The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall, which one of its commissioners said was “doomed to fail.”After at least five infants died while sleeping in a product made by Fisher-Price, the company has recalled more than two million of the product, the Snuga Swing, because it poses a suffocation risk, according to the recall.The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Fisher-Price announced the recall on Thursday.There were reports that five infants, who were one month to three months old, had died between 2012 and 2022 while the product was being used for sleep, the recall said.“In most of those incidents, the infants were unrestrained and bedding materials were added to the product,” it said.The recall said the product should never be used for sleep and that consumers should immediately remove the headrest and the body support insert before “continuing to use the swing for awake-time activities.”However, a commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard L. Trumka Jr., said in a statement that the latest recall was “doomed to fail and will keep many babies in harm’s way.”“Merely warning parents to stop using these products for sleep now will not be as effective as removing them from homes and day cares,” he said. “Fisher-Price cannot un-ring the bell. Dangerous products will remain in homes after this recall.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Doctors in Australia found a three-inch live parasitic worm in a woman’s brain during surgery after they spent more than a year trying to find the cause of her distress.Doctors in Australia had screened, scanned and tested a woman to find out why she was sick after being hospitalized with abdominal pains and diarrhea. They were not prepared for what they found.A three-inch red worm was living in the woman’s brain.The worm was removed last year after doctors spent more than a year trying to find the cause of the woman’s distress.The hunt for the answer, and the alarming discovery, was described this month in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a monthly journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The woman, whom the article identifies as a 64-year-old resident of southeastern New South Wales, Australia, was admitted to a hospital in January 2021 after complaining of diarrhea and abdominal pain for three weeks. She had a dry cough and night sweats.Scientists and doctors from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne said in the journal article that the woman was initially told she had a rare lung infection, but the cause was unknown.Her symptoms improved with treatment, but weeks later, she was hospitalized again, this time with a fever and cough. Doctors then treated her for a group of blood disorders known as hypereosinophilic syndrome, and the medicine they used suppressed her immune system.Over a three-month period in 2022, she experienced forgetfulness and worsening depression. An MRI showed that she had a brain lesion and, in June 2022, doctors performed a biopsy.Inside the lesion, doctors found a “stringlike structure” and removed it. The structure was a red, live parasitic worm, about 3.15 inches long and .04 inches in diameter.They determined that it was an Ophidascaris robertsi, a type of roundworm that is native to Australia and reproduces in a large snake, the carpet python, which takes its name from its intricate markings. The pythons shed the worm’s eggs in their feces. The eggs are then ingested by small mammals, and the worms can grow inside them.Roundworms infect hundreds of millions of people globally, according to the Cleveland Clinic, but the researchers in Australia said this was the first report of the Ophidascaris worm species infecting a human.The woman may have been infected by the worm the same way small animals typically are: by accidentally consuming worm eggs.Carpet pythons were at a lake area near where the woman lived, the article said. She had no direct contact with the snakes but often gathered warrigal greens, which are similar to spinach, from around the lake to cook. The article said that she could have inadvertently consumed worm eggs by eating the greens or because her hands or her kitchen were contaminated by them.Scott Gardner, a professor of biological sciences and the curator of the Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that people do not need to panic about being infected by an Ophidascaris from snakes and should use good hygiene to avoid being infected by parasites.“A lot of the parasites that can affect people do so because we get in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Dr. Gardner, who was not involved with the Australia study, said in an interview. “So we ingest some eggs that aren’t supposed to come into us, and if we’re immunocompromised, then we can have a pretty serious infection.”Karina Kennedy, the director of microbiology at Canberra Hospital and an author of the article, said in a news release that the woman’s initial symptoms “were likely due to migration of roundworm larvae from the bowel and into other organs, such as the liver and the lungs.”In the first stages of the woman’s illness, however, doctors were not able to find evidence of the parasite, Dr. Kennedy said.“At that time, trying to identify the microscopic larvae, which had never previously been identified as causing human infection, was a bit like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” she said.Six months after the brain surgery, the woman’s psychiatric symptoms remained, but had improved, the article said. She was also treated with medicine to kill worm larvae that may have been in her other organs. She is still being monitored by infectious disease and brain specialists.Dr. Kennedy, who is also an associate professor at the Australian National University medical school, advised people to wash their hands after gardening and touching foraged products, and to thoroughly wash foods and surfaces used for cooking.In the article, the scientists and doctors involved with the woman’s case said that her experience emphasized the risk of diseases spreading from animals to humans. Outbreaks of these diseases have become more frequent in recent decades and account for about 60 percent of all known infectious diseases and 75 percent of new and emerging ones, according to the C.D.C.Though the type of worm that infected the woman is endemic to Australia, the Ophidascaris species infects snakes in other parts of the world. Scientists said in the article that this case shows “that additional human cases may emerge globally.”

