(ATLANTA) — The source behind a norovirus outbreak that sickened a few hundred people last year has been identified, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report looked at the outbreak in Tazewell County, Illinois, which includes part of Peoria, which saw 317 people fall ill, all of whom dined at a restaurant — referred to as restaurant A — between Nov. 19, and Nov. 26, 2022.
Investigators with the Tazewell Health Department and Illinois Department of Public Health concluded the outbreak was likely caused by a sick food handler at the restaurant who had ungloved contact with salad, toppings and dressings during food preparation.
The team looked at 317 patients, three with confirmed and 314 with probable norovirus infection, defined as having diarrhea or vomiting after dining at the restaurant during Thanksgiving week. They also interviewed 40 people who dined at the restaurant and did not become ill.
Patrons at the restaurant were sent an online questionnaire and had a follow-up interview regarding what food they consumed and the symptoms of their illness.
The most common symptom was vomiting, with 84% reporting followed by nausea at 80% and diarrhea at 68%. Other symptoms included muscle pain, chills, abdominal cramps and fever.
Seven people visited an emergency department and five people visited outpatient health care providers. No hospitalizations or deaths occurred.
The investigators found a food handler who had prepared menu items with ungloved hands was likely a main contributor for the outbreak. The employee had vomiting on Nov. 22 and worked from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23.
Based on questionnaire answers, the item suspected of making people sick was the salad. Among 268 sick people who had a second interview, 227 said they consumed salad compared to the 15 of the group that didn’t get sick. Additionally, 27 people in the sick group didn’t eat salad but consumed additional sauces and dressings.
Contamination likely occurred throughout preparing of the salad, including dividing the salad, toppings and dressings into individual portions and refrigerating them for the next day, according to the report.
The report stated the restaurant voluntarily closed on Nov. 26 for disinfection and reopened on Nov. 29 receiving a health inspection. TCHD educated foot handlers on hand hygiene and the importance of staying home when sick.
Although the outbreak originated in Tazewell County, people who became ill with norovirus lived in 10 additional Illinois counties and 12 other states, extending far beyond the county where the restaurant was located.
Norovirus is a highly contagious virus that is the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis, which is an inflammation of the inside lining of the gastrointestinal tract.
Although it’s often referred to as the “stomach bug” or “stomach flu,” norovirus illness is not related to influenza.
In fact, it is the leading cause of foodborne illness in the U.S., causing 58% of foodborne illnesses each year, according to the CDC.
The most common symptoms are nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea. However, patients can also experience fever, headaches and body aches.
(NEW YORK) — NFL Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s televised sudden collapse on Jan. 2 appears to have significantly raised awareness of lifesaving CPR, according to the American Heart Association (AHA).
The AHA says it saw a 620% increase in page views to the “Hands-Only CPR” content pages on its website, along with a 145% increase in page views to its “What is CPR” page. CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) is a lifesaving procedure performed to help keep blood flowing to vital organs such as your brain and heart when your heart stops beating.
Every year, just under half a million Americans die from a cardiac arrest. Globally, cardiac arrest claims more lives than colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, influenza, pneumonia, auto accidents, HIV, firearms, and house fires combined.
Damar was resuscitated using CPR and a lifesaving AED machine, which sends an electric shock to a person’s heart when they experience an electrical disturbance. AEDs were already on the Food and Drug Administration shortage list since July 2022 due to increased demand and global semiconductor shortages.
Now, the devices are in even greater demand, and are expected to be backordered through 2023. Two major AED manufacturers — Philips and Stryker — tell ABC News they are now growing their AED business in response to increased awareness.
In a statement, a Philips spokesperson said the company “has seen the impact of the ‘Damar Effect’ and record post-pandemic volumes for AEDs. This increased interest has prompted us to make significant investments in our production capacity and critical component supply to get us back to our current lead time of 2-3 weeks. This lead time includes the first FDA-approved AED for home use, our HeartStart AED.”
A Stryker spokesperson tells ABC News the company is “committed to saving lives and making public access AEDs more readily available in workplaces and communities across the globe. Stryker has seen significant growth in this space in recent years, with a marked increase over the course of 2023, reflective of the increased attention around SCA being the third leading cause of death in the United States.”
