ER visits for tick bites near record levels this summer across US
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(NEW YORK) — Emergency rooms across the country are seeing a spike in tick bite cases, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
July has already seen the highest number of tick-related ER visits since 2017, with the Northeast region reporting the most cases, the CDC said.
Young children and elderly adults appear particularly vulnerable, with those under 10 and over 70 years old having the highest rates of emergency room visits, according to the CDC.
For residents in the New York tristate area, the threat is particularly severe. The Fordham Tick Index, which monitors tick activity in southern New York, Connecticut and Northern New Jersey, currently rates the bite risk as “very high” – 9 out of 10 on its scale.
The CDC reports that climate change may be contributing to the increasing numbers. In regions where Lyme disease is already present, milder winters result in fewer disease-carrying ticks dying during cold months, the agency notes.
According to CDC data, May typically marks the annual peak for tick-bite emergencies. These rising numbers have prompted health officials to remind the public about the dangers posed by these tiny insects.
The CDC warns that ticks can transmit various diseases through their bites, many of which share similar symptoms. Most people who visit emergency rooms report fever and chills, headaches, fatigue and muscle aches. Some patients also develop distinctive rashes, particularly those associated with Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
With outdoor activities in full swing this summer, the CDC has issued several recommendations to prevent illness. The agency advises avoiding wooded and brushy areas with high grass and leaf litter, and staying in the center of trails when hiking. It also recommends using Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents containing DEET, Picaridin, or other approved ingredients.
The CDC recommends treating outdoor clothing and gear with permethrin, which remains effective even after multiple washes. Those planning to use both sunscreen and insect repellent should apply sunscreen first, followed by the repellent.
Health officials are also emphasizing that no area is immune to tick activity.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday a series of measures to phase out eight artificial food dyes and colorings from America’s food supply by the end of next year.
Speaking at a news conference, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the agencies are looking to revoke authorization for two synthetic food colorings and to eliminate six remaining synthetic dyes used in cereal, ice cream, snacks, yogurts and more.
“Today, the FDA is taking action to remove petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply and from medications. For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals,” he told reporters. “The FDA is also announcing plans today to authorize four additional natural color additives using natural ingredients in the coming weeks, while also accelerating the review and approval of other natural ingredient colors.”
Makary claimed studies have found a like between petroleum-based synthetic dyes and health conditions, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, obesity, diabetes, cancer and gastrointestinal issues.
‘Why are we taking a gamble?” he said. “While America’s children are sick and suffering, 41% of children have at least have at least one health condition, and one in five are on medication. The answer is not more Ozempic, more ADHD medication and more antidepressants. There’s a role for those medications, but we have to look at underlying root causes.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was also due to speak at the news conference.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration in January started the process to ban one artificial dye, Red No. 3, which will need to be removed from food by January 2027 and from medications by 2028 because it was shown to cause cancer in rats.
Kennedy is now seeking to remove the six other petroleum-based dyes approved by the FDA. This includes Green No. 3, Citrus Red No. 2, Red No. 40, Orange B, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Blue No. 1 and Blue No. 2. The agency is also taking steps to revoke the authorization for two synthetic food colorings — Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B — within the coming months.
The department is also authorizing four new natural color additives.
It is not yet clear what enforcement mechanism Kennedy will seek to implement the new changes.
The timeline to phase out synthetic dyes comes after Kennedy told food industry leaders at a meeting last month that he wanted their companies to remove artificial dyes from their products by the end of his four-year term, according to a memo describing the meeting, which was obtained by ABC News.
Kennedy’s announcement Tuesday speeds up that process — and alert companies that Kennedy intends to make good on his warning quickly.
From candy to breakfast cereal to medication, synthetic food dyes are in a wide range of products that Americans consume. Studies suggest their vibrant color makes food more appealing and could even increase appetite.
The health effects of the dyes are not fully understood, but many other countries have either banned the additives outright or required food packaging warning labels about the health risks.
All dyes have the potential to spark allergic reactions for a small minority. Several dyes have been linked to hyperactivity and behavioral problems in children or have been shown to cause cancer in mice or rats — but none have shown to cause cancer in humans.
Already, red and blue states alike have taken matters into their own hands in removing artificial food dyes from certain foods. Both West Virginia and California have passed laws to ban a handful of food dyes from school lunches, with plans to extend the ban to a broader, statewide level too.
In West Virginia, the ban on artificial dyes in school lunch will go into effect in August, making it the first state in the country to implement such restraints. In California, it will take effect in 2028.
