California Officials Dragged Feet Investigating China-Linked Biolab, Documents Suggest; Doctors Work to ‘make up for lost ground’ from Cancer Screenings that were Missed, Delayed During Pandemic, and other C-Virus related stories
California officials dragged feet investigating China-linked biolab, documents suggest:
Suspicions were raised about the operations of a Chinese-linked biolab in central California far earlier than previously known, according to a review of hundreds of internal emails, documents and photographs obtained by Fox News.
Two California state agencies called on by the city of Fresno to intervene in the matter tell Fox they had no authority to get involved but the delay of local and state officials to take action in fall 2022 appears to have allowed lab workers to empty a warehouse full of dangerous biological agents, lab mice, chemicals and equipment.
A trove of emails obtained through a public records request with the city of Fresno showed one official had been so concerned by Universal Meditech Inc.’s operations he filed urgent pleas with California’s environmental and toxic substance agencies for assistance in possibly shutting down the biolab before it could relocate.
When no one stepped up to stop them, UMI quietly moved last year into a previously vacant warehouse in Reedley about 20 miles away.
Reedley officials were unaware of the move.
Once discovered, the unpermitted and unlicensed lab containing numerous deadly infectious agents wasn’t shut down until March of this year.
That discovery and subsequent media attention has prompted numerous investigations and raised questions over UMI’s true intentions.
The company said it was making pregnancy and COVID-19 tests but local officials then and now aren’t clear on why UMI also possessed hundreds of lab mice and cultures of malaria, dengue fever, HIV and tuberculosis.
“Something is off here,” then-Fresno Fire Chief Kerri Donis said in an email in August 2022 about the leased UMI warehouse on Fortune Avenue. Two years earlier, 39 Fresno firefighters responded to an overnight fire at a workstation in the warehouse. Follow-up investigations concluded there were numerous safety violations, including non-permitted electrical work. The Donis email asked for further investigation from within her department and the city’s code enforcement division. —>READ MORE HERE
Doctors work to ‘make up for lost ground’ from cancer screenings that were missed, delayed during pandemic:
Cancer experts are warning that it “might be some time” before cancer services return to levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic, but it’s important to “make up for lost ground.”
In a new report, researchers detail the drop in cancer screenings and subsequent diagnoses that occurred in the United States during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, and indicate that the data trigger concerns about cancer outcomes in the coming years.
The report, published Wednesday in the journal Cancer, provides more evidence that in the first calendar year of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were significant declines in the number of newly diagnosed cases of six major cancers: colorectal, female breast, lung, pancreas, prostate and thyroid. Those declines can be attributed to many people canceling or postponing cancer screenings while staying home during the pandemic, which can subsequently delay a diagnosis or care.
“Suspension of cancer‐related procedures has created a backlog of health services, such as increasing wait times for cancer surgery,” researchers from the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society and other US institutions wrote in the new report.
“Despite the Biden administration’s plan to declare the public health emergency over on May 11, 2023, it might be some time before cancer services return to prepandemic volumes,” the researchers wrote.
At the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 10 million cancer screenings were estimated to have been missed, said Dr. Lisa Richardson, director of the CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control.
“But now it’s time for you to come back in to get these things done,” Richardson said about the importance of resuming routine health care, including cancer screenings. “Cancer doesn’t wait, neither should you.” —>READ MORE HERE
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