Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday faced federal lawmakers for the first time since September as he sought to defend a more than 12% proposed cut to his department’s budget and dodge arrows from angry Democrats along the way.

In his testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, kicking off an expected sprint of seven budget hearings he’ll attend across congressional committees and subcommittees over the next week, Kennedy emphasized the administration’s work to reform dietary guidelines and crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.

Republicans on the committee praised Kennedy as a “breath of fresh air” and asked him to promote his department’s recent actions. Democrats, who have been furious over Kennedy’s sweeping overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, largely had a different agenda.

They needled Kennedy on what they viewed as the Trump administration’s hypocrisy on fraud, demanded to know why he was cutting budgets for various programs and slammed his efforts to pull back vaccine recommendations and messaging, which they said have caused unnecessary deaths.

Kennedy fired back, often raising his voice as he accused the Democrats of misrepresenting his work and past statements.

Here are three standout moments from Thursday’s hearing:

A standoff over measles

One heated exchange early in the hearing came between Kennedy and Rep. Linda Sanchez. The California Democrat decried recent measles outbreaks across the U.S. and asked Kennedy to answer for the fact that under his leadership, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pulled back public health messaging supporting vaccination.

“As a mother, this horrifies me,” Sanchez said. “Did President Trump approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging campaign?”

Kennedy repeatedly refused to answer, saying first he wanted to respond to the “misstatements that you’ve made” and later praising the Trump administration’s record on preventing measles, although protections against the disease have eroded in some parts of the country as vaccination rates have dropped.

“That’s not answering my question,” Sanchez said as the two talked over each other.

But Sanchez also got Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered politics, to acknowledge that a 6-year-old who died of measles last year in West Texas could have potentially been saved with vaccination.

“Do you agree with the majority of doctors that the measles vaccine could have saved that child’s life in Texas?” she asked.

“It’s possible, certainly,” Kennedy said.

RFK Jr. denies talking about Black children being ‘re-parented’

A fight erupted between Kennedy and Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, when Kennedy vehemently denied making remarks he’d said in 2024.

The comments dated back to when Kennedy was a presidential candidate. On the “High Level Conversations” podcast last July, he said, “Psychiatric drugs — which every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens, you’ll actually have to talk to people.”

“Have you ever re-parented, or parented, I should say, a Black child?” Sewell asked, as her staff held up a poster featuring an abbreviated version of the quote.

“I don’t even know what that phrase means,” Kennedy said. “I’m not going to answer something I didn’t say.”

“You’re making stuff up,” he later claimed.

A recording of the podcast shows he made the comments during a conversation about free rehabilitation facilities he was proposing opening at the time in rural areas around the country.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Kennedy before joining the administration was referring to spaces where young people facing alienation, mental health challenges and despair could get re-parented, which she said was a psychotherapy term for “developing the emotional regulation, discipline, boundaries, and self-worth that may not have been established in childhood.”

For Kennedy and his former party, civility is the exception

Kennedy spent most of his life as a Democrat, the scion of one of the nation’s most famous political families. Both Republicans and Democrats during the hearing began their remarks by expressing their admiration of Kennedy’s relatives, among them former President John F. Kennedy.

But again and again throughout Thursday’s hearing, the fraying of bonds between Kennedy and his former party was on full display as spiteful comments were passed back and forth.

The health secretary grew defensive and visibly agitated. He repeatedly criticized Democratic lawmakers for not giving him a word in edgewise.

“They’ve all shut me up,” Kennedy said at one point. “They give a little speech that they can go and market, you know, for fundraising, and they don’t allow me to answer the question.”

On a few rare occasions, the exchanges were civil. One representative, Gwen Moore of Wisconsin, used humor to make that happen.

“I promise to give you easy, comfortable questions if you don’t yell at me and hurt my feelings,” she told Kennedy. He promised he wouldn’t.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week posted a list of more than two dozen types of testing that have become unavailable.

This is not the first time the CDC has paused some of its lab testing. But it is pausing more kinds of tests than ever before, and it is not totally clear why, said Scott Becker, chief executive officer of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

A government spokesman called the pause temporary and attributed it to “a routine review to uphold our commitment to high quality laboratory testing.”

“We anticipate some of these tests will be available through CDC labs again in the coming weeks. In the meantime, CDC stands ready to support our state and local partners to access the public health testing they need,” said Andrew Nixon of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.

