The WHO and FAO interim guidelines on COVID-19 and food safety are flawed, according to one expert who is hoping a planned update will solve the problem.
Roger Cook said the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) interim guidance published in April 2020 suggested COVID-19 was a food safety issue.
That guidance as its written now is blatantly and simply wrong, its misleading, we told them so last year, the UK, US, EU, Australia, Canada and ICMSF have all told them the same but theyre only now looking at an update. It will be interesting to see what that says and how far it goes, he told attendees at the 18th annual UK Association for Food Protection (UKAFP) conference.
Its our conclusion, and we agree with the ICMSF and most other regulatory risk assessment groups, that there is no direct food safety risk from food or food packaging. Since the WHO investigators have been to China, they have been suggesting that is the case as well. There doesnt seem to be a risk but thats not what the guidance says.
The event was held virtually this past week with Global Food Safety in a COVID Era as the theme.
There is no definitive evidence that SARS-COV 2 virus can be transmitted on food or its packaging. There has not been one case reported anywhere that definitively links the consumption of food or contact with packaging to a human case, said the president of the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP).
You might argue that its hard to see them, especially in countries where person-to-person spread in the community is rampant. But what about in New Zealand where the virus has virtually been eliminated from the community? If its transmitted by food or packaging, and we import a lot of food into New Zealand from countries were COVID-19 in the community is rampant, then we would expect to see cases and clusters randomly turning up in the community but we dont.
Trade problemsCook, who is managerof foodscience and risk assessment at New Zealand Food Safety, part of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), said some trading partners have taken the interim guidelines literally and say it is a food safety problem and frozen and chilled food is the issue.
That is non-peer reviewed science, poor epidemiology, poor risk assessment and unfortunately those trade barriers are escalating. Despite being COVID free, having risk proportionate controls and no community cases we are still being told we cant export to these countries and we are getting this from the importers, who are getting it from the ports, unless our exporters test their workers for COVID and that puts a huge strain on our testing capabilities, he said.
They want the product and packaging tested, they want to disinfect the packages and to implement cleaning programs that are stronger than any we would put in place for Listeria, which is a far trickier organism to control.
Cook said this is being demanded because the interim guidelines doesnt specify any difference in risk level.
Its just one size fits all and Im sorry but one size doesnt fit all. We need a risk-based, escalating, region based regulation of procedures and thats what weve put in place. Were hoping the new updated FAO/WHO guidelines may state that and then were hoping trading partners will reverse what theyve been doing and trade in food will continue and the price wont go up to cover what are inappropriate mitigation strategies. Trade is being disrupted and we may see more disruption over the next six months until the FAO/WHO guidelines are made to represent a proper risk and regionalization basis, he said.
Regulators view on trustRebecca Sudworth, director of policy at the Food Standards Agency (FSA), also presented at the event.
Sudworth said trust in the FSA is high and has risen over the years but younger age groups and people from non-white backgrounds tend to have a lower level of trust in the agency.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted just how important it is that people trust the information they receive. Trusted information will be acted on. But the sources people trust are not always reliable, she said.
The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the potential consequences when some people trust public health advice less than others. This is a wake-up call to all regulators, we must treasure trust we hold were it is high and build trust were we can do better. It is important in risk communication to be clear about what we dont know so what is the level of certainty or uncertainty we have in relation to the available evidence.
Having a trusted food safety regulator is an important foundation for trade deals, said Sudworth.
So if our trading partners and consumers in other countries trust our food is safe and produced to high standards then this will promote international trade. Regulation provides the level playing field for industry and it means consumers can have trust in what they eat. The economic role of a regular is often overlooked. Regulators are not just about telling people what they cant do. They are at the heart of building consumer and business confidence.
Sudworth also acknowledged the pressure on local authorities to use their scarce resources in the most effective way.
This has included changing guidance so they can concentrate on the most important interventions. For lower risk businesses, if they have a Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS) score of 3 or higher, weve advised some planned interventions could be deferred. Some businesses have been waiting longer for their FHRS rating whether its a new rating or re-inspection. Weve advised local authorities where appropriate to prioritize new ratings. After a sharp drop in March when lockdown started we have now seen numbers of new ratings increase steadily but not yet back to pre-pandemic levels, she said.