“In these last 9 months we have seen such a huge increase in awareness and education, and just people wanting to learn more about CPRs and AEDs and cardiac arrests then I have seen in my nine years prior,” said Dr. Comilla Sasson, an emergency medicine physician and the vice president for Health Sciences with the American Heart Association.
“It’s a pretty amazing event,” she told ABC News.
Americans’ awareness may have been given another boost on July 17, when 18-year-old Bronny James experienced sudden cardiac arrest while playing basketball at U.S.C.
Despite this increased awareness, the U.S. falls behind other countries, including European countries, where bystander CPR rates are in the 80-90% range, Sasson said.
In the U.S., fewer than half of people who experience cardiac arrest outside of a hospital receive bystander CPR, according to the 2023 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics from the American Heart Association.
Meanwhile, safety experts say workers don’t have adequate access to AED machines, or free CPR training from employers. Among 2,000 employees in corporate offices, hospitality, education and industry/labor, 55% can’t get first aid or CPR and AED training from their employer, and half of all U.S. workers (51%) cannot locate an AED machine at work at all, according to the American Heart Association.
In the U.S., Black people and those who are in lower socioeconomic status neighborhoods are less likely to have CPR performed than a person in a higher socioeconomic status neighborhood and that is white.
“Where you live should not determine whether or not you survive a cardiac arrest,” Sasson said.
But Sasson says AHA is “up for the challenge.” The organization has community sites for training, free 90-second videos on their website and promote a “train the trainer” model approach to encourage CPR awareness and education by paying it forward.
Since his cardiac arrest and throughout his ongoing recovery, Damar Hamlin has become an advocate for bystander CPR training.
“Damar Hamlin has been really amazing in terms of working with the AHA and helping to spread the best news that it’s not just about you learning, it’s about sharing that information with others around you,” Sasson said.
CPR, said Sasson, “should be considered a life skill.”
(NEW YORK) — Aubrey Vailoces, a mom of three, was breastfeeding her 10-month-old daughter in her Maui home last week when she said alarms started going off and she saw her entire neighborhood was covered in black smoke.
“You couldn’t even see the neighbors’ houses,” Vailoces told ABC News’ Good Morning America, describing the scene in the historic town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui. “My partner said, ‘We have to go,’ and I said, ‘I have nothing,’ and he just said, ‘We have to go.'”
Vailoces, 36, and her partner scrambled out of the home and into their car, evacuating with their 10-month-old daughter as well as Vailoces’ 6-year-old twin daughters and her mom.
“We didn’t take anything. I was just in my nursing bra and underwear,” Vailoces said, adding she thought their home would be OK amid the wildfires that have since devastated much of Maui. “I was so comfortable thinking the fire would never get there, that we were too far.”
While Vailoces and her family eventually made it to safety, evacuating to a relative’s home, they later learned their own home was burned to the ground.
Left with no possessions, Vailoces said that in the immediate aftermath, she had to go door-to-door in the neighborhood surrounding her relative’s home searching for supplies for her infant daughter Blue.
“I didn’t have any bottles for the baby, and just happened to have formula with me in the car and her car seat,” Vailoces said. “The next day, I went door-to-door around the neighborhood asking if anyone has a baby and if there’s a bottle or a diaper … and some extra formula.”
Vailoces said she believes the stress of the wildfires and her family’s displacement both contributed to her difficulties producing breastmilk for her daughter, which led her to have to search for formula and bottles to feed Blue.
“One neighbor’s daughter just had a baby so he gave me two bottles … and some [neighbors] gave me two diapers, some gave me three,” she said. “They were holding onto their own diapers too, which I understand.”
The devastation left behind on wildfire-ravaged Maui has turned into a crisis for countless parents like Vailoces, who had to evacuate quickly and now need basic supplies to keep their children alive and safe.
The wildfires that erupted on Aug. 8 have claimed the lives of over 100 people, while many more remain missing, according to authorities. Officials on Maui have repeatedly warned that the death toll is expected to rise as they work to contain the active blazes and assess the damage.
Vailoces said she and her family were able to travel to another island, Oahu, where they are temporarily staying in her brother’s home. There, she said, they’ve had more access to supplies like diapers and formula.