CDC’s laboratory operations were faulted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they were the subject of a subsequent work group’s review. The agency has been evaluating its testing since 2024, Becker said.

But there can be other reasons for taking tests offline, including staffing issues, he noted.

The pausing of lab testing comes in the wake of the dramatic downsizing of the CDC in the last year through layoffs, retirements, resignations and the nonrenewal of temporary appointments. Staffing fell by 20% to 25%, according to different estimates, and was felt across the agency — including in the laboratories.

The poxvirus and rabies labs lost about half their prior staff, and the CDC’s malaria branch was gutted even more, according to the National Public Health Coalition, an organization of former and current CDC workers that formed in the wake of the downsizing.

Some of the paused testing focuses on common infections for which commercial testing is available, like Epstein-Barr virus, and the varicella zoster virus behind chickenpox and shingles. But also on the list is testing for some more exotic agents, like the for parasitic worms responsible for “snail fever” and for the virus that causes “sloth fever.”

Some specialized state labs, like those in the New York and California, have the ability to pick up the slack while CDC tests are on pause, Becker said.

He called the pauses “concerning, only if it’s permanent.”

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Nicknamed “Nimbus,” the new subvariant NB.1.8.1 has been described in news reports in China as having more obvious signs of “razor blade throat” — what patients describe as feeling like their throats are studded with razor blades.

Although “razor blade throat” may seem like a new term, the description of incredibly painful sore throats associated with COVID-19 has emerged before in the United States, like having a throat that feels like it’s covered with shards of glass. But the increased attention to this symptom comes as the Nimbus subvariant has caused surges of COVID-19 in other countries.

“Before Omicron, I think most people presented with the usual loss of taste and smell as the predominant symptom and shortness of breath,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious-disease expert. But as COVID has become less likely to require hospitalization, “people are focusing on these other aspects of symptoms,” such as an extraordinarily painful sore throat.

Part of the Omicron family, Nimbus is now one of the most dominant coronavirus subvariants nationally. For the two-week period that ended June 7, Nimbus comprised an estimated 37% of the nation’s coronavirus samples, now roughly even with the subvariant LP.8.1, probably responsible for 38% of circulating virus. LP.8.1 has been dominant over the past few months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Nimbus subvariant has also been increasing since May in California, the state Department of Public Health said in an email to the Los Angeles Times. Projections suggest the Nimbus subvariant comprises 55% of circulating virus in California, up from observations of just 2% in April, the agency said Friday.

“We are seeing some indicators of increased COVID-19 activity, including the rise of the NB.1.8.1 variant, elevated coronavirus levels in wastewater, and an uptick in the test positivity rate,” Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, wrote in an email to The Times.

“Wastewater surveillance across Southern California shows variability: Santa Barbara watersheds are reporting moderate-to-high levels, Ventura and Los Angeles counties are seeing low-to-moderate levels, Riverside is reporting low levels, while San Bernardino is experiencing high activity,” Hudson said.

While viral concentrations remain relatively low, Los Angeles County has observed an increase in coronavirus levels in sewage, the local Department of Public Health told The Times. For the week that ended May 30 — the most recent available — viral levels in wastewater rose by 13% versus a comparable period several weeks earlier.

In addition, there is a slight increase in the rate in which COVID surveillance tests are turning up positive in L.A. County. For the most recent week, 5% of COVID surveillance tests showed positive results for infection, up from 3.8% in early May. COVID-related visits to the emergency room remain low in Los Angeles County.

There were still low rates of COVID-19 illness in San Francisco, the local Department of Public Health said.

Yet coronavirus levels in wastewater in Northern California’s most populous county, Santa Clara County, are starting to increase, “just as they have over past summers,” the local Public Health Department said in an email to The Times. As of Friday, coronavirus levels in the sewershed of San José was considered “high.” Viral levels were “medium” in Palo Alto and “low” in Sunnyvale. Nimbus is the most common subvariant in the county.

Across California, coronavirus levels in wastewater are at a “medium” level; the last time viral levels were consistently “low” was in April, according to the state Department of Public Health’s website.

“Future seasonal increases in disease levels are likely,” the California Department of Public Health said in an email to The Times Friday.