Ms. Lacks’s family had accused Thermo Fisher Scientific of profiting from her cells, which have contributed to revolutionary advances in medicine, without seeking their permission.The family of Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman whose cancer cells were taken without consent and used to pioneer numerous medical discoveries, reached a settlement on Monday with a biotechnology company that had used the cells.In a lawsuit filed in October 2021, descendants of Ms. Lacks, who died in 1951, accused the company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, of selling the cells and trying to secure intellectual property rights on the products the cells were used to help develop without compensating the family or seeking their permission or approval.The terms of the settlement are confidential, lawyers for both parties said in a statement.Thermo Fisher, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, and the legal team for Ms. Lacks’s family released identical statements announcing the settlement.“The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment,” the statements said.Ms. Lacks was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1951 when a sample of her cells were taken without her knowledge. The cell line named for her, HeLa, became the cornerstone of many medical and scientific innovations, including vaccines for polio and the coronavirus. But Ms. Lacks died that same year, and her family did not know about her contribution to medical science for more than two decades.On Tuesday, which would have been Ms. Lacks’s 103rd birthday, members of her family gathered at a news conference to celebrate the settlement.A grandson, Alfred Lacks Carter Jr., said, “it could not have been a more fitting day for her to have justice and for her family to have relief.”“It was a long fight, over 70 years, and Henrietta Lacks gets her day,” he said.One of the family’s lawyers, Chris Ayers, suggested that similar lawsuits would follow.“The fight against those who profit, and chose to profit, off the deeply unethical and unlawful history and origins of the HeLa cells will continue,” he said.Ms. Lacks, a mother of five, died in October 1951. She was 31.Eight months earlier, she had learned she had cervical cancer after being admitted to a racially segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors removed a sample of cells from the tumor in her cervix without her knowledge or consent and gave them to a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University. The researcher found that her cells were the first to reproduce in a laboratory, outside the body.Most cells die within days, but because Ms. Lacks’s cells continued to multiply, researchers and scientists could use them to do things such as test how the polio virus infects cells and causes disease.Research using the HeLa cells has led to the development of vaccines for polio and the coronavirus, and to treatments for diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s and the flu.The cells have been used by researchers around the world and have been cited in more than 110,000 scientific publications, according to the National Institutes of Health.Ms. Lacks’s family was not told about the world-changing discovery and did not find out about the cell line until 1973, according to “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” a book by Rebecca Skloot that was turned into a movie featuring Oprah Winfrey as Ms. Lacks’s daughter Deborah.Ms. Lacks’s descendants have said they are proud of her contribution, but angry about how she was treated by the medical establishment. These frustrations have been made worse with the commercialization of her cells, they said.The family’s lawsuit against Thermo Fisher said the company had “made staggering profits by using the HeLa cell line — all while Ms. Lacks’ Estate and family haven’t seen a dime.”“Thermo Fisher Scientific’s choice to continue selling HeLa cells in spite of the cell lines’ origin and the concrete harms it inflicts on the Lacks family can only be understood as a choice to embrace a legacy of racial injustice embedded in the U.S. research and medical systems,” the lawsuit said.Thermo Fisher tried to dismiss the case, arguing that the lawsuit was filed after the statute of had limitations expired, The Baltimore Sun reported. Lawyers for the family said the limit should not apply because the company continued to benefit financially from the cells.