The recall of nearly 90 Lyons Magnus products over concern for microbial contamination came after “continued collaboration and consultation” with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.Lyons Magnus, a nutritional drinks company, expanded a voluntary recall of some varieties of popular products including the oat drink Oatly, Optimum Nutrition protein powder and Glucerna shakes, because of the potential for microbial contamination, the company and federal authorities said this week.The company said in a statement on July 28 that no illnesses or complaints related to recalled products had been reported. A company statement on Wednesday announcing that more products had been recalled did not say whether anyone had been sickened, and a spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the news releases.The Food and Drug Administration posted a listed of 89 products, along with lot and case numbers involved in the recall, which came after “continued collaboration and consultation” with the agency, the company said in its statement. Some of the recalled products were distributed nationally, the company said.The statement said that “root cause analysis” indicated that the products did not meet “commercial sterility specifications.”F.D.A. officials did not immediately reply to requests for comment on Friday evening.The recalled brands include varieties of Organic Valley milk and Stumptown Cold Brew Coffee.The company said that the recalled products could potentially be contaminated by harmful organisms that included Cronobacter sakazakii and Clostridium botulinum. Cronobacter sakazakii is a bacterium that can cause life-threatening infections or inflammation of the membranes that protect the brain and spine. Clostridium botulinum is a bacterium that makes dangerous toxins that could cause a severe form of food poisoning, according to the World Health Organization.“Although Clostridium botulinum has not been found in products, consumers are warned not to consume any of the recalled products even if they do not look or smell spoiled,” the company said in a statement that was also posted on the website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Consumers also are advised not to consume any products that are beyond their ‘best by’ date,” the statement said.According to the statement, the symptoms of Cronobacter sakazakii, which is rare, can include fever, vomiting and a urinary tract infection. Clostridium botulinum can bring on illness anywhere from six hours to two weeks after eating contaminated food and could be deadly, the statement said. Symptoms can include impaired vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and muscle weakness.

Abbott Nutrition said that its plant in Sturgis, Mich., resumed production of EleCare and other formulas on Saturday.Abbott Nutrition, the company that fueled a national shortage of baby formula when it shut down a leading production plant in February because of contamination concerns, said on Saturday that the site has restarted producing EleCare and other formulas.The restarting of the plant in Sturgis, Mich., which was the result of an agreement with the federal Food and Drug Administration, renewed hope that the formula shortage that has sent stressed parents scrambling would ease.Out-of-stock rates had soared to about 74 percent at stores across the country as of the week ending May 28, according to Datasembly, which tracks retail data. The crisis, which had been building for months and stems from pandemic supply issues, was worsened by the plant’s closure.In a statement, Abbott said EleCare would be released to consumers around June 20 and that it was “working hard” to restart production of Similac and other formulas.“We understand the urgent need for formula and our top priority is getting high-quality, safe formula into the hands of families across America,” the company said. “We will ramp production as quickly as we can while meeting all requirements.”Read More on the Baby Formula ShortageUnderstand the Shortage: With just a handful of companies making infant formula for the U.S. market, the shutdown of an Abbott Laboratories plant had an outsize effect.Pumping for the Cause: In New York City, the shortage has prompted a huge volunteer effort, with some mothers donating their excess supply of breast milk to help other parents.A Desperate Search: As the United States faces a baby formula shortage, some parents are rationing supplies, or driving for hours in search of them.An Emotional Toll: The shortage is forcing many new mothers to push themselves harder to breastfeed, with some even looking for ways to start again after having stopped.In February, Abbott announced it was voluntarily recalling three types of infant formula after four babies who were fed formula manufactured at the Sturgis plant became sick with bacterial infections.The F.D.A. had received three consumer complaints about Cronobacter sakazakii, a bacterium that can cause severe, life-threatening infections or inflammation of the membranes that protect the brain and spine. Abbott has said that there was no “conclusive evidence” to link the company’s formulas to the illnesses.Dr. Robert M. Califf, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told a House panel last month that the Sturgis plant had a leaking roof, water pooling on the floor and cracks in production equipment that allowed bacteria to get in and persist.He detailed “egregiously unsanitary” conditions but he also acknowledged that his agency was too slow in addressing problems at the plant.In a statement on Saturday, the F.D.A. said that it had investigators at the Sturgis plant for several days to observe flooring, roofing and equipment improvements made to the facility. Abbott reported that the facility tested negative for Cronobacter, the agency said.A consent decree the company signed with the government provides a series of new safeguards, including hiring a qualified expert to oversee improvements at the plant and notifying the F.D.A. if it finds any contamination.The agency on Saturday said the steps it has taken, and the restarting of the Sturgis plant, “will mean more and more infant formula is either on the way to or already on store shelves moving forward.”The plant shutdown exacerbated an existing supply crisis, as parents rushed to stock up on formula, sometimes driving for hours, as networks formed on social media to help connect them with dwindling supplies.Navigating the Baby Formula Shortage in the U.S.Card 1 of 6A growing problem.