The uptick in COVID comes as many medical professional organizations and some state and local health officials are objecting to the Trump administration’s recent moves on vaccine policy, which some experts fear will make it more difficult for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and other diseases.

Federal officials in May weakened the CDC’s official recommendations from recommending the COVID vaccine to everyone age 6 months and up. The CDC now offers “no guidance” on whether healthy pregnant women should get the COVID vaccine, and now asks that parents of healthy children talk with a healthcare provider before asking that their kids get inoculated.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a rebuke of the changing vaccine recommendations for pregnant women, accusing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — led by the vaccine-skeptic secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — of “propagating misinformation.” The American Pharmacists Assn. wrote that dropping the vaccine recommendation for pregnant women did “not appear to be based on the scientific evidence provided over the last few years.”

And an open letter by 30 organizations specializing in health — including the American Medical Assn. — said that “we must continue to prioritize high levels of COVID-19 vaccine coverage in pregnant patients to protect them and their infants after birth.”

Chin-Hong said he recommends pregnant women get vaccinated “one million percent.”

“The data are incredibly clear that pregnant women do have a higher rate of complications, hospitalization and premature births when they did not get vaccinated [against COVID] compared to the ones that did,” said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious-disease expert at Stanford University. The vaccines also help newborns, as antibodies generated by the mom-to-be cross the placenta, and can protect the newborn for a certain number of months, she said.

That’s essential protection, given that newborns can’t be vaccinated under 6 months of age, Maldonado said. If newborns are infected, they have relatively high rates of hospitalization — as high as those age 65 and over, Maldonado said.

Then, last week, Kennedy abruptly fired all members of a highly influential committee that advises the CDC on vaccine policy. In an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy criticized the previous members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, founded in 1964, as being “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

Maldonado, a professor in pediatric infectious diseases and epidemiology, was one of the fired vaccine advisors. She called their mass dismissal unprecedented in the history of the ACIP.

“We are absolutely in uncharted territory here,” Maldonado said. “I think it’s going to be really hard to understand what vaccines are going to go forward. … They’re also going to review the entire vaccination schedule.”

In general, routine review of vaccine schedules are a good thing, and prior reviews have concluded that the current recommended shots are safe and effective, Maldonado said. But the criteria being circulated by recently appointed federal officials “could actually wind up refusing to recommend, say, measles vaccine or HPV vaccine, because I’ve seen some of the misinformation that has been out there about some of these vaccines. …

“And if any of that is accepted as truth, we could wind up losing some of these vaccines,” Maldonado said.

“The question, then, is: ‘Would those vaccines disappear?’ … Hard to know,” she said. But it’s also possible that federal officials could begin to stop paying for certain vaccines to be administered to children of low-income families.

She rejected Kennedy’s characterization of the committee as a rubber stamp for vaccine makers. “Generally, a decision to not pursue a vaccine happens usually well before anything gets to a vote,” Maldonado said.

A joint statement by the governors of California, Oregon and Washington condemned Kennedy’s dismissal of the vaccine advisors as “deeply troubling for the health of the nation” and defended the fired vaccine advisors as having been “carefully screened for major conflicts of interest.”

“We have grave concerns about the integrity and transparency of upcoming federal vaccine recommendations and will continue to collaborate to ensure that science and sound medicine prevail to prevent any loss of life,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement Thursday.

Traditionally, the advisory committee’s recommendations on who should get vaccinated were adopted by the director of the CDC.

“It was one of the most depressing weeks in American health … a dark period for everyone right now, and demoralizing,” said Chin-Hong, of UC San Francisco. “It’s very destabilizing.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics called the purge of the vaccine advisors “an escalating effort by the administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines.” Kennedy’s handpicked replacements include people known for their criticism of vaccines, the Associated Press reported.

The mass firing “likely puts vaccine access and insurance coverage at serious risk,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a statement. “It corrodes trust in the recommended schedule for vaccines, not only by the public, but by medical providers who rely on the ACIP for science-based, apolitical guidance.”

The departments of public health for California, Oregon and Washington said they “continue to recommend all individuals age 6 months and older should have access and the choice to receive currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines, with an emphasis on protecting higher risk individuals, such as infants and toddlers, pregnant individuals, and others with risks for serious disease.”