The food industry asked for more flexibility in applying certain labeling regulations so some products could be repurposed to maintain supply and reduce food waste. As retail demand surged products designed for catering and hospitality remained unsold as businesses had to suspend trading and the supply chain was disrupted. The FSA agreed some temporary flexibilities but we also laid out some red lines to protect consumers.
Online food salesHome delivery was already a growing trend before COVID-19 but now it has come to fore, said Sudworth.
Food eaten outside the home is also a growing category. There is a trend away from people preparing fresh cooked meals themselves and a move towards people having food prepared by somebody else. Which is quite an important shift, she said.
On ghost and dark kitchens if there is a business that is unregulated and operating under the radar that is unacceptable and something we want to stamp out. But the idea of these new facilities to serve the delivery market, they are regulated depending on the arrangement. This is where as regulators we need to keep in touch with new developments to know how we regulate environments like that. It is an opportunity to get information about pop-up businesses to pass that along to local authorities and enforcement agencies.
The rate of change on these new styles of business is different depending on the location. In urban centers there can be a bigger growth and they can be in places where you would not normally expect to find a food business. We have been scanning the publicly available information, like looking on delivery platforms to see who is listed there and checking that against the businesses that are registered. Weve found in general we do know about most things and people want to do right thing and are engaging with local authorities to go through the right processes.
Sudworth added it was too soon to tell if a decline in lab confirmed infections reflects an actual fall or if the reporting or testing dropped. The FSA is trying to understand more but it will take months or years to gauge the pandemics impact.
How OSI handled the pandemicOther presenters included professor Ben Chapman, professor Kali Kniel, professor Donald Schaffner, and Danile Sohier from Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Sharon Birkett, director of quality and regulatory affairs at OSI Group, ran people through how the firm handled the pandemic. This included controls at all sites and staggered shifts with 30 minutes gaps to ensure the first shift left before the second arrived on the floor.
We had employees enter on a single file pattern to collect their temperature. We were trying to avoid them congregating in around areas like the time clock, hygiene stations, or in the canteen. We reduced the number of people allowed in the changing room at one time and put in place a lot of visible markers to help them understand better social distancing and what was important, she said.
In places where we couldnt keep social distancing we put in physical barriers or provided eye protection in the form of goggles or a face shield. In the operating space we put barriers in place because in many places they were in close and constant contact for eight hours.
No OSI site was closed by local authorities due to COVID clusters but the company did shut three plants in the US for this reason.
During the initial lockdowns in Europe, OSI had more than 1,000 metric tons of product in the market, either in restaurants, in distribution or in storage and this was worth more than 5 million. Most of the product was frozen and had a shelf life of between 90 and 120 days. We had so much product on the market we had no need to continue to produce so we suspended operations in eight plants in the EU because of the level of inventory, most restarted in May 2020, said Birkett
We didnt want to waste food so we did agree with our customers to extend the best before shelf life for most products in the market. We agreed with local authorities and that customer on how to visualize the new longer shelf life. We didnt want to move it back to our sites and repackage it just so it would have a new longer shelf life. In the end, 90 percent of our products received new longer shelf lives.
When we restarted operations in May for those plants that were closed, typically these machines run hard every day and now theyve stopped for three months, so we went back through and started our lines up slowly and we had to retrain our employees on how to use the PPE.
All of our food service products sold frozen received new best before dates and we did not waste food. Dates were extended by 15 to 60 days. Our refrigerated products moved through the market as there was a high demand for retail. All the extensions on the best before dates were validated based on data we already had at the sites.
(To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News,click here.)
by: Lauren Daniels, Nexstar Media Wire
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) Early on in the pandemic, research suggested that ones blood type might impact whether or not that person was more likely to contract COVID-19.
Now, new research from Harvard University and Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI) shows how people with type A blood are more likely to become infected.
Experts say the findings theyve made in Oklahoma are just another piece of the puzzle as theyve worked to solve this virus.