Twenty-six other states, from Iowa to Washington and from to Texas to Vermont, are considering similar legislation around banning food dyes or other chemical additives in foods, according to a list compiled by the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization that focuses on chemicals and toxins.
The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment within California’s Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 concluded a two-year study into seven synthetic food dyes that found associations with certain neurobehavioral outcomes in some children.
Researchers also found that the FDA’s current level of “acceptable daily intake” levels for the dyes may be too high to protect children from the potential behavioral impact, the report said.
(WASHINGTON) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., before a House committee Wednesday morning, defended the massive cuts to the department’s workforce and laid out his priorities for the Trump administration’s proposed budget — all while he is expected to field questions about his history of promoting conspiracy theories and controversial comments about vaccines.
Kennedy is appearing before the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday morning. He will then head to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the afternoon. The appearances mark the first time Kennedy has testified before Congress since his confirmation hearings in late January, and he may be forced to confront statements he made that critics say are evidence of promises broken.
In his opening statement before the House committee, Kennedy said his goal at HHS is to focus on the chronic disease epidemic and deliver effective services for those who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and other services by cutting costs to taxpayers.
“We intend to do more, a lot more with less. The budget I’m presenting today supports these goals and reflects two enduring American values, compassion and responsibility,” Kennedy said in his opening statement.
Kennedy said the new budget addresses priorities including tackling mental health and addiction; addressing nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyles; equipping the FDA to expand food safety experts; eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion funding; strengthening cybersecurity and rebuilding.
Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, slammed Kennedy and the Trump’s administration for the cuts to HHS, including the elimination of entire divisions.
In April, HHS began laying off about 10,000 workers and consolidating 28 institutes and centers into 15 new divisions.
Including the roughly 10,000 people who have left over the last few months through early retirement or deferred resignation programs, the overall staff at HHS is expected to fall from 82,000 to around 62,000 — or about a quarter of its workforce.
“Mr. Secretary, you are gutting the life-saving work of the Department of Health and Human Services and its key agencies while the Republicans in this Congress say and do nothing,” DeLauro said. “Because of these cuts people will die.”
In a video statement posted on X prior to the layoffs, Kennedy said that he plans to bring to the agency a “clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.”
Kennedy has defended the cuts as necessary to weed out wasteful spending at one of America’s largest departments, but he has drawn criticism for laying off people who are responsible for regulating tobacco usage, monitoring lead exposure in children and diagnosing black lung disease in miners.
The secretary himself has appeared not to know about some of the cuts, telling CBS News last month he was “not familiar” with several cuts cited by the outlet.
Before the House committee, Kennedy also rebuked criticism of his agency’s response to the measles outbreak.
“We are doing a better job at CDC today than any nation in the world controlling this measles outbreak. I’m happy to elaborate on that afterward,” Kennedy said.
DeLauro replied that Kennedy’s comparison of the U.S. response to measles to the response of other countries was unfair.
“Mr. Secretary, you keep comparing the U.S. to other countries compare us to Europe, but the Europe you are referring to is the WHO European region has 53 countries in Europe and in Asia, including those with low vaccine vaccination rates like Romania and that has never eliminated measles,” she said. “If you compare us to western Europe countries that we often compare ourselves to, like Great Britain, they have seen no measles death.”
Kennedy argued that the U.S. is doing better than other countries in the Americas with smaller populations, including Canada and Mexico.
Kennedy said several times during his hearing in January that he supports vaccines, although he refused to unequivocally say that vaccines don’t cause autism, despite numerous existing studies already showing there is no link.
“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines,” Kennedy said.
However, in March, the HHS confirmed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will study whether vaccines cause autism.
Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan asked Kennedy if he would vaccinate his own children today with the measles vaccine, chickenpox vaccine or polio vaccine, and Kennedy refused to say he would.
“My opinions about vaccines are irrelevant,” Kennedy said. “That question directly, it will seem like I’m giving advice to other people, and I don’t want to be doing that.”
“But that’s kind of your jurisdiction, because CDC does give advice, right?” Pocan replied.
DeLauro scolded Kennedy for promoting vaccine skepticism in the wake of a measles outbreak spreading across the U.S.
In the wake of several ongoing measles outbreaks across the U.S. and over 1,000 cases so far this year, Kennedy has shared contradicting views about vaccines.
In a post on X on April 6, Kennedy said that the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles” is to receive the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. However, in a post later that evening, he said more than 300 children have been treated with an antibiotic and a steroid, neither of which are recognized treatments or cures for measles.