The L.A. County Department of Public Health said in a statement that, “at this time in Los Angeles County, current vaccine recommendations for persons aged 6 months and older to receive the COVID-19 vaccine remain in effect and insurance coverage for COVID-19 vaccines is still in place.”

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The meeting was held at a Riverside County building, in a room that can host some 300 people. It was full. An overflow room had space for over 100 more. It was full. A cafe in the building had a few more seats. Those filled up, too. Some people stood along the edges.

The reason, as it so often has been in the Inland Empire in recent years, was warehouses — specifically a proposal to build an industrial and warehouse complex on the edge of the old March Air Force Base.

But the result on this night was different, breaking with decades of political and economic inertia and cementing a genuine sea change that formally emerged last year. After Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill in September reining in warehouse development statewide, San Bernardino County Superior Court overturned an approval for a gigantic project in Bloomington a few weeks later.

Then came Monday’s hearing. A developer, Meridian Park West, had proposed a 3 million-square-foot warehouse space as part of what planners called the West Campus Upper Plateau project, an 818-acre swath of land west of the decommissioned base and surrounded mostly by homes, a church and ballfields. 

The prospect of warehouses on that land infuriated the neighbors, who already navigate the trucks and traffic that come with the Inland Empire’s self-created place in international commerce, a waystation between the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports and the American interior. The warehouse boom in recent decades has brought jobs but also disruption to Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and this project crystallized what has become a difficult choice for many communities: The jobs are tempting, but the price is safety and public health.

In community after community, that debate resolved in favor of jobs. In 1980, there were 234 warehouses spread across this region. Now there are more than 4,000. They cover nearly 40 square miles of land. 

That rampage was virtually uncontested in the early years. But concentration has multiplied the environmental and community impact of these projects. It also focused public attention. Proposals that once sailed through now are encountering more determined opposition. That was starkly on display this week as the March Joint Powers Commission met to discuss, one more time, the ever-evolving proposed project.

The developer this time came with some concessions and window dressing. Recast as the March Innovation Hub, the warehouse pitch was accompanied by a promise to create a center of research and “innovation,” backed by a $4 million endowment. The project footprint had been reduced, highlighted by the new center, which, in theory, would act as a place to explore advances in biotechnology, aviation and transportation, according to the authority’s staff. 

The authority’s staff also recommended the commissioners, made up of various Riverside County politicians, approve the modified project. Their constituents were having none of it. 

Authority officials and the developer made their pitches, leaning heavily on the prospect of new construction jobs and an estimated 3,100 permanent jobs once the complex was built and operating. Hundreds of residents who had assembled for the evening stirred uneasily during those presentations, occasionally interrupting with jeers

When a public opinion researcher hired by the developer reported that the community was evenly divided about the project, “What a lie!” one resident called out. 

Speaker after speaker rose to address the commission. Those in support came almost exclusively from organized labor, in particular building and trade unions. Carpenters, pipe fitters and others spoke up for the jobs that would be created in the construction of the complex.

Unanimous vote

The evening was dominated, however, by opponents. One after another, they ticked off their reasons for wanting the project stopped:

It would bring thousands of truck trips through residential communities. These residents were not buying the staff’s assertion that trucks would be restricted to certain roads — these communities already are overrun by truck traffic, so they’re not easily fooled by assurances.

It would provide jobs, yes, but most of them seemed ill-suited to this area. Warehouse employment is often minimum wage or just above it, and rents in Riverside and surrounding communities are high. One speaker noted that a full-time employee of one of these new warehouses might take home $2,800 a month — income, to be sure, but hard to stretch in an area where rents average $2,000 a month. Workers, then, would have to live in cheaper areas and commute, meaning more traffic.

It would contribute to the region’s stultifying air pollution and health problems that flow from it. Parents told of their asthmatic children struggling to breathe; residents spoke of loved ones moving away in search of healthier places. One doctor responded to the claim that “there’s no such thing as a bad job” by retorting: “There’s no such thing as a good cancer.”

It would demolish the character of the communities around it. These are neighborhoods of private homes. A large church that runs a school and sports programs sits to the south of the project area. What about those residents and parishioners and their priorities, the speakers asked?

It would, to opponents, represent a triumph of money and influence over popular will. “You are our elected officials,” one speaker noted. “Your responsibility is to represent us, not a wealthy developer who does not even live in the county.” Cheers erupted. And others made the same point, to the same applause. “We deserve,” one speaker pointedly noted, “to be protected by the leaders we elected.”