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of a blood-testing company, was ordered to pay $250 a month to defrauded investors after her prison term. Her lawyers said she had “limited financial resources.”Lawyers for the disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes said this week that she would be unable to afford to pay $250 each month to victims of her failed-blood testing start-up, Theranos, after leaving prison.Ms. Holmes, 39, began an 11-year, three-month prison sentence in Texas in May after she was found guilty last year of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy for defrauding investors about her company’s technology and business dealings.Last month, a federal judge in California ordered Ms. Holmes and her former business partner, Ramesh Balwani, to pay $452 million in restitution to investors who were defrauded, including the media mogul Rupert Murdoch.Federal prosecutors asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California last week to correct “clerical errors” in court records. One of the suggested corrections would require Ms. Holmes, as part of her restitution, to pay either $250 or at least 10 percent of her earnings, whichever is greater, each month after she is released from prison.Ms. Holmes’s lawyers objected to this proposed change in a filing on Monday and said the court had substantial evidence showing that she had “limited financial resources.”Her lawyers also disputed the government’s argument that the change would align with the payment schedule for Mr. Balwani, who was tried separately and is serving a nearly 13-year sentence on fraud charges. He has to pay at least $1,000 per month after he is released from prison, according to court records.Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani have appealed their cases.Ms. Holmes’s lawyers argued that it was appropriate that the two had been treated differently in sentencing. “There is no indication in the record that the absence of a change to the schedule after she is released was a clerical error,” the filing said.Lawyers representing Ms. Holmes and the U.S. government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.Other entities listed as victims for the purpose of restitution include RDV Corporation, an investment firm representing Michigan’s wealthy DeVos family, which invested $100 million in Theranos, and several investment vehicles tied to Don Lucas, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who died in 2019.Ms. Holmes raised $945 million for Theranos, a company she founded in 2003 after she dropped out of Stanford University. She promised that the company would revolutionize health care with tests that could detect a variety of ailments with just a few drops of blood. But the claims unraveled after a 2015 investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed that its blood-testing technology did not work. Theranos dissolved in 2018.

Grail, which makes a blood test for cancer, said a vendor’s software issue caused inaccurate letters to be sent to about 400 customers last month.A company that developed a blood test that detects dozens of types of cancer has acknowledged that about 400 of its customers were mistakenly told last month that they might have the disease.The company, Grail, said in an emailed statement on Sunday that a vendor it works with had sent hundreds of letters with incorrect test results because of a “software configuration issue” that has since been resolved.The letters went to customers who had recently purchased Grail’s Galleri test, which uses a blood draw to detect a cancer signal shared by 50 types of cancer and is available only by prescription.The problem was not caused by inaccurate test results, Grail said. More than half of the people who received the letter in error had not yet had their blood drawn for the test, the company said.The vendor, PWNHealth, notified Grail on May 19 that an “inaccurate form letter” had been sent to roughly 400 customers from May 10 to May 18, Grail said in its statement. The inaccurate messages were reported by The Financial Times.After Grail was notified about the problem, it contacted the affected customers by phone and email, the company said. “No patient health information has been disclosed or breached due to this issue, and no patient harm or adverse events have been reported,” it said.PWNHealth said in an emailed statement that, after it learned about the problem, it found that a system used to send template messages to people had a “misconfiguration.” The company did not specify how it learned about the issue.“We addressed the underlying problem within an hour of becoming aware of it and have implemented additional processes to ensure it does not happen again,” the company said. “In partnership with Grail, we started contacting impacted individuals within 36 hours.”The test result letters were erroneously sent out amid a regulatory battle between the United States and Grail’s parent company, Illumina, the leading maker of gene-sequencing machines. Illumina acquired Grail in August 2021.In April, the Federal Trade Commission ordered Illumina to divest itself of Grail because the acquisition could “stifle competition and innovation” in cancer testing, raising prices and shrinking choices for consumers.Illumina said it would appeal the F.T.C. ruling and a similar regulatory challenge by the European Union. The company said in April that winning both appeals would allow it to make the Galleri test more widely available, as well as more affordable and profitable.If its appeals fail, Illumina will “move expeditiously to divest” itself of Grail, the company said.