Kennedy’s embrace of anti-vaccine ideas nearly put his confirmation in jeopardy, as he faced resistance from Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who heads the HELP committee. Cassidy expressed concerns about Kennedy’s views on vaccines before ultimately voting to move him through the confirmation process in February.
Cassidy said, at the time, that Kennedy assured him he would not alter vaccine policy without “ironclad” scientific evidence. The senator added that Kennedy and Trump officials promised him an “unprecedentedly close collaborate working relationship” with the secretary.
Kennedy’s controversial moves on fluoride came up with Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist, telling Kennedy he was concerned about the secretary’s comments on it.
Last month, Kennedy said he plans to assemble a task force and ultimately change the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance to stop recommending adding fluoride to drinking water and other products. He has claimed that fluoride in drinking water affects children’s neurological development.
The Food and Drug Administration said it will conduct a scientific review of fluoride-containing supplements sometimes used to strengthen children’s teeth by late October with the aim of removing them from the market.
“I’ve seen the benefits having been a practicing dentist for 22 years. … You don’t prevent cavities by fluoride killing the bacteria in the mouth,” Simpson said. “What it does is make the enamel more resistant to decay. So, I want to see the studies on this and where we’re headed with this.”
Previous reviews by public health experts and dental professionals have not shown any serious health risks with the addition of fluoride.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
Web page for https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/ on April 18, 2025. Via The White House
(WASHINGTON) — The White House has redirected COVID.gov to a new landing page called “Lab Leak: True Origins of COVID-19,” which makes a five-point argument for the theory that COVID-19 originated from a mistaken lab leak in Wuhan, China.
The new site appears to use theories from the final report of the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released in December 2024. There has never been a consensus or a “smoking gun” to explain what started the pandemic.
The COVID.gov page, as recently as last week, listed resources for testing, treatment, and vaccination against COVID-19, as well as information for Long COVID.
The five pieces of evidence put forth by the White House for the theory include the following assertions: that the “virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature,” that data shows all cases “stem from a single introduction into humans,” that “Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab,” that researchers at that research lab “were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019,” and that “if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.”
The page includes claims that government officials, including former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, helped edit and then amplify a research paper on the origins of COVID-19 published in 2020 that supported natural origin theory.
The current page suggests this paper’s explicit intention was to discredit the lab leak theory and remove any doubt that the origins were of natural origin. This is not a new accusation and in the past Fauci and the paper authors disagreed with the accusations that the paper was manipulated or had any specific goal.
The origins of the pandemic have been hotly debated since its start.
The prevailing theories always seemed to focus on two scenarios: either natural exposure to an infected animal or an accidental lab leak.
With no “smoking gun” and limited access to raw data, discussion of the science has played out in a haze of circumstantial evidence.
In October 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report on the intelligence community’s views on the origin conundrum, which also leaned toward a natural spillover, but represented divided views. A subsequent declassified report released in 2023 also noted that most of the intelligence community was split on the origins of the pandemic. In reports, US agencies generally agreed that the virus was most likely not developed as a biological weapon and that China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic.
The new splash page features a photo of Fauci and the pardon that former President Joe Biden granted him, highlighting that it was for “any offenses.” The page also accuses federal agencies, including NIH and HHS, of breaking laws and violating rules about transparency and cooperation with Congressional investigation. The agencies complied with FOIA requests and other regulatory requests from the committee and also appeared before lawmakers when asked to testify.
The web page also calls into question the efficacy of social distancing, masking and lockdown. The White House also criticized the response from New York officials.
Fauci testified about the accusations before lawmakers in 2024, saying that accusations about him covering up or influencing research about the lab leak theory are untrue.
“The accusation being circulated that I influenced the scientists to change their minds by bribing them with millions of dollars in grant money is absolutely false, and simply preposterous. I had no input into the content of the published paper,” Fauci said in June of 2024.
“The second issue is a false accusation that I tried to cover up the possibility that the virus originated from a lab. In fact, the truth is exactly the opposite,” Fauci said during that 2024 hearing.
This is not the first time that the White House has made clear its position on the origins of COVID-19. In January, President Trump said that COVID-19 had “strained” his relationship with President Xi Jinping of China.
“But, I like President Xi very much. I’ve always liked him. We always had a very good relationship. It was very strained with COVID coming out of Wuhan. Obviously, that strained it. I’m sure it strained it with a lot of people, but that strained our relationship,” Trump said in remarks to the World Economic Forum.
ABC News’ Eric Strauss, Sony Salzman and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