As the night ground on, the developer’s representatives seemed to feel the momentum swinging against them. When it came time to vote, some commissioners entertained the prospect of a compromise: They would approve the project but insert language that specifically prohibited the developer from using any of the land zoned as “industrial” for logistics, the planning word for warehouses.

Desperate for a win, the developer agreed to that condition. That alone offered powerful evidence of how far this debate has shifted. In order to salvage a commercial, industrial project here in the land of warehouses, the developer was willing to jettison the warehouses themselves.

And yet, even that was not enough. Opponents, sensing the possibility of a broader victory, objected. They pressed for a straight up vote on the overall project.

There were a few last gasps. Riverside City Councilmember Chuck Conder sputtered a bit in frustration, defending the region’s air quality and arguing that the project would make traffic “better, not worse.” He stared down disbelieving members of the audience and demanded that residents who opposed this project come back with ideas of their own. 

“Something’s going to be built,” he noted. “Tell us what you want.”

But that felt like the death rattle of an old idea, and the matter plowed ahead to a vote. The commission’s clerk called the roll, and the project died. The vote was unanimous.

Jennifer Larratt-Smith has been one of the leaders of the campaign to kill the warehouses, which she has been fighting for years, often just grateful for a delay. She was among the speakers Monday night, and as she left the meeting room, she beamed, absorbing the congratulations of her neighbors and others. 

She noted that public sentiment against warehouses is shifting. And she noted, with relief, that democracy, as exemplified by the hundreds who petitioned their leaders for help, sometimes prevails.

“Every once in a while,” she said, exhausted and elated. “Every once in a great while.”

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The directive was sent to all 50 states and will cancel roughly $12 billion in funding. California officials said they couldn’t immediately say how the cuts would affect state services.

“We are working to evaluate the impact of these actions,” Erica Pan, the state department’s director and state public health officer, said in a statement.

The funding was awarded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to aid the state with its respiratory virus monitoring, testing and response, immunizations and vaccines for children, and to help address health disparities, Pan said.

The cuts were reported earlier by NBC News, which quoted a statement from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon saying that the “COVID-19 pandemic is over, and H.H.S. will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

It is unclear how much funding the state had been awarded and how much is now being pulled, but a 2023 news release shows that the CDC awarded the state a $37-million grant to help strengthen the state’s health infrastructure, workforce and data systems.

According to the release, the grant award’s start date was Dec. 1, 2022, and was set to last through Nov. 30, 2027.

It couldn’t immediately be determined how much of the award has already been spent, but much of it was designated to support county health departments, including the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Riverside County Department of Public Health, Long Beach Health Department, Orange County Health Department and San Bernardino County Department of Public Health.

In addition, two other large awards were provided by the CDC to California in the immediate wake of the COVID pandemic: a $555-million grant during 2020 and $1.7 billion as part of the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021.

The state Department of Public Health didn’t immediately respond for a request for comment on what programs could be affected by the CDC’s cancellation of funding, nor how the state’s infectious-disease monitoring, testing, response and immunization programs could be affected.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health received notices from the federal government that COVID-associated funding was going to be rescinded, a spokeswoman for the department said. It also received an informal notice from the state that COVID-related grants for vaccination services probably would be terminated.

“In total, these actions to rescind … COVID-associated funding will impact more than $45 million in core L.A. County Public Health funding,” the spokeswoman said. “Much of this funding supports disease surveillance, public health lab services, outbreak investigations, infection control activities at healthcare facilities, and data transparency. We are working to determine the impacts of the announcement of the loss of this funding.”

According to 2025-26 state budget figures, Gov. Gavin Newsom allocated $5.1 billion to the state’s health department; about $2.3 billion of that comes from federal funding.

Although Congress initially authorized the money for state health programs as part of its COVID relief bills, it has since been allowed to be targeted to other programs, such as testing and surveillance for other respiratory viruses.

California has been ground zero for the H5N1 bird flu since last March. Thirty-eight people in the state have been infected with the virus, most of them dairy workers who were exposed working with infected cows or milk. However, two of the people were children; the cause of their infection has not been determined.

The virus has also infected 756 dairy herds; more than 75% of the state’s total dairy herds.

