The AFSCA said the investigation was ongoing and the factory would only be allowed to reopen if Ferrero could provide the necessary guarantees that it complied with food safety regulations.

... Can we convince our Government to promote and follow a healthier path?

Can we convince the unhealthily greedy businesses to be less unhealthy about their profits and business?...

And the numbers are in for the latest week of pandemic for the UK for those currently suffering COVID:


Record 4.9 million people have the virus in UK
wrote:

About one in every 13 people in the UK has coronavirus, according to latest estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

That is some 4.9 million people, up from 4.3 million people the week before.

ONS officials say that is the highest number seen since its survey began at the end of April 2020 [at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK].

The surge in infections is being driven partly by the contagious Omicron BA.2 sub-variant and people mixing more...

Hospitals are under "enormous strain", with growing numbers so busy they are having to divert ambulances to other sites because they are unable to cope.

Over the past week, 20 NHS Accident and Emergency departments in England issued diverts, with patients taken elsewhere...

... Current figures are close to the total seen in first Covid wave, in spring 2020 - although more than half of those patients are in hospital for other reasons, but happen to have Covid as well ... hospitals are also said to be seeing rising number of people coming forward for other conditions, including flu...

... "A very high number of hospital beds are occupied, and combined with staff absences and severe workforce shortages, this means that trusts can't recover care backlogs as quickly as they want to. Ambulance services are doing everything they can in these extremely difficult circumstances, but the extra pressures are leading to growing delays..."

... He urged those eligible to come forward for their spring Covid boosters.

After a Covid infection, there is an increased risk of developing a serious blood clot for the next six months...

... The researchers tracked the health of just over one million people who tested positive for Covid between February 2020 and May 2021 in Sweden, and compared them with four million people of the same age and sex who had not had a positive test.

After a Covid infection, they found an increased risk of:

• blood clots in the leg, or deep vein thrombosis (DVT), for up to three months
  
• blood clots in the lungs, or pulmonary embolism, for up to six months
  
• internal bleeding, such as a stroke, for up to two months
  

When the researchers compared the risks of blood clots after Covid to the normal level of risk, they found that:

• four in every 10,000 Covid patients developed DVT compared with one in every 10,000 people who didn't have Covid [x4 increased risk (400%)]
  
• about 17 in every 10,000 Covid patients had a blood clot in the lung compared with fewer than one in every 10,000 who did not have Covid... [over x17 increased risk (1700%)]
  

... The risk of a blood clot in the lung in people who were very seriously ill with Covid was 290 times greater than normal, and seven times higher than normal after mild Covid. But there was no raised risk of internal bleeding in mild cases.

"For unvaccinated individuals, that's a really good reason to get a vaccine - the risk [from covid] is so [very] much higher than the risk from vaccines,"...

... record waits for planned surgery and in A&E, as staff plough through a backlog fuelled by Covid...

... "I have never seen it as bad as it is now," says Dr Katherine Henderson, the RCEM's president. "Long waits in emergency departments cause harm because a patient's condition may deteriorate and there may not be the staff there to notice. "It makes everybody really anxious, and we know that people are not getting the care they deserve."...

... There are a number of factors playing a role in this - staff shortages, a lack of care in the community - which means some patients wait a long time to be discharged - and the fact that running hospitals has become more difficult because of Covid infection-control measures...

Nearly three million people around the world have multiple sclerosis. Scientists think they have now uncovered a mystery cause of this incurable disease. It is a virus that nearly every one of us can expect to catch. So what does it mean for treating and even preventing MS?...

... One grand vision is to repeat the success of tackling the cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV). Infections with HPV can increase the risk of cancers including those in the cervix, penis and mouth. But a childhood vaccination programme has had such a profound impact on the cancers that the old routine of regular smear tests may no longer be necessary.

There are several companies already working on an EBV vaccine...

A cancer survivor is vowing to untangle the twisted mystery of why almost 100 people associated with a New Jersey high school have developed “extremely” rare malignant brain tumours.

Al Lupiano is among the 94 former staff and students from Colonia High School in the Woodbridge Township School District who have been stricken by the devastating diagnoses in recent years.

“I will not rest until I have answers,” Lupiano, 50, declared in an interview with NJ.com and the Star Ledger on Thursday. “I will uncover the truth.”

Among the others diagnosed with brain cancer was Lupiano’s younger sister, who passed away from the disease in February at the age of 44....

Researchers suspect an adenovirus may be involved, but are still searching for the cause of illness

Puzzled scientists are searching for the cause of a strange and alarming outbreak of severe hepatitis in young children, with 74 cases documented in the United Kingdom and three in Spain. Clinicians in Denmark and the Netherlands are also reporting similar cases. And in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said late yesterday it is investigating nine cases in Alabama.