The World Health Organization began naming the variants after Greek letters to avoid public confusion and stigma.Markets plunged on Friday, hope of taming the coronavirus dimmed and a new term entered the pandemic lexicon: Omicron.The Covid-19 variant that emerged in South Africa was named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.The naming system, announced by the World Health Organization in May, makes public communication about variants easier and less confusing, the agency and experts said.For example, the variant that emerged in India is not popularly known as B.1.617.2. Rather, it is known as Delta, the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet.There are now seven “variants of interest” or “variants of concern” and they each have a Greek letter, according to a W.H.O. tracking page.Some other variants with Greek letters do not reach those classification levels, and the W.H.O. also skipped two letters just before Omicron — “Nu” and “Xi” — leading to speculation about whether “Xi” was avoided in deference to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.“‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’” Tarik Jasarevic, a W.H.O. spokesman, said on Saturday. “And ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name.”He added that the agency’s best practices for naming diseases suggest avoiding “causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”The W.H.O. has promoted the naming system as simple and accessible, unlike the variants’ scientific names, which “can be difficult to say and recall, and are prone to misreporting,” it said.Some researchers agree.Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, said she conducted many interviews with reporters this year, before the Greek naming system was announced, and she stumbled through confusing explanations about the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants. They are now known as Alpha, which emerged in the United Kingdom, and Beta, which emerged in South Africa.“It makes it really cumbersome to talk about when you’re constantly using an alphabet soup of variant designations,” she said, adding, “Ultimately people end up calling it the U.K. variant or the South African variant.”That’s the other big reason that the W.H.O. moved to the Greek naming system, Dr. Rasmussen said: The older naming convention was unfair to the people where the virus emerged. The agency called the practice of describing variants by the places they were detected “stigmatizing and discriminatory.”The practice of naming viruses for regions has also historically been misleading, Dr. Rasmussen said. Ebola, for example, is named for a river that’s actually far from where the virus emerged.“From the very beginning of the pandemic, I remember people saying: ‘We called it the Spanish flu. Why don’t we call it the Wuhan coronavirus?’” Dr. Rasmussen said. “The Spanish flu did not come from Spain. We don’t know where it emerged from, but there’s a very good possibility it emerged from the U.S.”The W.H.O. encouraged national authorities and media outlets to adopt the new labels. They do not replace the technical names, which convey important information to scientists and will continue to be used in research.