For new moms and pregnant women who remain on Maui, the search for supplies can be more dire.
In many cases, pregnant and postpartum moms are not able to even get to pop-up locations where supplies are being distributed, according to Sonya Niess, board president of the Pacific Birth Collective, a Maui-based nonprofit that advocates for birth education and wellness.
“We’re taking boats and jet skis to deliver crucial items for families to be able to survive,” Niess told GMA. “They didn’t have gas to put in their car to drive out or to get to one of the hubs.”
Kiana Rowley, vice president of the board at the Pacific Birth Collective, said the organization has been working to not only get supplies but also support pregnant women who may be close to giving birth.
“They’re 38 weeks and they’re supposed to give birth any day, and they don’t have a midwife,” Rowley said, noting that a major difficulty has been roads that are closed or destroyed. “So, we’re also working on making sure that people have the support they need, no matter where it is.”
Both Rowley and Niess said that it has largely been left up to grassroots organizations like their own to help pregnant and postpartum women in the midst of the widespread wildfire disaster. The small, community-based organizations, Rowley and Niess said, have proven better equipped to meet the need where it exists and to recognize the need based on their years of work on the ground.
“In one shelter, there was a mom … who went into labor,” Niess said. “We were able to connect with her and find her housing so when she got out of the hospital she was not going back to the shelter with a newborn and three toddlers and a teenage son.”
Another pregnancy-focused and Hawaii-based nonprofit organization, the Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawaii, mobilized its 24/7 hotline in the wake of the wildfires to help pregnant and postpartum moms on Maui.
The organization also sent a five-person clinical team to the island to offer free tests and ultrasounds in its mobile van, according to social media posts.
Natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes and tornadoes can have harmful effects on maternal health, research shows.
Research published last year that looked at the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico found that natural disasters “increase the risk of miscarriage, premature delivery, and low birth weight,” in addition to increasing the risk of “physical and mental health problems.”
Officials on Maui are also already warning about pollutants in the air due to the fires, with some areas remaining too dangerous for anyone, pregnant or not, to return.
Another part of the problem, according to Pacific Birth Collective board members, is that Maui was already a difficult place to give birth prior to the wildfires, due in part to a lack of maternal health care and disparities in care.
The island has one main hospital, Maui Memorial Medical Center. Earlier this year, the island’s main private obstetrics practice announced it would be no longer providing obstetric care, stating on its website, “We have found that continuing OB care is unsustainable moving forward due to staffing issues, physician recruitment, and low reimbursements in exchange for time worked.”
“We all already have such a lack of access to care, so this level of catastrophic disaster is definitely increasing the disparities,” Ki’i Kaho’ohanohano, a Pacific Birth Collective board member, told GMA. “We now have more native Hawaiians displaced than we ever have, which has been a problem for generations, and we have a totally overwhelmed hospital. We have one labor and delivery unit and no [neo-natal intensive care unit].”
Both Kaho’ohanohano and Niess said they hope people across the country do not forget the moms and babies on Maui in the weeks, months and years ahead that it will take to rebuild.
“The donations are coming in hot now. We’re overwhelmed with them, but we know that that’s going to dry up in just a few months, most likely, but these families are still going to be in great need,” said Niess. “We know it’s easy to move on in life and to just go on to the next thing, but we’re in it for the long haul and we need people to remember. We need them to keep checking in to see what it is they can do, to keep donating.”
(NEW YORK) — Doctors at NYU Langone in New York City announced Wednesday that they have successfully transplanted a genetically engineered pig kidney into a human who was declared brain dead, in what they called “a landmark step forward.”
A surgical team removed the kidneys of the human recipient in July 2023 and transplanted the pig kidney, as well as the thymus. Before the transplant, the pig kidney was modified to remove alpha-gal, a sugar molecule on the surface of pig cells that triggers a rare allergy to red meat, as well as organ rejection.
Dr. Robert Montgomery, a professor and chair of the department of surgery at NYU Langone Health and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, said the recipient’s kidney has functioned properly for a month and that its function will be monitored for a total of two months.
“The one-month kidney biopsies and kidney tests show no evidence of rejection, and normal renal function,” Dr. Montgomery said during Wednesday’s press conference. “The pig kidney appears to replace all of the important tasks that the human kidney manages.”
