alongside rubella elimination in Japan. The achievement follows 2 decades of coordinated immunisation campaigns, regional surveillance, and high routine vaccine coverage. buff.ly/EpFb7HK
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Rubella elimination verified in Japan, and measles and rubella elimination verified in Pacific island countries and areas

The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that the 21 Pacific island countries and areas that are part of the WHO Western Pacific Region have collectively been verified as having eliminated…

buff.ly

4 170 470

Reposted by Robyn Hall

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control @ecdc.europa.eu · 18d

Stay up to date with the latest in epidemiology – fast, reliable, straight to your inbox.

Subscribe to the #ECDCHighlights newsletter 👉 www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/newsletter

#IDsky #EpiSky #PublicHealth #Epidemiology

4 7

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Michelle Wille @duckswabber.bsky.social · 22d

First record of HPAI in a sheep in March 2025, identified on an infected poultry premises w ducks, chickens, turkeys and geese in Great Britain. Serological positivity across repeated sampling and the presence of viral RNA in milk samples
👉 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

2 2 14

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 23d

Does drinking beer make you more attractive to mosquitoes?

Experiments performed at a large music festival suggest the bloodsuckers are more attracted to hedonistic attendees

www.science.org/cont...
1/3

Does drinking beer make you more attractive to mosquitoes?

Experiments performed at a large music festival suggest the bloodsuckers are more attracted to hedonistic attendees

www.science.org

2 8 18

Reposted by Robyn Hall

CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · Sep 12

Quick takes: Mosquito-borne illness in Europe, polio in 3 nations, avian flu hits more US poultry

France and Italy continue to battle chikungunya outbreaks and the spread of dengue, as Greece probes possible local malaria cases.

Quick takes: Mosquito-borne illness in Europe, polio in 3 nations, avian flu hits more US poultry

France and Italy continue to battle chikungunya outbreaks and the spread of dengue, as Greece probes possible local malaria cases.

www.cidrap.umn.edu

9 14

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Adrian Esterman @profesterman.bsky.social · Sep 11

Australia has approved its first vaccine designed to protect koalas from chlamydia. This single‑dose vaccine, developed by the University of the Sunshine Coast, reduces infection, prevents disease progression, and even reverses symptoms in some cases.

3 6 47

Robyn Hall @viroepivet.bsky.social · Sep 9

Still won't catch me drinking raw milk from infected cows though!

1 1

Reposted by Robyn Hall

ESCAIDE @escaide.eu · Sep 8

Field epidemiologists often work in challenging conditions, where time and resources are limited.

Mobile labs are transforming their work by bringing diagnostics to outbreak sites and cutting wait times from days to hours.

Celebrate #WorldFieldEpidemiologyDay and learn more: youtu.be/z3vJQaNVXBw

Side session: The expanding role of mobile laboratories in global health crises | #ESCAIDE2024

YouTube video by ECDC

youtu.be

4 5

Robyn Hall @viroepivet.bsky.social · Sep 8

#onehealth @cirad.bsky.social #zoonosis #virology #fieldepi

Robyn Hall @viroepivet.bsky.social · Sep 8

An interesting ZOLA (Zoonotic Risk Mitigation in Live Animal Markets) PhD research project for a Bangladeshi candidate

[email protected] for more info

1 4 2

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Biocheck.Gent @biocheck.bsky.social · Sep 4

Biocheck was mentioned in #QualityMeatScotlandMagazine for its ability to provide science-based insights into on-farm practices of #Scotland’s pig industry as well as help farmers & vets to make informed decisions which is exactly what we aim for. 🚀

Read the full article 👉 shorturl.at/zS3NQ

1 1

Reposted by Robyn Hall

MicroSeq2025 @microseqasm.bsky.social · Sep 3

Peter presents the Australian Biosecurity Genomic Database 🖥️ exactly the solution to this problem! Now you can easily compare your data to this database and quickly identify notifiable pathogens. Bonus: instructions for how to report them if you find them! Incredible initiative.

1 1 2

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Translational and Computational Infection Research @compvirol.bsky.social · Sep 4

📖Publication Alert🚨

Our PhD student @sjanshoff.bsky.social published a paper on the prevalence of the emerging Alongshanvirus (ALSV) in horses across the Americas, Europe and Oceania 🐎🌍

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#TRACiR #virology #scicomm #teamscience

2 2 4

Robyn Hall @viroepivet.bsky.social · Sep 4

Rude 😅 (canberran here)

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Tara Murphy @taramurphy.bsky.social · Sep 3

Interested in owning a part of Australian history? The Molonglo Observatory site is for sale:

www.realestate.com.au/property-hou...

Don't worry, we stopped scientific operations a few years ago and gave it a suitable farewell (see next post).

