Quarantines

SACRAMENTO -- One of the Golden State's most notorious invasive pests -- the crop-devouring Medfly -- has reappeared in Los Angeles County for the first time in half a dozen years, state officials announced Thursday. Authorities said they expected to soon establish a quarantine zone on the Palos Verdes Peninsula -- the site of the discovery -- and begin stepped-up treatment to kill a pest long feared as among the most worrisome threats to the state's agricultural economy.

The globe-trotting groom with a highly dangerous strain of tuberculosis whose travels last month caused an international health scare told a Senate panel Wednesday that he had no idea he was contagious. "I don't want this, and I wouldn't have wanted to give it to someone else," said Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer now in quarantine at a Denver hospital. "CDC knew that I had this," he said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Laboratory tests of a patient isolated in Denver with a highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis have found no signs so far of the bacteria in his sputum, an indicator that the chances he could have spread the disease are very low, National Jewish Medical and Research Center said Tuesday. The three consecutive negative results are the first step toward loosening restrictions on the patient, who has been confined to a hospital room by public health orders.

A man whose transatlantic journey may have exposed dozens of airline passengers to a virulent, drug-resistant tuberculosis strain had his disease diagnosed in part through the work of a doctor who is now his father-in-law, a TB expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials said Friday. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the CDC, said Dr. Bob Cooksey had helped with the bacteriological test.

A man infected with an extremely dangerous strain of tuberculosis was waved into the United States at a border crossing even after a routine check of his passport set off an urgent warning, authorities said Thursday.

Health authorities have begun notifying hundreds of people who may have been exposed to a Georgia man infected with a form of tuberculosis resistant to almost all drugs, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The man traveled on two transatlantic flights in May and health officials are most worried about the airline crews and the passengers sitting around him, said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding.

Farmers will be allowed to sell 20 million chickens being held on farms that may have received feed contaminated with the chemical melamine, suspected in a rash of pet deaths, the Agriculture Department said Monday. The department said there was no need to quarantine livestock on farms where melamine or related compounds could not be detected in animal feed, perhaps because it made up only a small share of the feed. A USDA spokesman said 20 million chickens were in that category.

His legs shackled and his wrists in handcuffs, Robert Daniels craned his neck past the armed Maricopa County sheriff's deputy and gazed at a sliver of daylight spilling through the hospital doors. "That's the first time I've seen sunlight in ... " Daniels' voice trailed off. He couldn't remember the last time. The 27-year-old has been confined to a sealed room in the Maricopa County Medical Center's jail ward since August.

State officials who quarantined a Stanislaus County hog farm after an industrial chemical was found in its animals said Friday that the health risk to people who ate pork from the facility appeared "minimal," as inspectors continued testing. Tests of seven urine samples and two feed samples at American Hog Farm in Ceres all came back positive for melamine, the chemical that has tainted more than 100 brands of dog and cat food, said State Veterinarian Dr. Richard Breitmeyer.

The White House on Wednesday unveiled a foreboding report on the nation's lack of preparedness for a bird flu pandemic, warning that such an outbreak could kill as many as 2 million people and deal a war-like blow to the country's economic and social fabric. It urged state and local governments to make their own preparations beyond the federal efforts. In the government's first detailed look at the potential effects on public health and U.S.