The Illinois Department of Public Health is investigating a potential hantavirus case in an Illinois resident that is not linked to the deadly cruise ship outbreak, the health department announced Tuesday.

Three passengers have died and at least four people are sick in what health officials say is an outbreak of hantavirus, which usually spreads by inhaling contaminated rodent droppings.

The network monitors disease outbreaks across the globe and prepares countries to respond to those outbreaks.

The COVID-19 variant that may be driving a recent rise in cases in some parts of the world has earned a new nickname: “razor blade throat” COVID.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health alert to doctors on Monday to increase awareness of the international spread of measles, and urged them to vaccinate infants a few months ahead of the typical schedule if families are planning to go abroad.

For years, researchers say there was very little advancement in the field. But in recent decades, prosthetic limbs have come a long way. And at the multidisciplinary Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in downtown Chicago, the next generation of bionic prosthetics are being developed.

Although the common cold doesn’t get as many names – at least not the ones that make headlines – the specificity with which scientists talk about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, matters because it is still such a problem.

Aspartame is a popular artificial sweetener found in thousands of products like diet sodas and sugar-free gum. It’s considered one of the most studied food additives in existence.

The U.N. health agency’s officials said that even though the emergency phase was over, the pandemic hasn’t ended, noting recent spikes in cases in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

In a report issued Wednesday, the WHO and the CDC said millions of children were now susceptible to measles, among the world’s most contagious diseases. In 2021, officials said there were about 9 million measles infections and 128,000 deaths worldwide.

At a press briefing in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world has never been in a better position to stop COVID-19. The U.N. health agency said deaths fell by 22% in the past week, at just over 11,000 reported worldwide. There were 3.1 million new cases, a drop of 28%.

In its latest weekly assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.N. health agency said there were 5.3 million new cases and more than 14,000 deaths reported last week. WHO said the number of new infections declined in every world region except the Western Pacific.

Additional monkeypox vaccines are arriving in Chicago, but they will be in limited supply. This as the World Health Organization this declared monkeypox a public health emergency. 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday he decided to convene the emergency committee on June 23 because the virus has shown “unusual” recent behavior by spreading in countries well beyond parts of Africa, where it is endemic.

That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins. WHO concluded last year that it was “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 might have spilled into humans from a lab.

There were more than 12 million new weekly cases and just under 33,000 deaths, a 23% decline in mortality, according to the U.N. health agency’s report on the pandemic issued late Tuesday.