In addition, there have been eight measles cases since the beginning of the year, in addition to thousands of seasonal flu, COVID-19, norovirus and RSV cases.

Pan said the state will continue to advance public health and work to protect people.

“All Californians deserve to live in healthy and thriving communities, which is the role of public health,” she wrote in her statement, saying her department is “committed to seeking the resources required to support the critical, lifesaving infrastructure needed to keep people healthy and protect them against infectious disease, vaccine-preventable diseases and health emergencies.”

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The One Life, One Heart Overdose Awareness Walk is scheduled for 8 a.m. on April 12 in Fairmount Park, 2601 Fairmount Blvd., according to the Riverside University Health System.

“These walks are more than a remembrance,” county Board of Supervisors Chairman Manuel Perez said. “They are a call to unite, support one another and build a community where hope replaces loss and recovery is within reach for all.”

A 5K walk is planned, along with a resource fair, featuring information on the threat from fentanyl and other controlled substances. There will additionally be free lunches.

“When we walk together at these events, we remember those we’ve lost, while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those who are still struggling so that they have the resources and support needed to move forward,” Public Health Officer Dr. Matthew Chang said.

The Riverside walk will be followed by two other gatherings:

• Palm Desert Civic Center, 43900 San Pablo Ave., 7 a.m. on April 26; and
• Murrieta Town Square Park, 1 Town Square, 8 a.m. on June 7.

The latest public health figures show 296 fentanyl fatalities countywide in 2024. The data are subject to revision because December numbers remain unconfirmed. However, barring a major change, the current total would represent a sizable drop from prior years. In 2023, there were 570 fentanyl poisonings, while in 2022, there were 527, according to the RUHS.

The agency cited U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention data indicating that, nationwide, roughly 97,000 overdose deaths were documented over the 12 months ending June 30, 2024, a 14% drop from the prior 12-month period.

The county events will include opportunities for attendees to procure services related to temporary housing assistance, behavioral health counseling and general health care, according to officials.

Register at for your run/walk in Riverside, Palm Desert and Murrieta at bit.ly/1LifeWalker25.

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Dengue is primarily carried and transmitted by infected Aedes aegypti, a species of mosquito common to the Riverside County area. While seven human cases of the disease have been reported by Los Angeles and San Diego counties this year, none have been reported in Riverside County.

In addition, it is likely that the seven cases involved people who were traveling elsewhere, according to the statement from the Northwest Mosquito and Vector Control District.

“With fall temperatures, we often spend more time outdoors,” said Jeremy Wittie, general manager for the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. He noted that mosquitoes are more active in the fall and emphasized that wearing repellent is essential to staying healthy.

The district urged residents to take a handful of steps to help control the spread of Aedes aegypti, including eliminating standing water sources where mosquitoes lay eggs. For those planning on traveling to active transmission areas, officials recommended applying repellents with EPA- registered ingredients and wearing long-sleeve shirts, long pants, socks and shoes.

Reported symptoms of dengue include aches and pains (such as eye pain, typically behind the eyes, muscle, joint, or bone pain), nausea, vomiting, and rash, the statement said.

The district urged anyone with these symptoms to avoid mosquito bites and contact a medical provider.

The post Amid Dengue Cases, RivCo Residents Urged To Take Precautions appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Dengue is primarily carried and transmitted by infected Aedes aegypti, a species of mosquito common to the Riverside County area. While seven human cases of the disease have been reported by Los Angeles and San Diego counties this year, none have been reported in Riverside County.

In addition, it is likely that the seven cases involved people who were traveling elsewhere, according to the statement from the Northwest Mosquito and Vector Control District.

“With fall temperatures, we often spend more time outdoors,” said Jeremy Wittie, general manager for the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. He noted that mosquitoes are more active in the fall and emphasized that wearing repellent is essential to staying healthy.

The district urged residents to take a handful of steps to help control the spread of Aedes aegypti, including eliminating standing water sources where mosquitoes lay eggs. For those planning on traveling to active transmission areas, officials recommended applying repellents with EPA- registered ingredients and wearing long-sleeve shirts, long pants, socks and shoes.

Reported symptoms of dengue include aches and pains (such as eye pain, typically behind the eyes, muscle, joint, or bone pain), nausea, vomiting, and rash, the statement said.

The district urged anyone with these symptoms to avoid mosquito bites and contact a medical provider.