Its real, its on the ground and now its getting us a little bit of understanding of whats causing it, said Dr. John Armitage with the OBI.
The OBI began providing free antibody testing to blood donors in July.
Dr. Armitage says they noticed that a larger number of donors with types A or AB had COVID-19 antibodies as compared to those with type O.
So we saw a 2.5% difference in the results we get back from those two different types of donors, he said.
Now, researchers at Harvard have an explanation as to why type As are getting COVID-19 at this slightly higher rate.
So the As have a substance very similar to their A blood group thats lining their lungs and their bronchi and respiratory tract, Armitage said.
In simple terms, he says that type As provide a stickier environment for COVID-19 to cling to, causing infection.
If you think of a family maybe somebody picks up the virus in a family from an event or theyve been traveling together maybe its a married couple and somebody gets the infection and the other doesnt it might be related to blood group, somebody might be more susceptible with that A, Armitage said.
Armitage says everyone should still take the COVID-19 precautions we know no matter their blood type.
Lets talk about a painful subject. I am of the opinion and Im far from alone that the most reliable way to determine if a possible therapy has any usefulness is a randomized, double-blinded controlled clinical trial. I can be a bit more specific than that, even: lets make that a trial that is run with sufficient statistical power to have a good chance of providing a meaningful readout.
The worldwide coronavirus pandemic has featured some well-run trials that have truly advanced our knowledge of the disease and how to treat it. But it has featured far, far more garbage. That word was chosen deliberately. There have been too many observational trials, too many uncontrolled (or poorly controlled) ones, too many open-label ones, and above all, there have been way too many trials whose number of patients would be insufficient to tell us much of anything even if everything else had been run properly.
I am not revealing any hidden tricks of the trade here. Clinical trial design is a subject with a very large literature, and there are any number of people and organizations who can provide useful guidance on both its theoretical and practical aspects. Among these aspects are the calculations that should be made for how many patients a trial is likely to need to be well-powered enough for a clean read on its clinical endpoints. You can start to learn the basic outlines of the subject online. Now, thats not to say that its an easy subject to get ahold of. Youre going to have to estimate some of your key parameters as well as you can, among them what you think the effect size of your treatment might be, what the patient-to-patient variability might be like, the time course of treatment that might be needed, and more. Just picking the proper clinical endpoints is a subject all in itself (and its one that can have a huge effect on a trials design and on its chances for success). And at the other end of things, your inclusion criteria and patient enrollment process is a place for serious thought, too. Who should be evaluated (or definitely not evaluated) in your trial, and how long will it take you to round those people up? Where are you thinking about doing all this, anyway?
There are a wide variety of trial designs out there as well, and you can find yourself sorting through some that are clearly inappropriate to the problem at hand, some that would be great if you had about ten times as much money and time as you do, and several that at first glance look like they could all work out, but which have real-world differences that its crucial that you be aware of. You would be well advised to consult with experience practitioners before you start, to make sure youre on the right track.
Unfortunately, underpowered, badly-run, and badly designed trials have been with us for a long time. Here are some well-justified concerns from 2002, for starters, and various fields of clinical research undergo periodic bouts of soul-searching over the years about these issues. But the pandemic year has really made some of our problems more obvious. Not only do we have trouble with badly run trials, but mixing in with that is a bandwagon effect. Clinicians all over the world just piled onto some of the coronavirus ideas, and kept piling on for months and months and months.Think, for example, about the hydroxychloroquine situation. Now, I still get messages condemning me as an implacable, irrational foe of the One True Coronavirus Therapy. But its worth remembering that I started out as a Huh, I dont know how that would work, but lets look into it person, which I really think should be the default setting. And in that spirit, I was all for running trials and getting more hard data.