#RadioAstronomy

Four pictures of the Molonglo Telescope site, from a Ray White real estate advert. The main top image shows the telescope infrastructure, extending out across farming land.

8 12 40

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Vaccine Safety Initiative @vaccinesafety.bsky.social · Aug 25

Stopping Spillover at the Source: #OneHealth Meets #Pandemic #Prevention
🛎️ A new roadmap in Emerging Infectious Diseases outlines how investigating and intercepting virus spillovers early—using integrated, cross‑sector efforts (One Health approach)—can help prevent future pandemics.
#ActNow

A visual guide to One Health investigations of spillovers to assist with primary pandemic prevention. One Health investigations trace spillover events backward from detection, systematically uncovering the causal chain that led to spillover. This process involves characterizing the pathogen, contexts, and risks for transmission and determining the reservoir hosts and environmental conditions that enabled the event.

1 3 2

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Michelle Wille @duckswabber.bsky.social · Aug 25

Cattle B3.13 H5N1 rapidly accumulated adaptations in polymerase genes = better replication in bovine cells/tissues: PB2 M631L in all sequences + maps to the polymerase-ANP32 interface, PA K497R in majority sequences
👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1 4 7

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Michelle Wille @duckswabber.bsky.social · Aug 25

Reassortment of HPAI produced high fitness genotypes w enhanced capacity for transmission. Also host dependant advantages, such as EA-2022-BB in gulls (presumably underpinnining massive 2022 seabird outbreaks).
👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

3 5

Reposted by Robyn Hall

European Virus Bioinformatics Center @evbc.bsky.social · Aug 25

BEAST X accelerates Bayesian phylogenetic and phylodynamic inference with enhanced scalability and geo spread modeling.
#BEASTX #Phylodynamics #VirusEvolution
👤EVBC: Philippe Lemey
🔗

BEAST X for Bayesian phylogenetic, phylogeographic and phylodynamic inference - Nature Methods

BEAST X advances Bayesian phylogenetic, phylogeographic and phylodynamic analysis by incorporating a broad range of complex models and leveraging advanced algorithms and techniques to boost statistical inference.

doi.org

6 12

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Angus O’Ferrall @angusoferrall.bsky.social · Aug 23

Short blog post on linking One Health pathogen surveillance through snail faecal sampling -> www.lstmed.ac.uk/news-events/...

#AMR #Schistosomiasis #OneHealth

Connecting pathogen surveillance: freshwater snails may contribute to AMR dissemination as well as parasite transmission

We recently proposed a rationale for connecting AMR surveillance with schistosomiasis research. This approach not only optimises sample usage but also reflects the interconnected nature of parasite

www.lstmed.ac.uk

1 5

Reposted by Robyn Hall

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Aug 22

Will a #virus spillover into a new host species lead to dead-end infection or sustained #epidemic? This study uses a nematode-virus model to show that early #spillover traits, especially infection prevalence & shedding, are important predictors of viral persistence @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3UCnZHp

Top: Experimental design depicting the passage experiment and the methods for quantifying infection prevalence, shedding ability, and infection prevalence in spillover populations. Middle: Host strains are ordered by the number of virus-positive plates over the course of the experiment (positive control C. elegans strain JU1580 set farthest right). Passage 0 denotes the exposure population. Note that the extraction procedure for passage 0 plates was different from the subsequent passages; many adult worms were removed from passage 0 populations to measure infection prevalence, intensity, and shedding (see methods). Bottom: Strains differed in epidemiological characteristics including B) maximum likelihood prevalence of infection, C) infection intensity (corrected median Ct), D) maximum likelihood shedding ability (the probability that 1 infected worm could cause visible fluorescence on a shedding plate), and E) relative susceptibility.

1 9 23

Robyn Hall @viroepivet.bsky.social · Aug 21

📌

Robyn Hall @viroepivet.bsky.social · Aug 21

I just found out Animal Health Canada is on bluesky! 🎉
Doing some great things around EAD preparedness in Canada 🦠

Animal Health Canada | Santé animale Canada @ahc-sac.bsky.social · Jan 28

CanSpotASF is an enhanced African Swine Fever surveillance program in Canada targeting swine populations, such as commercial swine, smallholders, pet pigs and wild pigs.

Learn more: animalhealthcanada.ca/canspotasf

2 4

Reposted by Robyn Hall

Animal Health Canada | Santé animale Canada @ahc-sac.bsky.social · Aug 21

Have you registered for the 2025 AHC Forum? 🎉 Join us Sept 23–24 in Ottawa or online as we celebrate 15 years of connecting Canada’s animal health and welfare community with expert insights, bold discussions and future-focused ideas.

👉 Register now: https://animalhealthcanada.ca/forum-2025

2 2