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McDonald’s pulled Quarter Pounders from one-fifth of its U.S. stores Tuesday as a result of the outbreak, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said had sickened at least 49 people in 10 states. One person died and 10 were hospitalized, according to the CDC.

A preliminary investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suggested fresh slivered onions that are served raw on Quarter Pounder hamburgers were a likely source of the contamination.

McDonald’s said it was searching for a new regional supplier for fresh onions. In the meantime, Quarter Pounders were removed from menus in the impacted states as well as portions of other states.

McDonald’s said it has worked closely with federal food safety regulators since late last week, when it was alerted to the potential outbreak. The company said the scope of the problem and the popularity of its products have complicated efforts to identify the contamination source.

McDonald’s has more than 14,000 U.S. stores and serves 1 million Quarter Pounders every two weeks in the affected area.

McDonald’s is known for its stringent food safety guidelines and protocols, said Chris Gaulke, a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration. The company said Wednesday that the supplier regularly tested its onions for E. coli, for example.

“Given the volume of food that they go through, how infrequently this happens to McDonald’s is a testament to the effort that they take,” Gaulke said.

But some experts questioned why McDonald’s simply stopped selling one sandwich and didn’t close restaurants for further investigation.

“Good practice would have been to close all the restaurants,” Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer who specializes in food safety cases, said. “Until we know definitively what the product was that made people sick, consumers should be aware.”

Marler said cross-contamination remains a potential possibility at the affected restaurants until they are thoroughly cleaned.

Asked why it didn’t close any stores, McDonald’s said nothing in the government’s investigation indicated there were issues with its food preparation practices. In an interview on the “Today” show Wednesday, McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger also said it’s likely that whatever product was contaminated has already passed through the company’s supply chain.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the outbreak late Tuesday. It said infections were reported between Sept. 27 and Oct. 11 in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

State and local public health officials were interviewing people about the foods they ate in the week before they got sick. Of the 18 people interviewed as of Tuesday, all reported eating at McDonald’s, and 16 people reported eating a beef hamburger. Twelve reported eating a Quarter Pounder.

McDonald’s said it’s unlikely the beef in the Quarter Pounder was the source, since it comes from multiple suppliers and is cooked at a high enough temperature to kill E. coli.

McDonald’s said its initial findings suggest that some of the reported illnesses were linked to onions from a single supplier, which the company didn’t name. McDonald’s said the onions are cleaned and sliced by the supplier and then packaged for use on individual Quarter Pounders.

The incubation period for E. coli is only a couple of days, so illness would be quickly apparent to anyone affected, said Donald Schaffner, a food safety expert at Rutgers University. “If you ate these burgers in September and now it’s the middle of October and you didn’t get sick, you’re probably OK,” he said.

E. coli bacteria are harbored in the guts of animals and found in the environment. Infections can cause severe illness, including fever, stomach cramps and bloody diarrhea. People who develop symptoms of E. coli poisoning should seek health care immediately and tell the provider what they ate.

The type of bacteria implicated in the McDonald’s food causes about 74,000 infections in the U.S. annually, leading to more than 2,000 hospitalizations and 61 deaths each year, according to the CDC. In general, E. coli infections were lower in 2023 than in recent years and cases of severe kidney injury caused by the bacteria remained stable, according to latest federal data.

Outbreaks at restaurant chains are rare, but they do happen.

In 2020, Chipotle agreed to pay a record $25 million fine to resolve criminal charges that it served tainted food that sickened more than 1,100 people with E. coli between 2015 and 2018. In that case, poor safety practices, such as not keeping food at proper temperatures to prevent pathogen growth, were to blame.

In 2006, Taco Bell ordered the removal of green onions from its restaurants nationwide after samples taken by investigators appeared to contain a harsh strain of E. coli. The outbreak sickened at least 71 people.

“The worst thing you can have at a restaurant is a food safety problem. It’s the equivalent of an airline losing the plane,” said Aaron Allen, a restaurant consultant and founder of Aaron Allen and Associates.

But Allen said McDonald’s has enough experience and safety protocols in place that it won’t suffer long-term damage from the outbreak.

“No one would be better equipped to mitigate and respond to this than McDonald’s,” he said.

McDonald’s shares fell 4.7% in late trading Wednesday.

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