But what did we get? A search through clinicaltrials.gov for hydroxychloroquine|coronavirus gives you 113 trials. Whats more, thirty-six of those are still listed as recruiting patients. This is ridiculous, but its not amusing. There are some large, well-controlled data sets available that indicate that HCQ is very likely not a useful therapy, but as you can see, there are also dozens of other smaller ones that say Yes! No! Maybe! Sorta! Kinda! Kinda Not! Depends! Could Be! Who Knows? And that adds up not just to a lack of knowledge, it turns into an actual hindrance to knowledge as you try to sort through the data. The heap of fuzzy indeterminate results also fuels the extrascientific political and cultural arguments about the drug, since everyone can find some sort of support for whatever opinion they might have.
You have to think that there were other therapies that deserved a look in the clinic as compared to the forty-third, sixty-seventh, or ninety-eighth hydroxychloroquine study. Youll recall that for a while, HCQ ended up mixed into other clinical trials just because everyone wanted it or imagined that it was some sort of standard of care, and that did no one much good, either. Now, HCQ isnt the only offender, but its a big one, and I think it illustrates what we should try not to do next time.
How, then, should we try not to do that? (Update: some thoughts here on this problem from a distinguished team of authors with exactly the same concerns). Its not like the US (to pick a big example) has a National Clinical Trial Authority that passes judgment on these things. To be honest, the downsides of having such an agency might worry me even more. But letting everyone go into Headless Poultry Mode and pile up overlapping crap in the clinic isnt such a good way to go, either. You would hope for a little more coordination among major medical research centers, and youd also hope for some local university/research hospital review boards to be aware that greenlighting the East Porkford Covid-19 Treatment Study with 47 patients isnt really going to advance medical science very much. Especially when its covering the same ground as the trials kicking off in Mashed Potato Falls, Rancho Malario, and Kidneystone Pass. But Im being unfair to East Porkford some of these lackluster trials were conducted at larger institutions that should have known better. The way were set up, its down to the review boards and the sources of funding to police things better, and to keep their heads while all about them are losing theirs.
And its also down to the NIH and the CDC to lead the way more than they did during 2020. The RECOVERY trial in the UK has been an example of what can be accomplished in that line. The NIH has helped run some good trials, but weve had nothing that comprehensive in the US as compared to the UK effort, and I really wish we had. I fear that some day, eventually, were going to have a chance to do better, and I hope that we take it.
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) reports as of March 17, 2021, there have been 2,320,735 total confirmatory laboratory results received for COVID-19, with 136,334 total cases and 2,565 total deaths.
DHHR has confirmed the deaths of a 90-year old female from Morgan County, a 59-year old male from Brooke County, a 72-year old male from Cabell County, an 83-year old male from Berkeley County, a 78-year old male from Berkeley County, a 64-year old male from Nicholas County, a 52-year old female from Kanawha County, a 74-year old male from Wetzel County, a 73-year old male from Kanawha County, a 76-year old female from Berkeley County, a 67-year old male from Berkeley County, a 74-year old male from Berkeley County, a 63-year old female from Cabell County, a 72-year old male from Brooke County, an 81-year old male from Hampshire County, a 79-year old male from Berkeley County, an 83-year old female from Kanawha County, an 86-year old female from Hampshire County and an 83-year old female from Berkeley County.
Words cannot convey the despair I feel over each and every life lost to this terrible virus, said Bill J. Crouch, Cabinet Secretary of DHHR. I offer my sincere condolences to the family and friends of these West Virginians.
CASES PER COUNTY: Barbour (1,293), Berkeley (10,121), Boone (1,654), Braxton (798), Brooke (2,041), Cabell (8,114), Calhoun (236), Clay (384), Doddridge (488), Fayette (2,811), Gilmer (723), Grant (1,139), Greenbrier (2,451), Hampshire (1,574), Hancock (2,601), Hardy (1,333), Harrison (4,983), Jackson (1,703), Jefferson (3,753), Kanawha (12,458), Lewis (1,071), Lincoln (1,297), Logan (2,845), Marion (3,805), Marshall (3,116), Mason (1,824), McDowell (1,391), Mercer (4,306), Mineral (2,608), Mingo (2,211), Monongalia (8,346), Monroe (988), Morgan (952), Nicholas (1,281), Ohio (3,718), Pendleton (628), Pleasants (813), Pocahontas (602), Preston (2,638), Putnam (4,373), Raleigh (5,018), Randolph (2,436), Ritchie (633), Roane (510), Summers (707), Taylor (1,111), Tucker (508), Tyler (641), Upshur (1,730), Wayne (2,644), Webster (394), Wetzel (1,125), Wirt (364), Wood (7,264), Wyoming (1,778).
