Tag Archives: Alerts

UK food supply chains ‘on the edge of failing,’ meat industry says

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s food supply chains are “right on the edge of failing” as absence related to COVID-19 has aggravated a critical shortage of labor, a meat industry body said on Wednesday.

The British Meat Processors’ Association (BMPA) said the shortage of skills was so critical, some plants had reported vacancies of 10% to 16% of permanent positions, discounting the impact of the pandemic.

“On top of the underlying worker shortage, we’re also hearing from some members that between 5% and 10% of their workforce have been ‘pinged’ by the (health service) app and asked to self-isolate,” BMPA CEO Nick Allen said.

The shortage of workers affected the meat products that require more labor to produce, he said, meaning those lines would be the first to be cut.

On Monday, England’s car plants, railways, supermarkets and pubs warned the government that the COVID-19 tracing app, which has told hundreds of thousands of workers to isolate, was wrecking the recovery and pushing supply chains to the brink of collapse.

Alerts, or “pings,” from the official app telling anyone identified as a contact of someone with the disease to self-isolate for 10 days have also disrupted schools and the healthcare system.

The government has announced exemptions for some workers identified as critical, including health and transport workers, but says it does not plan widespread rule changes.

Pictures on social media showed gaps on supermarket shelves as the so-called “pingdemic” is putting pressure on retailers’ ability to maintain opening hours and stock shelves.

Andrew Opie, director of food & sustainability at industry lobby group, the British Retail Consortium, said the government needed to act swiftly.

“Retail workers and suppliers, who have played a vital role throughout this pandemic, should be allowed to work provided they are double vaccinated or can show a negative COVID test, to ensure there is no disruption to the public’s ability to get food and other goods,” he said.

(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Questions mount over tours to deadly New Zealand volcano

By Charlotte Greenfield and Praveen Menon

WHAKATANE/WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Tourists caught in the deadly blast at New Zealand’s White Island were there despite a recent increase in volcanic activity, although experts said precise predictions on eruptions were all but impossible.

Five people were killed, eight are still missing and more than 30 were injured when the White Island volcano, one of the most active in New Zealand, erupted in a steam and gas explosion on Monday. Many of the visitors were on a day tour from a cruise trip in a nearby port.

Geological hazard tracker GeoNet raised its alert level for the island near the middle of a six-point scale in mid-November because of an increase in volcanic activity. But tour companies were not required to keep their dozens of customers that day away from the volcano, operators and agencies say.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said the government would investigate the incident.

“I have to say that I’m very surprised to hear there were visitors there today, because scientists seem to have been well aware that White Island was entering a phase of heightened activity,” said Drexel University volcanologist Loÿc Vanderkluysen. “I’ve been to White Island before, but I don’t think I would have been comfortable being there today.”

Local tourism authorities market White Island, or ‘Whakaari’, as it is known in the Maori language, as “the world’s most accessible active marine volcano”.

The volcano attracts volcanologists and thrill-seekers from around the world to walk across the island’s wild landscape, which features active geothermal steam vents and bubbling mud pools.

The privately owned island runs daily tours, and more than 10,000 people to visit every year.

“The eruption was unfortunate but not completely unexpected,” said Jessica Johnson, lecturer in Geophysics at the University of East Anglia in the UK. “The most that the scientists can do is continue to monitor the volcano and issue information when it is available.”

The regional government monitors the volcano’s activity through GeoNet and other agencies. Tour operators, which must have government permits to take people to the island, can shut down access based on that data, tour companies said.

“The safety instructions, the discussion before you go, makes it very clear to you that this is an active volcano, there are risks, when you get handed over gas masks, so the tour companies go to great lengths to make sure people do understand exactly what this is,” said Anne Tolley, local leader and parliament member from the East Coast.

Experts said it was difficult to predict exactly when a volcano would erupt. New Zealand uses a scale of 0-5 to rank volcano eruption risk, with 0 being no activity and 5 being a large eruption. On Monday, White Island was level 2.