Dr. Adam Griesemer, a transplant surgeon at NYU Langone Health, explained during the press conference that the thymus was also transplanted, embedded beneath the kidney’s outer layer, because it has been shown to help protect the transplanted kidney from being attacked by the human immune system.
“The thymus gland is the tissue in our neck and chest where our immune system matures and where it learns to recognize the proteins in our body and learns to reject proteins that are not part of our own body,” Dr. Griesemer explained. “So, transplanting the thymus from the pig allows new developing cells in the recipient’s body to learn to recognize the pig antigens as their own, and it can potentially lead to a decreased immune response and decreased risk of rejection.”
The transplant recipient was 57-year-old Maurice Miller. His sister, Mary Miller-Duff, expressed pride in her brother being involved in the historic transplant.
“Mo, as I like to call him, was a kind, giving brother who loved life, and always lent a helping hand,” Miller-Duff said at the press conference. “It is only fitting that in his final act, he will be helping so many in the need through this innovative medical advancement.”
Miller-Duff said her brother came home from work one day with a headache and feeling as if he had vertigo. His partner later found him passed out in the bathroom.
Scans revealed Miller had an eight-centimeter-wide tumor on the right side of his brain. Doctors performed a biopsy, but Miller didn’t wake up after the procedure.
“So, the doctors did a head scan and they found that there was bleeding on the brain and that’s why he wasn’t waking up,” Miller-Duff said. “They went in to try to relieve that, but he just didn’t wake up.”
Tests revealed that the tumor was a glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.
The pig-to-human transplant is a hopeful sign that xenotransplantation – the process of transplanting non-human cells and organs into humans – may be viable after years of failures.
Last year, the University of Maryland School of Medicine transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a 57-year-old man who was experiencing end-stage heart failure and did not qualify for a traditional transplant. Two months later, the organ failed suddenly, and the recipient passed away.
Dr. Montgomery said concerns about potential infection of the pig heart in the University of Maryland case, which may have contributed to the transplant’s ultimate failure, was mitigated for the current transplant with a new test that he said “is much more sensitive at detecting viruses that aren’t present in the blood that that are more difficult to detect.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not allowed living human xenotransplantation clinical trials due to the risk of transmission of viruses, but Montgomery said he hopes that fact that Miller has not developed any infections helps the agency reconsider their current policy.
In a separate procedure, a team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham published a study Wednesday that found two gene-edited pig kidneys functioned for seven days in a brain-dead recipient, compared to the 60 days in the NYU Langone recipient, while using “current standard-of-care immunosuppression drugs,” according to the university.
(MIAMI) — Florida health officials are issuing a warning about dengue as the virus continues to increase in South Florida.
Four cases of locally acquired dengue were reported in Miami-Dade County and for the first time in Broward County, during the week ending Aug. 5, according to a report from Florida Health.
In total, 10 cases of the mosquito-borne illness have been reported in the state this year, with cases first occurring in January and March before returning this summer, the report said.
“Dengue is spread by the bite of an Infected mosquito and is not normally present in Florida. However, infected travelers can bring the virus back to Florida mosquitoes,” Florida Health Broward County wrote in a statement.
No information is known about any of the infected patients, including names, ages, sexes or where they live in their respective counties.
It comes after health officials in Florida warned about a growing number of cases of locally-acquired malaria, the first such cases since 2003.
Florida Health did not immediately reply to ABC News’ request for comment.
Dengue viruses are spread through bites from infected Aedes species mosquitoes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These mosquitoes are also responsible for spreading Zika and chikungunya viruses.
Dengue can be caused by dengue virus 1, 2, 3 or 4, the health agency said. A person can be infected multiple times over the course of their life.
About one in four people develop symptoms lasting two to seven days, but symptoms are usually mild and include fever; rash; nausea; vomiting; muscle, joint and bone pain. Because symptoms are not specific to dengue, they’re often confused with other illnesses, according to the CDC.
There are no treatments to treat dengue aside from managing symptoms, which includes rest, drinking fluids and taking acetaminophen. The CDC warns not to take aspirin or ibuprofen, because it can trigger gastritis or bleeding.
