Two Oklahoma counties where 53 residents have become infected with Campylobacter and Shiga-toxin producing E. coli still don't have answers, KFOR 4 News reports.

The highly transmissible omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for about three-fourths of all COVID-19 cases reported nationwide, according to the CDC's COVID-19 data tracker weekly review published Feb. 10.

Mandatory nurse staffing ratios are a temporary solution to a larger issue and will not bring about the respect the profession deserves, Kathleen Bartholomew, MN, RN, a national speaker and nurse advocate, wrote in an op-ed for Nurse.org. Instead, nurses should be advocating for charge nurses to have the authority to set ratios on an hourly basis and "get as many nurses as they request. Period," she said. 

Dayton (Ohio) Children's Hospital deployed gunshot detection technology which can activate security measures at a moment's notice, SDM Magazine reported Feb. 9.

Avian flu has begun to spread to mammals, including minks, otters, foxes and sea lions, and WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, warned that the risk to humans may begin to rise.

Job flexibility is at the center of hospitals' and health systems' strategies to welcome back nurses who left during earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic — and some are seeing significant progress. 

Although rare, surgical tools or items are unintentionally left inside a patient in about 1,500 out of 28 million surgery operations each year in the U.S., which can result in significant harm. As part of a national workgroup effort, 114 healthcare facilities participated in evidence-based research to identify the best ways to reduce instances of retained surgical items in patient procedures.

Shower curtains, wallpaper, paints, toys and makeup are just a few of the items in daily life that contain phthalates, a common chemical used in plastics. Now, research suggests that the chemical may be traced to a higher risk of diabetes in white women — who were found to have anywhere between a 30 to 63 percent higher incidence of diabetes, according to the study.

The occurrence of rhinovirus and enterovirus among children rose slightly between 2019 and 2020 — surprising some and revealing new insights for pediatricians. 

North Carolina has been the site of several mass shootings throughout the last several years, and Atrium Health, one of the state's largest health systems, has in turn seen an increase in the number of gunshot victims. Between 2017 and 2021, the health system had a nearly 54 percent increase in gunshot victims treated at its facilities.

It's been roughly two months since the combined hospitalization rate for flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus peaked. The decline, however, has only meant a minor sigh of relief for hospital workers. 

The Minnesota Department of Health announced Feb. 8 that it will begin screening all newborns for a viral infection that is the most common infectious cause of birth defects in the U.S., making it the first state in the nation to do so.

Health experts from the University of Washington in Seattle recently released research about growing cases of drug-resistant Shigella among two populations: gay men and homeless individuals.

Retention and recruitment of nurses across the nation is something health systems and hospitals continue to struggle to maintain. It's an ongoing issue that calls for a "great reevaluation," Tamera Rosenbaum, MSN, RN, the chief nursing officer at the University of Colorado Health's Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, told Fox 21 News.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is at risk of losing Medicare reimbursements due to patient safety concerns, Bay Area News Group reported Feb. 7.

Athens-based University of Georgia researchers developed a first-of-its-kind fungal vaccine, and they say it has shown promising results in animal trials.

The rise in severe strep A infections that some children's hospitals saw in the last few months of 2022 may mark a return to pre-pandemic levels, the CDC said in a Feb. 2 update. 

Health officials worldwide are keeping tabs on the spread of H5N1 avian flu among mammals — sparking concern about the possibility of animal to human infection.

When a patient in California was diagnosed with a rare and highly fatal brain-eating amoebic infection, physicians concocted a treatment plan that included nitroxoline — the drug most commonly known for treating urinary tract infections — which ultimately led to the patient's survival.

The discovery of a protein showed signs of being a possible therapeutic target for monoclonal antibody treatment in sepsis cases as well as other infectious diseases, including COVID-19, according to research led by Haichao Wang, PhD, a professor and director of the laboratory of emergency medicine at Northwell Health's Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y.