Although there are signs scientists can watch for, they are more of an indicator of risk rather than predictive tools, said Toshitsugu Fujii, Head of the Mount Fuji Research Institute in Yamanashi, Japan.

“With a steam explosion it can be hard to see the signals until right before it happens,” Fujii said. “It seems that the volcano was getting more active and they raised the alert level, so they were paying attention. But you can’t tell, even so, if it’ll erupt today, next week or next month.”

Paul Quinn, chairman of Ngāti Awa Holdings, which owns White Island Tours, told Radio New Zealand that the alert levels over the last few weeks did not meet the company’s threshold for stopping operations.

He did not say what specific criteria the company considered, but said that at level 3 it would “liaise more directly” with the government about whether to continue tours.

 

LIVE VOLCANO

Ardern acknowledged that tourism on White Island had been going on safely for decades.

“It has been a live volcano throughout that time and at various time has been level 2 but it is a very unpredictable volcano,” she said.

There are dozens of volcanoes across New Zealand. The country’s largest city, Auckland, sits on a volcanic field made up of about 50 volcanic cones and craters that have erupted over the past 250,000 years. Some get daily tours.

Mount Ruapehu on the central North Island has erupted several times in recent years but is still a major tourist attraction, with ski resorts on its slopes.

Injuries and deaths are rare for volcano tourism anywhere, data show. White Island’s last eruption was in 2016, but no one was affected. A volcano on the Italian tourism island of Stromboli killed one person when it erupted in July.

When Japan’s Mount Ontake erupted in a steam explosion September 2014, the peak was packed with hikers out on a weekend to admire autumn foliage. 63 were killed, the highest toll for an eruption in 90 years. Japan constantly monitors 50 peaks.

Tristan Vine, a Whakatane businessman, told Reuters that New Zealand’s volcano tours are a big draw and that many businesses in the town rely on them.

“There’s obviously plenty of other things to be done but White Island is built on the foundation of that. So it’s quite critical for the town,” Vine said.

Graphic: Volcanoes in New Zealand (https://graphics.reuters.com/NEW%20ZEALAND-VOLCANO/0100B4PY2EJ/New-Zealand-Volcano-Map.jpg)

(Additional reporting by Elaine Lies in Tokyo. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

U.S. doctors use medical records to fight measles outbreak

FILE PHOTO: Materials are seen left at demonstration by people opposed to childhood vaccination after officials in Rockland County, a New York City suburb, banned children not vaccinated against measles from public spaces, in West Nyack, New York, U.S. March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. doctors are tapping into their electronic medical records to identify unvaccinated patients and potentially infected individuals to help contain the worst U.S. measles outbreak in 25 years.

New York’s NYU Langone Health network of hospitals and medical offices treats patients from both Rockland County and Brooklyn, two epicenters of the outbreak. It has built alerts into its electronic medical records system to notify doctors and nurses that a patient lives in an outbreak area, based on their Zip code.

“It identifies incoming patients who may have been exposed to measles and need to be assessed,” said Dr. Michael Phillips, chief epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health.

    Alerts in a patient’s medical record also prompt conversations with their visitors – who may also have been exposed to the virus – about their own health, prior exposure to measles and vaccination history.

Mount Sinai Health System in New York rolled out a similar program last week, said Dr. Bruce Darrow, its chief medical information officer.

Darrow said it was important because although a patient who comes from a measles-affected Zip code may have passed the screening, family members who visit may have been exposed.

He said the alert system raises awareness for doctors and nurses “to be on lookout not just for our patients, but anybody who comes into the building.”

U.S. officials have reported more than 700 confirmed cases of measles, the highest level since the virus was deemed eliminated in 2000. The measles virus is highly contagious and can cause blindness, deafness, brain damage or death.

At NYU Langone, the alerts were developed using software from Madison, Wisconsin-based Epic Systems Corp. Epic, whose medical records software is used by thousands of U.S. hospitals and clinics, said other customers began requesting their help to address the outbreak.