To combat outbreaks at restaurants and other dining establishments, policies that support sick workers, including paid leave, may be needed, the agency said in a report this week.People who showed up to their restaurant jobs while sick were linked to 40 percent of food poisoning outbreaks with a known cause from 2017 to 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released on Tuesday.Paid sick leave and other policies that support sick workers could improve food safety outcomes, according to the report, which was based on a review of 800 food poisoning outbreaks, using data provided by 25 state and local health departments.Of the 500 outbreaks where investigators identified at least one cause, 205 involved workers showing up sick, the report said. Other common causes included contaminated raw food items, in 88 cases, and cross-contamination of ingredients, in 68 cases.In 555 of the outbreaks, investigators were able to determine what virus, bacterium, toxin, chemical or parasite was to blame. Most outbreaks were caused by salmonella or norovirus, the report said.To combat these outbreaks, “comprehensive ill worker policies will likely be necessary,” the report said. It highlighted research that showed that expanded paid sick leave reduced how often food service workers showed up at work sick, and noted that paid sick leave regulations were associated with decreased rates of food-borne illness.Daniel Schneider, a professor of social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said the report was “sobering,” and highlighted that the United States is the only wealthy country with no federal paid sick leave.“Reports like this show the real urgency of it, not just because it’s in workers’ interests, although it is, but because it is in the public interest,” Professor Schneider said.Of the 725 managers who were interviewed by state and local health departments, 665 said that their business required food workers to tell a supervisor if they were sick, and 620 said that sick employees were either restricted or blocked from working. Fewer than half of the managers — 316 — said their business provided paid sick leave to workers.Professor Schneider is a director of the Shift Project, which collects data about people in the retail and food service industries. He said that workers said they showed up sick because there was nobody able to cover for them, they would feel guilty leaving their co-workers short-handed, they couldn’t afford to miss work or they feared retaliation from management.“Food service workers face really impossible trade-offs around issues like working sick because food service jobs are so low-paid in our economy,” he said.To discourage workers from showing up sick to their jobs at restaurants, catering businesses and food trucks and carts, businesses may need to better enforce existing policies, such as those that prohibit workers from coming in sick; come up with plans to staff a restaurant when someone calls out sick; and adopt “a food safety culture where absenteeism due to illness is not penalized.”While the health departments providing information on outbreaks represented “geographically diverse areas,” the report cautioned that its findings might not be representative of all U.S. outbreaks. It also said that it was based on information that was collected before the coronavirus pandemic and acknowledged evidence that many retail food establishments had since changed at least some of their policies.Each year, 48 million people become sick from a food-borne illness, according to C.D.C. estimates. Of those, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.

More than 200 others could be at risk from a fungal meningitis outbreak that has been traced to two clinics in Matamoros, Mexico, where people traveled for cosmetic surgeries, health officials said.Two people in the United States have died with probable cases of fungal meningitis and more than 200 others are at risk after an outbreak of the infection among patients who had surgery in Matamoros, Mexico, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.At least 220 people in the United States who were treated at two clinics in Matamoros this year could be at risk after having epidural anesthesia, which is injected near the spinal column, the C.D.C. said. The people at risk traveled from the United States to the Mexican clinics for surgical procedures that included liposuction, Brazilian butt lifts and breast augmentation.The C.D.C. said that as of Friday two people had died who had been classified as having probable cases of fungal meningitis. There were 11 more probable cases of the infection, based on spinal tap results, and 14 suspected cases, based on symptoms consistent with meningitis, the C.D.C. said.Health authorities in the United States and Mexico have asked the World Health Organization to issue an emergency declaration in response to the outbreak.The two clinics linked to the infections are River Side Surgical Center and Clinica K-3 in Matamoros, and both closed on May 13, the C.D.C. said.People who had epidural anesthesia at these clinics should go to their nearest health center, urgent care facility or emergency room as soon as possible to be tested for meningitis, even if they do not have symptoms, health officials said.It can take weeks for meningitis symptoms to appear, and once they do, they can quickly become severe and life-threatening, the C.D.C. said. Symptoms may include sensitivity to light, a stiff neck, fever, vomiting and confusion. Fungal meningitis infections are not contagious or transmitted person to person.The C.D.C. said that anyone who has planned an elective procedure involving an epidural injection of an anesthetic in Matamoros should cancel the surgery and related travel “until there is evidence that there is no longer a risk of infection at these clinics.”According to the C.D.C., millions of people in the United States travel to another country for medical care each year, a practice known as medical tourism. The most common procedures people seek on those trips include dental care, surgery, cosmetic surgery, fertility treatments, organ and tissue transplantation, and cancer treatment.The C.D.C. said Mexico’s Ministry of Health provided it with a list of 221 U.S. residents who might be at risk for meningitis because they were listed as having had a surgical procedure at one of the two clinics this year.Dallas Smith, a C.D.C. epidemiologist, said in a webinar for scientists and medical providers on Friday that 205 of those exposed were women and 16 were men. The median age of the patients was 32, and 178 of them were from Texas.Dr. Smith said the outbreak was similar to a fungal meningitis outbreak that started in November 2022 in Durango, Mexico, where more than 1,400 patients were possibly exposed through contaminated epidural anesthesia. In that outbreak, 80 people were found to have meningitis and 39 of them died, he said.“The outbreak that we’re experiencing now is pretty similar, and it has the capacity to have this high mortality rate and just devastate families and communities,” Dr. Smith said.He said that Mexican and United States authorities had submitted a request for a public health emergency of international concern to the W.H.O. because the outbreak had exposed people in Mexico, the United States, Canada and Colombia.This declaration is meant to accelerate international collaboration, funding and treatment development in response to a disease. The W.H.O. declared Covid-19 an emergency in January 2020 and lifted the designation this month.The C.D.C. said it was working with Mexico’s Ministry of Health and local health departments in 24 U.S. states and the District of Columbia to respond to the outbreak and to contact people who officials know had surgery at the clinics.C.D.C. officials found that six of the 221 people potentially exposed to the infection did not have epidural anesthesia and are not considered at risk. The agency also found five other people who were not in the initial group of 221, meaning at least 220 people in the United States were potentially exposed.Health officials are trying to determine which organism or organisms caused the outbreak and whether any other clinics were involved.Mexico’s Ministry of Health said on Thursday that an estimated 547 people had surgery at the two clinics between Jan. 1 and May 13.