However, about one in 20 will develop severe dengue, which can lead to shock, internal bleeding and even death, although deaths are rare, the CDC said.
Between 2010 and 2022, there have been more than 33,000 locally acquired cases of dengue in the U.S, CDC data shows. Since 2014, there have been fewer than 1,000 cases per year, but 2022 was the first time in nearly a decade that cases reached four digits.
To reduce the risk of mosquito-borne diseases, Florida Health recommends draining, emptying and cleaning places that collect water. Additionally, people are advised to cover up and wear insect repellent.
(NEW YORK) — The growing use of artificial intelligence has been a hot topic in recent years, with a growing number of industries starting to use the technology that’s predicted to revolutionize certain sectors.
The technology fuels excitement, but there are also concerns about potentially negative impacts on people and society.
In her new book, More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech, AI researcher and data journalism professor Meredith Broussard dives into the impact of some of AI’s deep-rooted problems.
Broussard spoke to ABC News about discovering how AI was used during her own diagnostic testing for breast cancer and some of the potential downsides of the technology being used in this capacity.
LINSEY DAVIS: So in the book you talk about being diagnosed with breast cancer and you learn at some point that AI had actually read your exam. What was your reaction to that?
MEREDITH BROUSSARD: I thought it was so strange, because I was depending on my doctors for care in this crisis moment of my life. And I thought, what did this AI find? How is it being used? And because I’m an AI researcher, I thought, who made this particular AI, because I know that there’s a lot of bias in artificial intelligence systems.
So I didn’t do anything with this knowledge right away, but then after I was recovered, I went back to it, and I actually took an open source AI and ran my films through this open source AI in order to write about the state of the art in AI-based cancer detection.
DAVIS: Do you think that this is something we’re going to increasingly see in the medical world?
BROUSSARD: I think that one of the things that researchers really want to do, that medical researchers really want to do, is they want to heal more people and they want to diagnose more people earlier and more accurately, and the real hope is that AI will help with that. Is it going to happen any time soon? No. Could it happen eventually? Maybe.
DAVIS: What are the potential risks of AI being used in this capacity?
BROUSSARD: One of the things that people often don’t realize is that when you make an AI system, a machine learning system, for something like breast cancer diagnosis, you actually have to tune it to have a higher rate of false positives or false negatives.
So a false positive would mean that it says, “Oh, you might have cancer,” when you don’t actually have cancer, and it sends you for more testing. And a false negative would mean that it says, “Nope, no cancer here,” but you actually do have cancer. So the cost of a false negative is much higher in medicine. And so these systems are actually tuned to have more false positives than false negatives, which means that it is quite often going to say, “Oh, yeah, I think there might be a problem here,” and then people are going to get referred for more testing, which, as many people know, can mean weeks or even months of waiting for additional tests and just being on the edge of your seat while you’re worrying about this.
DAVIS: Well, people are at home, are going to wonder, did you have a false positive?
BROUSSARD: So, I had really great medical care throughout my cancer experience. And I just, I’m so grateful to everybody who took care of me. One of the interesting things about the AI that diagnosed me is that it’s not actually used for diagnosis. It is used by the doctors at this particular hospital after they have already given their own diagnosis, so it’s like a backup tool. So the doctor, the radiologist, will enter in what they think the diagnosis is, and then they’ll get access to the AI’s results. And they can either ignore the AI’s results or they can use it to say, “OK, well, maybe I’ll go back and look at that area of concern again.”
So it’s still in the hands of doctors. Nobody needs to worry that AIs are out there, you know, diagnosing people with cancer. And we’re definitely not at the situation that a lot of people imagine, where it would be like a box that you kind of walk up to it and it scans you and tells you, “Yes, you have cancer. No, you don’t have cancer.” Like, that’s not a reasonable scenario.
DAVIS: Not today.
BROUSSARD: Not today. I mean, I hope it’s not ever like that, because I do not want bad news medically. I want that from a doctor. I don’t want it from a machine.
DAVIS: Meredith, we thank you so much. Of course, this is a conversation that’s going to be ongoing in the coming months and years ahead. Want to let our viewers know that her book, More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech, is now available wherever books are sold.
