As of Friday, Jan. 17, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began conducting enhanced health screenings to detect ill travelers traveling to the United States on direct or connecting flights from Wuhan, China. The CDC said the screenings are in response to an outbreak in China caused by a new and dangerous coronavirus.

Want to discourage employees who have the flu from coming to work and spreading the virus to others in your workforce? Provide them with paid leave and the option of telework. That’s according to a study on work attendance during acute respiratory illness (ARI), which found that those provisions tend to keep sick employees away from the workplace and also help them retain some work productivity.

Although the CDC recommends that people get vaccinated for the flu early in the fall, getting vaccinated now can still be beneficial in protecting you from the flu virus. Furthermore, vaccination should continue to be offered throughout the flu season, even into January or later.

The CDC says it has not yet determined the source of an outbreak of E. coli that has so far sickened people in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maryland, Montana, Washington and Wisconsin. The CDC is coordinating with public health and regulatory officials in those states, along with the FDA, in its investigation into the outbreak.

Every flu season, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) gets questions from pregnant workers about the flu and flu vaccines. Here are the answers to some of your most frequently asked questions, including getting the flu shot at work and administering flu shots to patients.

Is flu on the rise among workers? Those working in public health track the number of flu-related hospital and doctor visits, but many people suffer symptoms and don’t seek medical treatment. So, how do we know how many people are sick with the flu during a flu pandemic or a seasonal epidemic? Each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses a mathematical model to estimate the total number of flu illnesses in the United States, but this is not done until the end of the flu season.

The staff of Industrial Safety & Hygiene News wishes you a happy 4th of July. Although many people will get today off work others – especially public service personnel who perform vital services – will be on the job. Whatever your work status, we hope you get a chance to enjoy the festivities and fireworks, grilling and sunshine, friends and family. There’s still plenty of summer left, so we thought we’d provide you with some reminders about how to enjoy the season safely.

The rise of measles cases overall in the U.S. has been widely reported on and includes, this year alone, outbreaks in California, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Although the disease was thought to be eradicated in the United States at the start of the 21st century, a resurgence has occurred in recent years, attributed in part to a resistance to vaccinations that stems from a study linking vaccinations to autism which has since been discredited.

Although the U.S. has had considerable success at preventing and controlling rabies during the past 80 years, exposure to rabid animals sends approximately 55,000 Americans to hospital emergency departments each year. Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, said that vaccination programs for dogs and the availability of post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, the vaccine and medicine people get to prevent rabies if they may have been exposed to a rabid animal, have contributed to a 95% decrease in annual rabies deaths in people.