Global Pharma recalled eye drops in February after they were tied to a drug-resistant bacteria strain linked to at least one death. Two more companies have since recalled eye drops.Two brands of eye drops were pulled from shelves in January and February after they were linked to a drug-resistant bacteria strain that has caused at least one person’s death and serious health issues in others. Weeks later, two other types of eye drops were recalled because they posed a different kind of contamination risk.This flurry of recalls may have you second-guessing your trusted source of dry-eye relief, but there are significant differences among the recalls and plenty of steps you can take to stay safe.“I would encourage all people out there who take eye drops to continue using them, of course making sure that they’re not using any of these that are recalled,” said Dr. Christopher Starr, a clinical spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.Here’s what to know about these recalls.What eye drops have been recalled?In January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration warned people to stop using EzriCare Artificial Tears and Delsam Pharma’s Artificial Tears after the eye drops were linked to a drug-resistant strain of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Infections from this bacteria strain have caused at least one person’s death, vision loss in eight others and the surgical removal of four people’s eyeballs.Global Pharma, which makes EzriCare and Delsam Pharma’s eye drops, recalled both products in February.Last week, a Florida woman sued Global Pharma, claiming that an infection caused by the eye drops was so severe that doctors had to surgically remove one of her eyes.The F.D.A. has also warned people to stop using an eye ointment manufactured by Global Pharma because of possible contamination.The manufacturer of EzriCare Artificial Tears said it was recalling the product out of “an abundance of caution.”EzriCareThe two other eye drop recalls were not linked to the bacteria outbreak.On March 1, Apotex recalled prescription eye drops used to reduce eye pressure in people with glaucoma or ocular hypertension. The company recalled six lots of Brimonidine Tartrate Ophthalmic Solution 0.15 percent because at least four bottle caps developed cracks, which could affect the product’s sterility.Apotex recalled six lots of Brimonidine Tartrate Ophthalmic Solution 0.15 percent prescription eye drops.via F.D.A.On March 3, Pharmedica recalled two lots of Purely Soothing 15 percent MSM Drops because they were not sterile. These drops are used to treat eye irritation and swelling.Pharmedica recalled two lots of Purely Soothing 15 percent MSM Drops because they were not sterile.via F.D.A.Review the recall notices.The C.D.C. said that, as of March 14, the drug-resistant bacteria strain linked to the recalled EzriCare and Delsam eye drops had been found in 68 people in 16 states.The best way to find out if you have eye drops that were included in the recall is to review the recall notice provided by each company. Each notice has details on which batch of each product was affected.The notice for the EzriCare and Delsam eye drops is here, and the notice for the Global Pharma eye ointment is here. The Apotex Brimonidine Tartate notice is here and the Pharmedica Purely Soothing notice is here.See a doctor if you have symptoms.People who have used these artificial tears and who have symptoms of an eye infection should see a doctor immediately, the C.D.C. said. The symptoms can include yellow, green or clear discharge from the eye, redness of the eye or eyelid, increased sensitivity to light and eye pain or discomfort.Apotex said that people who received its recalled eye drops, which were distributed between April 5, 2022, and Feb. 22, should contact their health care provider and pharmacy. The company also provided a phone number and website for people to request a “recall/return packet.”An Apotex vice president, Jordan Berman, said in an email that the company had seen only four bottles with cracked caps. He said that one of the bottles was from a customer or consumer complaint and the other three were found in retained samples — products that the F.D.A. requires a company to keep back in case issues like these arise.“There have been no drug safety reports related to negative health outcomes due to this product,” Mr. Berman said.Pharmedica said that, as of March 3, it had not received any reports of illness or other “adverse events” from the use of the eye drops. The company did not specify how many bottles were affected or how the bottles became not sterile.Anyone who has issues with any of the recalled the eye drops can file a report with the F.D.A. online, by mail or by fax.Eye drops are generally safe.Dr. Barbara Tylka, an optometrist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said that, in general, eye drops are safe to use and that many people need them to treat conditions such as dryness or irritation. About 117 million Americans used eye drops and eyewash in 