(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 hospitalizations are continuing to increase in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For the week ending Aug. 5, COVID hospitalizations increased 14.3% from 9,026 to 10,320 weekly hospitalizations, data from the federal health agency updated Monday shows.
While the percentage jump is in the double digits, the absolute numbers are still quite low. Weekly hospitalizations during the omicron wave peaked at 150,674 in January 2022.
“We have to remember that we’re still dealing with numbers that are far less than what we’ve seen for the pandemic,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. “We have to zoom out to look at our experience for the entire pandemic, to understand that what we’re dealing with now is far from any crisis that we’ve experienced with previous waves.”
“While a percentage [increase] may seem scary, we’re still dealing with absolute small numbers,” Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, added.
COVID-19 hospitalizations have been rising over the last several weeks, increasing 12.5% last week and 12% the week before. Brownstein noted that the rate of increase week-over-week is also not as steep as seen during previous waves.
Data also showed that COVID-19 deaths have slightly increased in July, rising to 473 the week of July 15 — the latest date for which complete data is available. However, experts say this is expected after a rise in hospitalization and reporting delays may result in death numbers shifting in the coming weeks.
“Proportionately, it makes sense that when you have increased transmission, you will see proportionately some increase in hospitalizations, and you will see some increase in deaths,” Brownstein said. “But there’s a decoupling that is happening between cases and hospitalizations, where a jump in cases doesn’t necessarily mean as big a jump in hospitalizations and deaths.”
Brownstein said there could be several factors behind the increase including waning immunity, a reduction in mitigation measures and more people gathering indoors.
“It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be vigilant about COVID,” he said. “It also doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look for opportunities to reduce our personal risk, and to make sure that we’re, up to date on immunizations. But this is more likely going to be you know, what we’ll experience going forward with COVID.”
All currently circulating subvariants are related to XBB, a descendant of omicron. A newer variant known as EG.5 now makes up an estimated 17% of new cases, according to the CDC.
Currently, there is no evidence to suggests that EG.5 causes more severe disease or is significantly more infectious than previous variants.
Brownstein said some of the concern may be due to surges seen with variants in the past such as the delta variant in summer 2021, leading to a sounding of the alarm.
“But each new variant so far that has come through has subsequently had less of a population impact,” he said. “Now, is it possible we may see one in the future that is worthy, a real concern? Absolutely. But overall, we’ve seen a dampening of effect over the last several variants that have come through.”
(SALT LAKE CITY) — After a three-year manhunt, a Utah man has been arrested on charges of allegedly selling a fake COVID-19 cure, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah announced Monday.
Gordon Hunter Pedersen, 63, of Cedar Hills — 30 miles south of Salt Lake City — allegedly appeared in multiple YouTube videos before COVID-19 vaccines were approved, selling “structural alkaline silver.”
He allegedly claimed the product was a cure for the virus because it “resonates, or vibrates, at a frequency that destroys the membrane of the virus, making the virus incapable of attaching to any healthy cell, or to infect you in any way,” the release states.
Court documents said Pedersen sold the products on MyDoctorSuggests.com as well as Amazon and Shopify. Prices ranged up to $299.95 for a gallon of the silver products.
Prosecutors allege he also claimed to have a Ph.D. in immunology and in naturopathic medicine and he was a board-certified “anti-aging medical doctor.”
Between January 2020 and the end of April 2020, Pedersen’s company saw a 400% jump in revenue, equating to about $2 million, according to court documents.
Search warrants were executed at Pedersen’s home in late April 2020 and he was interviewed by federal agents, the documents show.
A federal grand jury indicted Pedersen on July 23, 2020, on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud and felony introduction of misbranded drugs into interstate commerce with intent to defraud and mislead.
After he failed to appear in federal court in relation to the indictment, a warrant was issued for his arrest on Aug. 25, 2020, officials say.
Pedersen evaded authorities for three years, but it came to an end after prosecutors said he was spotted on July 5 at his known address by a special agent. He was then spotted on surveillance video at a gas station paying for both fuel and a beverage in cash.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah declined to comment to ABC News, saying it does not comment on open cases.
Pedersen will appear at a detention hearing Tuesday afternoon at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City.
