Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China's Pandemic Epicenter By Lyle Fearnley,. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2020. viii, 280 pp. ISBN: 9781478011057 (paper)

Laboratory work on viral phylogenetics combined with broad claims about agricultural practices in South China, specifically the cultivation of free-grazing ducks, to produce claims about China as a disease epicenter;the development of spatial models of influenza epidemics in the early 2000s turned this ideological claim into a research object. Using a case study of the FAO Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Diseases established in Beijing in 2006, Fearnley suggests that senior technical director Vincent Martin employed two contrasting tactics to gain access to the epidemic epicenter: affinity, involving the cultivation of relationships to facilitate exchange of information and materials, and stratification, in which Martin demonstrated the insignificance of territorial boundaries to questions of epidemic risk and biosecurity. Rich McKay has recently shed light on stigmatizing discourses of “Patient Zero” that arose in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.2 How do the scaled-up efforts to demarcate zones of risk traced so carefully by Fearnley connect to ever-growing concerns with identifying the individual, episodic origin of epidemics?

Schistosomiasis in the People's Republic of China - down but not out.

Schistosomiasis has been subjected to extensive control efforts in the People's Republic of China (China) which aims to eliminate the disease by 2030. We describe baseline results of a longitudinal cohort study undertaken in the Dongting and Poyang lakes areas of central China designed to determine the prevalence of Schistosoma japonicum in humans, animals (goats and bovines) and Oncomelania snails utilizing molecular diagnostics procedures. Data from the Chinese National Schistosomiasis Control Programme (CNSCP) were compared with the molecular results obtained.Sixteen villages from Hunan and Jiangxi provinces were surveyed; animals were only found in Hunan. The prevalence of schistosomiasis in humans was 1.8% in Jiangxi and 8.0% in Hunan determined by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), while 18.3% of animals were positive by digital droplet PCR. The CNSCP data indicated that all villages harboured S. japonicum-infected individuals, detected serologically by indirect haemagglutination assay (IHA), but very few, if any, of these were subsequently positive by Kato-Katz (KK).Based on the outcome of the IHA and KK results, the CNSCP incorporates targeted human praziquantel chemotherapy but this approach can miss some infections as evidenced by the results reported here. Sensitive molecular diagnostics can play a key role in the elimination of schistosomiasis in China and inform control measures allowing for a more systematic approach to treatment.