Delays may be experienced with the reporting of information from the local health department to DHHR. As case surveillance continues at the local health department level, it may reveal that those tested in a certain county may not be a resident of that county, or even the state as an individual in question may have crossed the state border to be tested. Such is the case of Barbour and Tucker counties in this report.
BERLIN, March 18 (Reuters) - The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 17,504 to 2,612,268, the biggest daily rise since Jan. 22, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.
The reported death toll rose by 227 to 74,132, while the number of new cases per 100,000 people over seven days rose to 90, compared to 86 a day earlier. (Reporting by Emma Thomasson Editing by Caroline Copley)
The Republican-led Michigan Legislature took additional steps Wednesday to send $652 million in proposed COVID-19 response spending previously vetoed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer back to her desk over objections from most Democratic lawmakers, one of whom described the process as the definition of insanity.
Taken together, Senate Bills 29 and 114 include a $150 million general fund deposit into the Unemployment Insurance Agency fund, $405 million in property tax and fee relief for businesses, about $87 million in funds for non-public schools and $10 million for a summer school grant program.
The funding in question was included in an overall COVID-19 relief package signed by Whitmer last week. She line-item vetoed the proposed measures, citing problems in the bills and a lack of negotiation between the Legislature and her administration on the measures.
Shortly after those vetoes and after an attempt to override them outright the House voted out two different bills containing the same vetoed spending, with Republicans pitching it as a way for her to fix her mistake.
Related: Michigan House tries again on spending vetoed by Whitmer
Republicans in the Senate followed suit Wednesday, approving slightly amended versions of both the school and general fund spending bills in 20-15 votes. The House concurred in the amendments later Wednesday afternoon and the bills are back in the Senate for enrollment before they head to Whitmers desk.
Senate Appropriations Chair Jim Stamas, R-Midland, said on the Senate floor that hes ready for the invitation from the governor to take input from the Legislature on COVID-19 response so they can work through issues more effectively.
But Sen. Curtis Hertel, Jr., D-East Lansing, said Republican efforts to push through bills to make a political point isnt cutting it for Michigan businesses and residents who could use the help. Senate Democrats took a difficult vote against the legislation as a message of protest against the process and are prepared to withhold giving immediate effect to bills that we know dont solve problems, he said.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, Hertel said, later adding, I ask, I request, I demand that we get in the room, sit down, negotiate, and solve these problems.
Stamas countered that the definition of insanity is a governor who continues to take on a pandemic without including all branches of the government.
Weve continued to try to govern and be an effective body, yet this body has been shut down with bipartisan legislation over and over and over again, Stamas said.
Wednesdays votes were the latest development in an ongoing dispute between Whitmer and legislative Republicans over how best to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those tensions have bled into the process of allocating billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 aid available to the state.
The gulf between the two sides continues to widen amid clashes over the proper extent of executive authority, threats of another legal challenge from the Senate if spending tied to vetoed policy bills is touched and a standstill on negotiations between legislative Republicans and the states budget office.
Related coverage:
Whitmer signs bulk of coronavirus aid package, but vetoes limits on executive authority
Whitmer signals vetoes likely on parts of COVID-19 relief plan that limit executive powers
COVID-19 aid, confidentiality agreements, guns and LGBT rights: The week in Michigan politics
Michigan House clears $4.2B COVID-19 spending plan, ties some funds to limits on health departments authority
Michigan Senate approves $1.9 billion for vaccine distribution, direct care worker payments, school aid
Whitmer vetoes bills that would limit public health orders and repeal governors emergency powers
WASHINGTON Former President Donald Trump again urged people to be vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, saying he would recommend vaccination to a lot of people that dont want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me.
In an interview Tuesday night on Fox News, Trump acknowledged that people were free to decide for themselves whether they would be vaccinated against COVID-19.