2020, according to Statista, a market research firm.To use eye drops safely, Dr. Tylka said that people should use their own bottle and make sure it has not expired. People who have had eye drops prescribed to them for a procedure such as cataract surgery should stop using those products once the healing process is over, she said.To safely apply eye drops, she said, people should use their nondominant hand to “gently tug on the lower eyelid, look up slightly,” and then, with the dominant hand, put “that little drop in that lower cul-de-sac in the eyelid area.”Dr. Starr, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Weill Cornell Medicine, said that one thing some patients do wrong is press the bottle tip into the inner corner of the eye, which can contaminate the drops and scratch the surface of the eye. He said that when he accidentally hits his eyelid or eyelashes with the bottle tip, he considers the bottle contaminated and either resterilizes it or replaces it.Dr. Starr and Dr. Tylka both emphasized that, while the recalls were worrying, eye drops are generally safe.“I’ve continued to use eyedrops every day throughout this whole thing,” Dr. Starr said.

The maker of EzriCare Artificial Tears said it was recalling the eye drops after U.S. health authorities linked the product to a drug-resistant bacteria strain.The manufacturer of a brand of over-the-counter eye drops said that it was recalling the product, EzriCare Artificial Tears, after it was linked to a drug-resistant bacteria strain that has caused at least one person’s death and vision loss in five others.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised people to stop using the eye drops, as the agency investigates an outbreak of a strain of the bacteria pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause infections in the blood, lungs and other parts of the body. This strain of the bacteria had never been identified in the United States before the current outbreak and is resistant to a class of antibiotics called carbapenems, which are generally considered a last resort.The bacteria strain had been found in 55 people in 12 states as of Tuesday, the C.D.C. said. The agency said that the infections had caused one death, vision loss in five of 11 people who had eye infections, and some hospitalizations.Global Pharma, the Indian company that manufactures the EzriCare eye drops, said that it was recalling the eye drops “out of an abundance of caution.”“Global Pharma is fully cooperating with U.S. federal authorities, and is continuing to investigate this matter, but thus far we have not determined whether our manufacturing facility is the source of the contamination,” the company said in an emailed statement.Most of the people affected by the outbreak used artificial tears before the infections, the C.D.C. said. They had reported using more than 10 brands of artificial tears, and some patients used more than one, but EzriCare Artificial Tears is the most common brand, the agency said.The C.D.C. said that it had found the drug-resistant bacteria strain in opened bottles of the EzriCare eye drops collected from patients with and without eye infections. The agency is testing unopened bottles to determine if contamination occurred during the manufacturing process.The bacteria strain was found in people in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin between May 2022 and January, according to the C.D.C. Of those 55 cases, 35 were linked to four health-care facility clusters, the agency said.The C.D.C. said that people who have used EzriCare Artificial Tears and who have signs of an eye infection should seek medical care immediately. The symptoms can include yellow, green or clear discharge from the eye, redness of the eye or eyelid, increased sensitivity to light and eye pain or discomfort.The manufacturer of EzriCare Artificial Tears said it was recalling the product out of “an abundance of caution.” EzriCareDr. Thomas L. Steinemann, a spokesman for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, said that people did not need to be “too terribly concerned” about using other types of eye drops.“We use them for tears, we use them for antibiotics, we use them to treat glaucoma.” Dr. Steinemann said. “We use eye drop bottles every day, and I think for the vast majority of users of eye drop bottles there’s no cause for alarm.”Dr. Steinemann, an ophthalmologist at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, noted that the C.D.C. report said the EzriCare artificial tears were preservative-free, which means that, if contaminated, they do not have anything to prevent the growth of bacteria.He said that doctors often recommend preservative-free artificial tears to patients if they are using them more than four times a day because preservatives can worsen eye irritation. He said that he had only ever heard of preservative-free eye drops that were available in single-use vials that cannot be closed and used again later.