Measles News:

• Nearly 200 unvaccinated kids in North Dakota schools are being required to quarantine at home for three weeks to contain a measles outbreak. (CNN)
• Meanwhile, North Dakota is now up to 11 measles cases. (MPR)
• The West TX outbreak is continuing to slow down, with only 8 new cases since Friday, though El Paso’s outbreak may just be heating up with 52 cases there. (TX DSHS)
  

Health News:

• At least 10 people in California and Nevada have been hospitalized from Listeria infection caused by Ready-to-Eat foods sold to hospitals, hotels, convenience stores, and airlines. (FDA)
• A Seattle-area school closed its kitchen after over 50 students and staff got suspected norovirus. (King5)
• The U.S. government ordered $144 million of freeze-dried Jynneos mpox vaccine, which can also be used to prevent smallpox. (CIDRAP)
• Amid staff cuts, the FDA failed to publish over a dozen warning letters that flagged hazards at food companies, including potential contamination. (NBC)
• FDA approved or expanded three natural color additives as alternatives to artificial dyes. (ABC)
• The FDA approved the first at-home cervical cancer screening test, an alternative to pap smears. (CBS)
• The CDC and FDA advised Americans aged 60+ to avoid Valneva’s Chikungunya vaccine while they investigate cardiac and neurological side effects reported in six U.S. seniors and 10 overseas cases. (AP)
• The U.S. halted cattle imports from Mexico, citing fears of the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating maggot. (NPR)
• A new henipavirus was discovered in Alabama shrew. This group of viruses cause severe, often fatal infections, and includes Nipah virus in S.E. Asia and Hendra virus in Australia. (Medscape, EID)
• A whopping 22.5% of patients on extended-release painkillers became addicted within a year. (Bloomberg)

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Best Questions:

We have lots of employees with coughs and colds and their managers are skeptical. Are they legit, or faking it?

We get it — it can be super frustrating for managers when multiple employees call out sick at the same time. And even though we are finally out of this year’s long flu season and norovirus is declining, we still have two major issues to contend with: common colds and allergies.

Rhinoviruses and enteroviruses are two causes of the common cold, and both are high across the country right now. These usually peak in the early fall and late spring - so you’ll be glad to hear that we expect the numbers to start dropping in the next week or two and stay low for the summer.

It’s also peak allergy season in huge swaths of the U.S. right now, and each year is breaking the previous records, both in severity and length of allergy season.

In a cruel twist of fate, having allergies can make you more susceptible to getting a cold, and vice versa. So if you have an employee struggling with allergies who then also gets sick, it’s possible they’re not a faker — just unlucky.

Sources: YLE, AAAAI

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So….allergies really are getting worse each year?

Yes, it’s not just in your head! Allergy seasons are getting worse — and longer. In part, it’s due to climate change. Warmer temperatures mean that plants are blooming sooner, so pollen season is longer overall. There are also higher pollen counts and larger particles than in the past, which can make symptoms worse. For much of the U.S., winter is now the only season without major allergens (like pollen or ragweed) in the air. Warmer states in the South have very little respite.

As allergy seasons get longer and more intense, more adults are developing new allergies, too. What might not have bothered them before is now strong enough to cause an allergic reaction.

The bad news: you may want to buy your Zyrtec in bulk. The good news: employees generally don’t need to be excluded from work for allergies, so your staffing shouldn’t take too big of a hit.

Sources: The Atlantic, YLE, Royal Society

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Best Listen (or Read):

We really appreciated this interview with the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, who is fighting to stop the largest measles outbreak since 2000 despite a chaotic reorganization of federal health agencies. She’s been an epidemiologist for 25 years, but before this year, she’d never seen a measles case.

An Insider's View of the Texas Measles Outbreak - Tradeoffs

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