In response, Epic released a how-to guide last month that incorporated many of the best ideas from its customers fighting the outbreak. The guide walks health systems through ways to use medical records to identify and reach out to patients who are unvaccinated and helps inform doctors on how to screen, track and treat measles patients.

“For example, we can find all those patients missing the MMR vaccine and send out a message to patients or providers,” said Jordan Tucker, a member of the Epic implementation team, who is helping oversee the project.

So far, Epic clients in New York, Illinois, Texas and California are using the system to fight the outbreak.

Illinois has confirmed seven measles cases this year. In response to reports of a potential case in the Chicago area, two hospitals in the suburbs last month sent hundreds of letters to parents urging them to ensure their kids get their measles shots.

“We wanted to do everything we could before it got to us,” said Dr. Michael Caplan, co-medical director of a pediatric partnership between Advocate Children’s Hospital and North University HealthSystem.

Northern California’s Sutter Health, which serves 3 million patients, last month introduced a screening questionnaire about potential measles risk for every patient who tries to book their appointment online.

Dr. Jeffrey Silvers, Sutter Health’s medical director of infectious diseases, said people with measles often seek treatment for symptoms such as cough, runny nose or fever before they develop the tell-tale rash. The screening program aims to identify early whether they represent a measles case.

“If a person has a fever plus one of those symptoms, or a rash, they have to answer the next question, which is, ‘Have you been outside of the United States in the last three weeks or been exposed to anybody with measles?'” Silvers said.

Those who answer yes must call to schedule their appointment so that staff can take precautions to protect themselves and other patients.

California so far has had 40 measles cases, most of them in the southern part of the state. Sutter plans to use Epic’s software to develop a program to increase measles vaccination coverage, Silver said.

According to the World Health Organization, 95 percent of a population needs to be vaccinated to provide “herd immunity,” a form of indirect protection that prevents infection in people too young or sick to be vaccinated. CDC officials have said rising rates of vaccine skepticism are creating undervaccinated populations, weakening herd immunity.

If herd immunity is not sufficient and exposures continue, the outbreak could take off, said Caplan, the Illinois pediatrician. “Everybody is a little concerned about that.”

(This story in paragraph 15, changes number of patients Sutter Health sees to 3 million from 1.7 million).

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

North Korea’s Kim guides special operations drill targeting South

Combat Drills in North Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided a special operations drill targeting the South, the North’s media reported on Sunday, as rival South Korea remained on alert for any attempt by the North to take advantage of political turmoil in the South.

The North’s KCNA state news agency report did not say when North Korean forces conducted the combat exercise, nor did it mention the South Korean parliament’s vote on Friday to impeach its president, Park Geun-hye.

Pictures in a Sunday report on the exercise in the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed what appeared to be a mockup of South Korea’s presidential Blue House as a target.

Park will remain in the Blue House, though her powers have been suspended and assumed by the South’s prime minister while the Constitutional Court weighs parliament’s impeachment vote.

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn has urged a high state of military alert in case of any provocation by North Korea, including possible cyber attacks.

“We are ready to retaliate if North Korea makes any provocations and we condemn its malicious threat,” a South Korean military official told Reuters.

Tension on the divided Korean peninsula has been high this year after two North Korean nuclear tests and an unprecedented flurry of ballistic missile tests.

The North’s tests have brought tighter U.N. Security Council sanctions but no indication North Korea and its young leader Kim are willing to compromise on its nuclear and missile programmes.

The Rodong Sinmun pictures included one of Kim observing the exercise through binoculars.

“Watching the brave service personnel independently and pro-actively perform their combat duty destroying specified targets of the enemy, he said with a broad smile on his face: ‘Well done, the enemy troops will have no space to hide themselves, far from taking any counteraction’,” KCNA cited Kim saying.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Yun Hwan Chae; Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Robert Birsel)