“That to me stuck out when I read the C.D.C. report is that, at least for EzriCare, these products are dispensed in what we call multidose bottles, meaning that people are reusing the bottle,” Dr. Steinemann said. “But the bottle doesn’t have any preservatives, which I think might set the stage for either contamination or bacterial overgrowth in the bottle.”When people use any type of eye drops, Dr. Steinemann said, they should wash their hands, close the bottle after using it and not touch the tip, because that would risk making the drops not sterile. “Don’t touch the bottle to your eye or to your face or to your nose,” he said.EzriCare, a drug company based in New Jersey, said in a statement on Wednesday that it did not manufacture the eye drops and was involved only in designing the product’s label and in marketing it to customers.EzriCare said that it was first told about the C.D.C. investigation on Jan. 20 and “immediately took action to stop any further distribution or sale of EzriCare Artificial Tears.” The company said it had also been trying to contact customers to tell them to stop using the eye drops.Public health officials have warned that more must be done globally to stem the spread of drug-resistant infections, which occur when bacteria and fungi evolve to outsmart the antibiotic and antifungal drugs that have been developed to destroy them. The more antibiotics and antifungal medicines are given to people and livestock, the more likely resistance will occur, health officials have said.Nearly 30,000 people in the United States died in 2020 from drug-resistant infections, according to an analysis by the C.D.C., 15 percent more than in 2019. The increase was driven mostly by the coronavirus, which in the early days of the pandemic was a mystery to medical professionals. Many turned to antibiotics to try to treat the illness before vaccines and other treatments were available.Each year, more than 700,000 people across the world die from drug-resistant infections. The United Nations warned in 2019 that, without concerted action, these infections could kill 10 million people annually by 2050 and trigger a global economic crisis.

Officials said they were conducting an autopsy to see if a monkeypox infection contributed to the death of a Los Angeles County resident.Los Angeles County officials said this week that they were investigating the death of a person who had been diagnosed with monkeypox to see if the illness was a contributing cause of death.It is the second known death of a person diagnosed with the disease in the United States, which has reported more cases of the viral illness this year than anywhere in the world. Health officials are investigating what, if any, role monkeypox played in the two deaths.Dr. Rita Singhal, chief medical officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said at a news conference on Thursday that an autopsy was being conducted on the person who died in the county and that it could take days or weeks to get the results. Dr. Singhal did not say whether the person who died had any underlying medical conditions, as was the case in the earlier fatality, in Texas.“We are early in the investigation and do not have additional details available at this time,” Dr. Singhal said. “As soon as details become available, we will share them while maintaining confidentiality and privacy.”As part of the investigation, Dr. Singhal said, county officials will work with the state of California and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to see if guidelines for how to treat people with monkeypox, especially those who become severely ill, need to be updated.There have been more than 56,600 confirmed cases of monkeypox in more than 100 countries, including more than 21,500 confirmed cases in the United States, according to the C.D.C.The first reported death of someone in the United States who had been diagnosed with monkeypox was in Texas last month. The Department of State Health Services there announced on Aug. 30 that an adult in Harris County who was “severely immunocompromised” and diagnosed with monkeypox had died.“The case is under investigation to determine what role monkeypox played in the death,” the department said in a statement.As of Sept. 4, the deaths of 18 people who had been diagnosed with monkeypox had been reported to the World Health Organization. The number of weekly new cases globally decreased by 25.5 percent in the week ending on Sept. 4, compared with the week before, the W.H.O. said. The outbreak continues to primarily affect men who have sex with men who have a median age of 36 years, the W.H.O. said.The spread of monkeypox appears to be declining in major U.S. cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, health officials say.Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, cautioned two weeks ago that the decrease was not even across the country.“Week over week, our numbers are still increasing,” she said in a White House news conference. “The rate of rise is lower. But we are still seeing increases. And we are of course a very diverse country, and things are not even across the country.”