Domestic ducks are natural reservoirs of avian influenza viruses and serve as reassortant hosts for new virus subtypes. We isolated 2 novel influenza A(H5N8) viruses from domestic ducks in eastern China, sequenced their genomes, and tested their pathogenicity in chickens and mice. Circulation of these viruses may pose health risks for humans.

Two reassortant H16 influenza A viruses were isolated from gulls in California. Seven of the eight segments were most closely related to H16 and H13 isolates from eastern North America and Iceland. Of note is a C-terminal truncation of the nonstructural 1 (NS1) protein in one of the isolates that is usually found in swine H1N1 virus.

We report the complete genome sequence of a reassortant H14N2 avian influenza virus isolated in 2011 from a northern shoveler in California. This introduced Eurasian subtype acquired seven segments from North American viruses and circulated in the Pacific Flyway 1 year after its detection in the Mississippi Flyway.

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a mosquito-borne zoonotic disease endemic to Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The causative agent, Rift Valley fever phlebovirus (RVFV), belongs to the genus Phlebovirus in the family Phenuiviridae and causes high rates of abortions in ruminants, and hemorrhagic fever, encephalitis, or blindness in humans. Viral maintenance by mosquito vectors has led to sporadic RVF...

BACKGROUND Influenza A virus vaccines undergo yearly reformulations due to the antigenic variability of the virus caused by antigenic drift and shift. It is critical to the vaccine manufacturing process to obtain influenza A seed virus that is antigenically identical to circulating wild type (wt) virus and grows to high titers in embryonated chicken eggs. Inactivated influenza A seasonal vaccin...

In this issue of the Journal, there are two reports of recent transmissions of swine influenza viruses in humans. One group of viruses, described by Shinde et al.,1 are triple reassortants of viruses from pigs, humans, and birds, called triple-reassortant swine influenza A (H1) viruses, which have circulated in pigs for more than a decade. The other group, described by the Novel SwineOrigin Inf...