We have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works, he said.
Republican opposition to receiving the vaccine is strong. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 42% of Republicans say they probably or definitely will not get the shot, compared with 17% of Democrats a 25-point split.
Trump has promoted vaccination before. When he appeared Feb. 28 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, he said, Everybody, go get your shot.
--The Associated Press
A much higher percentage of children in Northern Virginia appear to have been exposed to the COVID-19 virus than previously believed, according to a new study released Thursday.
An antibody study conducted from July to October by Inova Health System, the Virginia Department of Health and George Mason University found that the overall antibody positivity rate in children ages 0 to 19 was 8.5%.
In addition, two-thirds of the children who had antibodies had no history of symptoms of COVID-19 infection. That highlights the silent, or asymptomatic, infection in children and subsequent risk of transmission of infection to others, Inova said in a news release.
Through the end of October, Northern Virginia as a whole had reported about 58,000 confirmed and probable cases of coronavirus, representing only 2.5% of the region's population. Following the post-holiday surge, cases have nearly tripled, to a total of about 164,000, or about 7.1% of the region's population.
The Inova study analyzed blood samples from more than 1,000 children, with those of Hispanic origin found to have the highest rate of antibody positivity, 26.6%.
COVID-19 antibodies were found in 8.2% of white children, 5.3% of Black children, 5.7% of Asian children, and 16.2% of children with multiple racial origins.
Broken down by age groups, the rate was 13.7% in young children (0-5 years), 7.5% in elementary school-age (6-10 years), 5.1% in early adolescents (11-15 years) and 10.8% in older adolescents (16-19 years).
Compared with an earlier study of adults in Virginia, which reported a COVID-19 antibody positivity rate of 4.4%, the pediatric rate of positivity is nearly double.
The pediatric serology project unexpectedly found more children were seropositive than we had anticipated, said Dr. Rebecca Levorson, division director for pediatric infectious diseases at Inova Childrens Hospital.
Most of these children did not have symptoms, which makes it difficult to know who may be infectious and who is not at a specific time," she added. "Nearly a quarter of the U.S. population is children, and as they may represent a larger proportion of SARS-CoV-2 disease than we previously thought, we need to recognize that children will continue to be infected with and possibly asymptomatically spread this disease."
More information about the pediatric serology project can be found at https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.28.21250466v1.
People whove been vaccinated for COVID-19 can enjoy small gatherings again, but should keep wearing a mask and social distancing in public. Thats according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It says fully vaccinated people can gather maskless with other vaccinated people indoors. It also says people can meet with unvaccinated people from one household at a time, if those people are considered at low-risk. A person is considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the last required dose of vaccine. For now, the CDC still discourages unnecessary travel for vaccinated people.
SALEM, Ore. With the American Rescue Plan now signed into law, Oregon will soon be receiving more than $4.2 billion in coronavirus relief funds. Unlikeprovisions in last year's CARES Act, much of that funding will be going directly to local city and county governments.
President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package last Thursday after it passed both chambers of Congress. While the precise amount of aid that will be doled out to municipalities in the coming days is likely to fluctuate somewhat, the National League of Cities has been working to calculate the approximate amounts that each area will receive.
All told, Oregon is slated to receive more than $4.2 billion $2.6 billion of which will go to the state government to fund agencies impacted by COVID-19, with another $155,000 going to capital projects. Almost $1.5 billion will be split among counties, cities and towns throughout the state.
So what does this mean for governments our area? The NLC came up with these early estimates...
Cities
NOTE: Municipalities receiving less than $1 million have been omitted for brevity in this report, but many of them are eligible for their own funding in the relief package.
Counties
The National League of Cities came to these numbers after using the formulas set out by the bill on how much money each city in the country can get. For municipalities over 50,000 people, population, poverty, and housing instability all contribute to the monetary value given to each local government. Cities with less than 50,000 will get money from the state that will be sub-allocated from funding through a simple per capita formula.
According to the legislation, half of the relief money will be given out this spring and summer and the other half will be given out in 2022.
