More cases of the superbug that originated in India.

Cases are starting to pop up is many countries, including 3 US states.

Pestilence?….

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UPDATE: New Drug-Resistant Superbugs Found in 3 States

iStock

BOSTON –  An infectious-disease nightmare is unfolding: Bacteria that have been made resistant to nearly all antibiotics by an alarming new gene have sickened people in three states and are popping up all over the world, health officials reported Monday.

The U.S. cases and two others in Canada all involve people who had recently received medical care in India, where the problem is widespread. A British medical journal revealed the risk last month in an article describing dozens of cases in Britain in people who had gone to India for medical procedures.

How many deaths the gene may have caused is unknown; there is no central tracking of such cases. So far, the gene has mostly been found in bacteria that cause gut or urinary infections.
(more…)

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The pestilence spreads further to over a half a billion eggs in the US.  That is an amazing number.  Keep watch for the birth pains to increase in frequency and magnitude….

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Egg recall in US grows to half a billion

20 August 2010 Last updated at 20:39 ET

Half a billion eggs in the US have been recalled in an investigation into a salmonella outbreak, which now includes two farms in the state of Iowa.

Iowa’s Hillandale Farms announced it was recalling 170 million eggs after tests confirmed salmonella.

The news follows a recall of 380 million eggs by another Iowa farm earlier this week.

A spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the two cases are linked.

Regulators said salmonella cases have increased threefold since May.

About 2,000 salmonella cases were reported between May and July, roughly 1,300 more than usual, the Centers for Disease Control said.

The newest recall from Hillandale Farms applies to eggs sold between April and August.

The salmonella strains causing the illnesses are the same from both farms, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Hillandale Farms said the eggs were distributed under five different names in 14 US states, while Wright County Egg announced this week the company distributes its product under more than a dozen names.

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Link to full article: Egg recall in US grows to half a billion

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More information on the superbug from South Asia, it is getting big enough that the WHO is starting to monitor.

More Birth Pains…

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WHO calls for monitoring of new superbug

Aug 20 12:52 PM US/Eastern

The World Health Organisation on Friday called on health authorities around the globe to monitor a multi-drug resistant superbug that surfaced in South Asia and spread to Britain.

The WHO said research published in The Lancet medical journal on August 11 identified a new gene that enables some types of bacteria to be highly resistant to almost all antibiotics.

“While multi-drug resistant bacteria are not new and will continue to appear, this development requires monitoring and further study to understand the extent and modes of transmission, and to define the most effective measures for control,” it added in a statement.

It underlined that the whole health care chain, including patients, hospitals, governments, laboratories, pharmaceutical firms and vetenarians, had “to be alert to the problem of antimicrobial resistance and take appropriate action.”

Multi-drug resistant bacteria generally “constitute a growing and global public health problem,” the UN health agency noted.

It underlined the value of hospital infection control measures to limit the spread of such resistant strains and prudent use of antibiotics to reduce the generation of resistant bacteria.

Rigorous use of such measures, including extensive hand washing in health care facilities, had proved successful in controlling multidrug-resistant bacteria in many countries, according to the global health watchdog.

Indian doctors warned earlier this year about the threat from a new multi-drug resistant superbug known as NDM-1 — months before the British study — warning that it could spread worldwide with patients.

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Link to full article: WHO calls for monitoring (from Rapture Ready News)

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This is becoming a huge deal, simply due to the huge number of eggs infected, 380 million.

Good news that most people know but I wanted to make sure to point out is as long as you cook the eggs thoroughly, not raw or over-easy, the heat will kill the bacteria.

The article below has both a link to a list of the recalled egg brands and a video on why they are being recalled.

From a prophecy stand point, I think this is just one more notch in the count of the increasing number of pestilence we are seeing these days.  They are the increasing birth pains.  Christ never said how these would come about, man-driven due to production issues (like this one) or a new/morphed disease that we don’t have a cure for.

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Illnesses linked to eggs will likely grow

By MARY CLARE JALONICK
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 19, 2010; 11:11 PM

WASHINGTON — A salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and led to the recall of hundreds of millions of eggs from one Iowa firm will likely grow, federal health officials said Thursday.That’s because illnesses occurring after mid-July may not be reported yet, said Dr. Christopher Braden, an epidemiologist with the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Almost 2,000 illnesses from the strain of salmonella linked to the eggs were reported between May and July, about 1,300 more than usual, he said. No deaths have been reported. The CDC is continuing to receive information from state health departments as people report their illnesses.

“I would anticipate that we will be seeing more illnesses reported likely as a result of this outbreak,” said Braden. The recall of 380 million eggs from Iowa’s Wright County Egg is one of the largest shell egg recalls in recent history.

(More: A list of which eggs have been recalled)

The outbreak could have been prevented if new rules to ensure egg safety had been in place a few months earlier, an FDA spokeswoman said.

The rules, which require producers to do more testing for salmonella and take other precautions, went into effect in July. They had languished for more than a decade after President Bill Clinton first proposed that egg standards be toughened. The FDA said in July that the new safeguards could reduce the number of salmonella cases by nearly 60 percent.

“There are preventive measures that would have been in place that could have prevented this,” said Sherri McGarry of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

(Video: Explanation of the recall)

She and other officials declined to say what specific measures would have prevented this particular outbreak, citing an ongoing FDA investigation.

Hinda Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the company, said it abided by guidance issued by the United Egg Producers, an industry group. Those procedures mirror several aspects of the federal egg safety rule.

FDA’s McGarry said illnesses were traced back to eggs produced on three of five farms the Iowa company owns. The investigation, which includes sampling, records review and sanitation assessments, is focusing on those three farms.

