ABBOTT LABORATORIES

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the Abbott Laboratories infant formula plant in Michigan that was shut down for months last year due to contamination, the company confirmed.

A mother in Florida has filed a lawsuit against formula maker Abbott Laboratories, alleging its contaminated infant formula caused her newborn daughter to contract Salmonella and ultimately be hospitalized.

Abbott Nutrition says baby formula production has resumed at the Michigan plant whose February shutdown over contamination contributed to a national shortage.

The Abbott baby formula plant on the west side of Michigan has been forced to shut down just days after it finally reopened.

The nationwide shortage of baby formula is quickly becoming the GOP's latest election-year attack on President Joe Biden.

The U.S. baby formula shortage has sparked a surge of interest among moms who want to donate breast milk to help bridge the supply gap as well as those seeking to keep their babies fed.

Residents of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti can receive free COVID tests to take at home.

(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)WASHINGTON – U.S. health officials have authorized two more over-the-counter COVID-19 tests that can be used at home to get rapid results. The FDA said Abbott’s BinaxNow and Quidel’s QuickVue tests can now be sold without a prescription. Most other COVID-19 tests require a swab sample taken by a health worker at a testing location. AdThe agency authorized an over-the-counter COVID-19 test from an Australian company in December but it is still not widely available. The program will provide free home tests to as many as 160,000 people in two counties in North Carolina and Tennessee.

After a year of struggling to boost testing, communities across the country are seeing plummeting demand, shuttering testing sites or even trying to return supplies. “We just don’t have enough people who are immune to rule out another surge.”U.S. testing hit a peak on Jan. 15, when the country was averaging more than 2 million tests per day. “People just aren’t going to go out to testing sites.”AdBut testing remains important for tracking and containing the outbreak. That’s more than 25 times the country’s current rate of about 40 million tests reported per month. From a public health viewpoint, testing is effective if it helps to quickly find the infected, trace their contacts and isolate them to stop the spread.

Nurse Banu Mufale administers a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine to physical therapist Becca Mamrol on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020, at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, Alaska. (Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News via AP, Pool)JUNEAU, Alaska -- Health officials in Alaska have reported that a second health care worker had an adverse reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine. ___THE VIRUS OUTBREAK:A health worker in Alaska suffered a severe allergic reaction after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. —-JUNEAU, Alaska — Health officials in Alaska reported a health care worker had a severe allergic reaction to a COVID-19 vaccine within 10 minutes of receiving a shot. The governor’s office announced Wednesday that the state has received all of its initial allotment of coronavirus vaccine doses.

It delivers results in about 15 minutes and is priced at $5, significantly lower than similar older tests. Assisted living facilities don't provide skilled nursing care and are outside of Medicare's purview. Assisted living providers have not received federal support during this pandemic, and this is a positive step in the right direction, said a statement from the industry group American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living. The Defense Department will be in charge of getting the tests to more than 20,000 assisted living facilities. Giroir said roughly 800,000-900,000 people are in assisted living facilities, while another 1 million seniors are served by adult day care centers.

This image provided by Abbott Laboratories in August 2020 shows the company's BinaxNOW rapid COVID-19 nasal swab test. The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2020, authorized BinaxNOW, the first rapid coronavirus test that doesnt need any special computer equipment to get results. (Abbott Laboratories via AP)WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized the first rapid coronavirus test that doesnt need any special computer equipment to get results. Abbott's BinaxNOW is the fourth rapid test that detects COVID-19 antigens, proteins found on the surface of the coronavirus, rather than the virus itself. "Its not a rapid test, its a laboratory-based test that will still be prone to the same massive delays as any other test," said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard University.

But the first so-called antigen test — announced Saturday by the Food and Drug Administration — is not quite the kind sought by top government health officials. WHY IS ANTIGEN TESTING IMPORTANT? The new test uses a nasal swab like other screening tests, and delivers results in about 15 minutes. OraSure Technologies has a $710,000 federal contract to develop a saliva-based antigen test that could be performed at home. The company has antigen tests for other viruses — including HIV and Ebola — and those have accuracy rates of over 95%.