A commission appointed by the health agency found that women and girls had been promised jobs in exchange for relationships or had been sexually exploited in order to keep jobs.Doctors and other staff members working for the World Health Organization to render aid during an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo sexually abused or exploited women and girls there, a commission appointed by the head of the agency reported on Tuesday.Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the agency’s director general, apologized directly to the victims — reported to number in the dozens — and promised to undertake “wholesale reform of policies and processes” to address exploitation and abuse in the organization. He said the agency was terminating the contracts of four people identified as perpetrators who were still employed with the agency and would refer allegations of rape to the authorities in Congo and in the home countries of those accused of misconduct.The Ebola response from 2018 to 2020 “was a large and complex operation in a highly insecure region requiring large-scale recruitment of local and international personnel,” Dr. Tedros said. “But none of that is an excuse for sexual exploitation and abuse. We accept that we should have taken stronger measures to screen our candidates and ensure more effective human resources processes.”The commission’s investigators were able to identify 83 people believed to have been involved in the abuse, including both Congolese nationals and foreigners, the report said. In 21 cases, the investigators were able to establish with certainty that those suspected of abuse were W.H.O. employees.The 35-page report cited “clear structural failures” in how the agency responded to allegations of misconduct. It painted a picture of an organization obsessed with bureaucracy and ruminating over technicalities of abuse accusations such as who would qualify for legal protection against exploitation and whether an accusation should be investigated if a written complaint had not been filed.The commission found that women had been promised jobs in exchange for relationships or had been sexually exploited in order to keep jobs. The report cited the stories of women like one identified as Nadira, who worked in Beni as an archivist.“To get ahead in the job, you had to have sex,” she told investigators. “Everyone had sex in exchange for something. It was very common. I was even offered sex if I wanted to get a basin of water to wash myself in the base camp where we were staying.”The report underscored the power differential between employees of international organizations like the W.H.O. and the people they are serving. It stated that “the majority of the alleged victims were in a very precarious economic or social situation during the response.”It added, “Indeed, very few of them were able to complete their secondary education, and some had never set foot in school.”The investigation was opened after The New Humanitarian, a nonprofit news organization based in Geneva, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation, published in September 2020 the findings of a yearlong investigation in which 30 of 51 women interviewed reported exploitation by men identified as working for the W.H.O. on the Ebola outbreak starting in 2018.The exploitation and abuse reports brought fresh scrutiny to the United Nations’ struggles with the decades-old problem of sexual exploitation by peacekeeping troops, which surfaced in conflicts in Bosnia in the 1990s and in more recent emergencies in places like the Central African Republic and Haiti.The 51 women interviewed all told investigating journalists that they had been pressured to provide sex to employees of the W.H.O. and of other international aid organizations as well as of Congo’s Health Ministry. They faced pressure when they were seeking jobs, and on occasion, the men terminated the contracts of those who refused, the women said.Eight women said they had been exploited by employees of the Health Ministry. Others reported encounters with men from charity groups including World Vision, UNICEF and the medical organization ALIMA.Dr. Tedros was made aware of the allegations only when they were revealed in the news media, the report said. At a news conference Tuesday for the release of the report, he was asked whether, because of the severity of the allegations and because he was overseeing the response to the outbreak and was on site numerous times, he would consider resigning.“This issue was not raised to me,” he said. “Probably I should have asked questions. And the next steps, what we’re doing is, we have to ask questions.”Dr. Tedros said the agency was “taking immediate steps” to determine why the organization had not detected and stopped the abuse.One factor the commission cited as creating the conditions for exploitation and abuse was the lack of transparency in the recruitment process for new employees to combat the Ebola surge.The response to the virus, much like the coronavirus response in the United States and globally, created a need for a large number of new workers. This, the report noted, was a boon to the many young people seeking employment. But the recruitment process was not competitive.“Local workers — who made up more than half of the W.H.O. personnel serving in North Kivu province — were recruited without competitive bidding,” the report said, “thus opening the door to possible abuses, including incidents of exploitation and sexual abuse, which have unfortunately been witnessed.”The report also cited “late and insufficient” training on stemming sexual exploitation and abuse in the response to the Ebola crisis. The first such training session occurred in November 2019, five months after the outbreak had been declared an international public health emergency. The report also found that only a small number of the organization’s staff members — 371 of the more than 2,800 deployed during the outbreak — had participated in the training session.