Throughout the pandemic, a variety of cases have been prosecuted of people selling fake COVID-19 cures.
Last month, four members of a Florida family were convicted of selling bleach as a cure for several ailments, including COVID-19, through their online church.
(NEW YORK) — Children and teenagers who previously had multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, known as MIS-C, may be more likely to have neurological and mental health issues than those who did not, a recent study suggests.
Researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital looked at 64 children, teens and young adults between ages 5 and 20 who were hospitalized at the hospital between November 2020 and November 2021.
The children underwent neurological examinations and assessments six months to one year after being discharged. They were also compared with siblings, friends or relatives who never had MIS-C.
Results showed that 25% of children who previously had MIS-C had “abnormal neurological findings” compared to 7% of those in the comparison group.
Patients with previous MIS-C were more likely to have memory problems as well as difficulty with motor skills and coordination. They also had higher rates of diagnosed ADHD, anxiety, depression and were more likely to report worse quality of life.
Those in the MIS-C group were also more likely to experience symptoms including chest pain, back pain, headaches, fatigue and nausea.
Dr. Caitlin Rollins, a leader in the study and director of the cardiac neurodevelopmental program at Boston Children’s, said while some of the symptoms could be due to stress — including due to the COVID pandemic, she believes they’re linked to MIS-C due to the higher rates among the group that previously had the condition.
“When families learn the child’s symptoms could be related to MIS-C, they are reassured that others are experiencing it,” she said in a press release. While additional larger studies are required to further evaluate this possible association, “We hope this study will increase awareness.”
MIS-C is a rare, but serious inflammatory condition that is caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that leads to COVID-19.
It typically occurs between two to six weeks after infection and presents a combination of symptoms, including inflammation of various parts of the body along with gastrointestinal symptoms, rash, fever, dizziness or lightheadedness and bloodshot eyes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors are unclear about what causes some children to develop MIS-C but believe it may involve a genetic predisposition for inflammation in response to respiratory diseases.
As of Monday, there have been 9,518 reported cases of MIS-C and 79 deaths over the course of the pandemic, CDC data shows. Cases were much higher during the early months of the pandemic but have since dropped dramatically.
Rollins said parents with children who’ve tested positive for COVID-19 should keep an eye on their children and seek medical care if needed.
“If parents are noticing changes in their child’s behavior or functioning, it could be related to MIS-C, and they should seek support,” she said.
She also encouraged pediatricians and pediatric cardiologists who treat children with MIS-C to ask questions about their neurologic and mental health and have them evaluated if necessary.
Rollins said she plans to follow the children in the study who had MIS-C for a second year and hopes they will also be able to undergo MRIs to see if the condition caused any structural changes to the brain.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use certain pregnancy, ovulation and urinary tract infection tests.
At least 15 tests manufactured by Universal Meditech Inc. (UMI) may be ineffective, including One Step Pregnancy Test, DiagnosUS One Step Ovulation Test, HealthyWiser UriTest UTI Test Strips and PrestiBio Breast Milk Alcohol Test Strips, the federal health agency said Friday.
“UMI has notified the FDA that it has stopped all operations and is no longer providing support for its tests,” the FDA said in a statement. “The FDA is not able to confirm the performance of UMI’s tests, raising concerns that the tests may not be safe and effective.”
The tests may have been sold online by at least four distributors under the names AC&C, HealthyWiser, Home Health US and Prestige Biotech.
While UMI did recall undistributed tests, it did not do so for those already distributed or sold.
“Given FDA’s concerns about these tests, the FDA is issuing this safety communication to consumers and patients as part of its mandate to protect the public health,” the agency said.
It’s not clear why UMI issued the recall, but when UMI notified FDA about the recall of the tests and what about the performance can’t be confirmed by the FDA.
Neither UMI nor the FDA immediately returned ABC News’ request for comment.
In addition to not purchasing tests, the FDA is warning consumers to throw away all recalled tests; to test again for pregnancy, ovulation or UTIs with a different brand; and report any problems to the FDA’s MedWatch program.
This is not the first time the FDA has issued an alert about recalled urine strip tests. Last year, the agency shared that Family Dollar was recalling several products that were stored “outside of labeled temperature requirements” including several pregnancy tests.