Salmonella is the most common form of food poisoning from bacteria, and the strain involved in the outbreak is the most common kind of salmonella – accounting for roughly 20 percent of all such food poisonings.

Minnesota, a state with some of the best food-borne illness investigators in the country, has tied at least seven salmonella illnesses to the eggs. California has reported 266 illnesses since June and believes many are related to the eggs. Colorado saw 28 cases in June and July, about four times the usual number.

Other states have seen a jump in reports of the same type of salmonella. Spikes or clusters of suspicious cases have also been reported in Arizona, Illinois, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.

The CDC said investigations by 10 states since April have identified 26 cases where more than one person became ill. Preliminary information showed that Wright was the supplier in at least 15 of those.

Much of the investigation so far has been centered on restaurants in California, Colorado, Minnesota and North Carolina.

The eggs were distributed around the country and packaged under the names Lucerne, Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph’s, Boomsma’s, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp.

The businessman who owns Wright County Egg, Jack DeCoster, has been cited for numerous health, safety and employment violations in the past. In 1997, DeCoster Egg Farms agreed to pay $2 million in fines to settle citations brought in 1996 for health and safety violations at DeCoster’s farm in Turner, Maine.

Wright County Egg is already facing at least two lawsuits related to the recall. One is from food distributor Dutch Farms, which says the company used unauthorized cartons to package and sell eggs under its brand name without its knowledge. The other is from a person who said they became ill after eating tainted eggs in a salad at a restaurant in Kenosha, Wis.

The outbreak also raised new questions about federal inspections of egg farms.

McGarry cited jurisdictional issues when she told reporters Thursday that the agency “does not have an inspectional history with this firm.” When asked who does have jurisdiction, McGarry pointed to the Agriculture Department. Yet USDA oversees voluntary grading inspections, but does not test for salmonella in shell eggs.

The FDA acknowledged in a statement late Thursday that it has done some inspections on egg farms already linked to recalls, but did not say anything additional about whether the agency had inspected Wright County Egg.

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the egg recall shows that stronger authority is needed on the farm.

“Jurisdiction over eggs has been scrambled between numerous government agencies for the last 20 years, resulting in enormous delays in addressing the hazard posed by salmonella,” she said.

Legislation that would increase the frequency of FDA inspections has stalled in the Senate after the House passed it a year ago.

The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight hours to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product. It can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems.

The form of salmonella tied to the outbreak can be passed from chickens that appear healthy. And it grows inside eggs, not just on the shell, Braden noted.

Thoroughly cooking eggs can kill the bacteria. But health officials are recommending people throw away or return the recalled eggs.

Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe in Atlanta, Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis and AP Business Writer Sarah Skidmore in Portland, Ore., contributed to this report.

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Link to original article: Illnesses linked to eggs will likely grow

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There are three mosquito-borne viruses that are on the rise over the last few years in Florida, Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE), Dengue Fever, and West Nile.  These are still small in numbers but the number of deaths has increased.

The Bible talked about pestilence as part of the birth pains.  As we progress through the birth pains, they will potentially become more frequent or have a larger impact.

Luke 21:9-11 – “But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.  Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:  And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.“

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Florida death toll rises for mosquito-borne virus

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) – Four Florida residents have died from a mosquito-borne disease that normally afflicts horses, health officials reported on Tuesday as the swampy state enters peak season for mosquito-borne illnesses.

Health officials said last month that two Tampa-area residents had died from eastern equine encephalitis, a viral disease that inflames the brain.

Two additional deaths from the disease known as EEE have since been confirmed, one in the state capital of Tallahassee and one in the northwest Florida town of Sopchoppy.

The disease mostly affects unvaccinated horses but a handful of human deaths are recorded each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is no human vaccine for the disease, which kills a third of its human victims and often leaves survivors with significant brain damage.

The Florida Department of Health is also tracking two other less deadly mosquito-borne diseases, West Nile virus and dengue fever.

EEE and West Nile virus have been detected in 43 of Florida’s 67 counties, while dengue cases have been confirmed in two south Florida counties, Monroe and Broward, according to the state Department of Health.

The dengue virus began showing up in Florida in 2009 after an absence since its last major outbreak in 1934. At least 28 confirmed cases of domestically transmitted dengue fever have been reported in Florida this year, along with 67 foreign-acquired cases. The disease is more prevalent in Central and South America.

Carina Blackmore, state public health veterinarian, said the number of mosquito bites to people, horses and livestock resulting in EEE or West Nile appears consistent with the last several years.

“The two things we try to relay are get rid of mosquitoes and avoid contact,” said Blackmore, adding that August and September are peak seasons for most mosquito-borne illnesses.

State health officials are urging residents to avoid contact with mosquitoes by wearing protective clothing and using insect repellent, especially products that include DEET. Homeowners are also asked to remove standing water where mosquitoes breed.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Alan Elsner)

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The original link: Florida death toll rises for mosquito-borne virus

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Just a follow-up from an article I posted yesterday, it looks like the superbug has spread to Australia and Britain.

Full Article:

South Asian ‘super bug’ spreads to Australia

Previous Post:

New Superbug spreading from India

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Pestilence, it not a common everyday word but one God uses in his warning of the last days.  Pestilence basically symbolizes plagues or other contagious diseases.  We have seen a lot of these pop up over the last few years.  They are a sign of the birth pains leading up to the Tribulation where they will play a major role in God’s wake up calls and wrath. 

The most recent was H1N1, we have also seen signs of older plagues making a comeback, with the bubonic plague in South America.  Now this article is nowhere near plague status but these super bugs (bacteria that are antibiotic resistant) seem to be popping up in various places with the threat of spreading. 

Keep your eye out, and look at them through the third lens of scripture.  They are yet another sign that we are living in the last days.

Scientists find new superbug spreading from India

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