Viruses can cause hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver, but otherwise-healthy children rarely become seriously ill. As of 12 April, none of the U.K. or Spanish children have died, but some are very sick: All have been admitted to hospitals and seven required liver transplants, six of them in the United Kingdom, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) statement issued today. Two of the nine affected children in Alabama have required liver transplants, the state’s Department of Public Health announced this afternoon.

The leading theory is that an adenovirus, a family of viruses that more typically cause colds, is the culprit—up to half of the sickened children in the United Kingdom tested positive for such a virus, as did all the children in Alabama. But so far, the evidence is too thin to resolve the mystery, researchers and physicians say.

“This is a severe phenomenon,” says Deirdre Kelly, a pediatric hepatologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital in the United Kingdom. “These [were] perfectly healthy children … up to a week ago.” Not all the news is bad, however. “Most of [the children] recover on their own,” Kelly notes.

“This should be taken seriously,” WHO’s Regional Office for Europe wrote in an emailed statement. “The increase is unexpected and the usual causes have been excluded.”

Scottish investigators first identified the outbreak on 31 March, when they alerted Public Health Scotland to a cluster of 3- to 5-year-olds admitted to the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow in the first 3 weeks of March. Each was diagnosed with severe hepatitis of unknown cause. Typically, Scotland sees fewer than four such cases annually, the investigators wrote in a paper published yesterday. But there have been 13 cases in Scottish children as of 12 April, all but one in March and April.

Chinese officials have reported the first human infected with the H3N8 bird flu strain, which has been detected in horses, dogs and even seals.

In a statement on Tuesday, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said the flu variant was found in a 4-year-old child living in Zhumadian in the Henan Province.

The health agency said the child started to develop fever and other symptoms on April 5 and was admitted to a local medical facility five days later due to the severity of his condition.

The patient lived on a farm where he frequently came into contact with chickens, the health agency said.

Though experts said the risk of large-scale transmission is low, infections in humans can lead to viral adaptive mutations that increase the risk of rapid spreading....

The Covid pandemic has caused the deaths of nearly 15 million people around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates.

That is 13% more deaths than normally expected over two years. The WHO believes many countries undercounted the numbers who died from Covid - only 5.4 million were reported...

The U.S. on Wednesday surpassed 1 million Covid-19 deaths, according to data compiled by NBC News — a once unthinkable scale of loss even for the country with the world's highest recorded toll from the virus.

The number — equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the U.S. — was reached at stunning speed: 27 months after the country confirmed its first case of the virus...

NHS bosses in England are urging hospitals to offer staff more overtime and tempt retired employees back, to help tackle waiting lists.

A letter sent by NHS England said tackling the backlog that had grown during the pandemic would require a "number of high impact actions".

And many hospitals were already taking innovative approaches to the issue.

More than six million people are on waiting lists for treatment...

The US Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it is limiting the emergency use authorization of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen Covid-19 vaccine to people 18 and older for whom other vaccines aren't appropriate or accessible and those who opt for J&J because they wouldn't otherwise get vaccinated.

The FDA said in a statement that the change is being made because of the risk of a rare and dangerous clotting condition called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after receiving the vaccine.

"We've been closely monitoring the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and occurrence of TTS following its administration and have used updated information from our safety surveillance systems to revise the EUA," Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the statement. "We recognize that the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine still has a role in the current pandemic response in the United States and across the global community. ... Today's action demonstrates the robustness of our safety surveillance systems and our commitment to ensuring that science and data guide our actions."...

..."A fever whose cause couldn't be identified explosively spread nationwide from late April," the official Korean Central News Agency said.

"Six persons died (one of them tested positive for the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron,)" it added.

With its 25 million people not vaccinated against Covid, North Korea's crumbling health infrastructure would struggle to deal with a major outbreak, experts say.

"On May 12 alone, some 18,000 persons with fever occurred nationwide and as of now up to 187,800 people are being isolated and treated," KCNA said....

Four more cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in England, with a further three found in London.

Another linked case has been idenitfied in the north-east of London, health bosses said on Monday.

Investigations are under way to establish links between the latest four cases, who all appear to have been infected in London, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said.

All four of these cases self-identify as gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men, the agency added.

Currently, common contacts have been identified for two of the four latest cases.

There is no link to travel to a country where monkeypox is endemic, and exactly where and how they acquired their infections remains under urgent investigation, including whether they have further links to each other.

Those patients needing medical care are all in specialist infectious disease units at the Royal Free Hosptial, Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne and Guys’ and St Thomas’.

The individuals have the West African clade of the virus, which is mild compared to the Central African clade....