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The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat. The department on Thursday said it was withdrawing a rule proposed in August after three years of development. Officials with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service cited feedback from more than 7,000 public comments and said they would “evaluate whether it should update” current salmonella regulations. (Aleccia, 4/24)

The United States is at a tipping point for the return of endemic measles a quarter century after the disease was declared eradicated in the country, researchers warned on Thursday. At current U.S. childhood vaccination rates, measles could return to spreading regularly at high levels, with an estimated 851,300 cases over the next 25 years, computer models used by the researchers suggest. (Lapid, 4/24)

As the United States experiences a large measles outbreak and faces a continuing barrage of vaccine misinformation and cuts to public health programs, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota is launching a project to help ensure safe US vaccine use. Funded by an unrestricted gift of $240,000 from Alumbra, a foundation established by philanthropist Christy Walton, the Vaccine Integrity Project will be led by an eight-member steering committee of leading public health and policy experts from across the country. (Van Beusekom, 4/24)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now working with California on a project that is offering gift cards to encourage people to get tested or vaccinated near farms with bird flu, the state says. Some clinics in the state are giving $25 in gift cards to people in the community to get swabbed for a potential bird flu infection or to get a shot of the regular seasonal influenza vaccine. (Tin, 4/24)

Lauren Caggiano had felt sick for days by the time she tested positive for the flu in an emergency room on a February afternoon. Hours later, she was in the intensive care unit. By 4 in the morning, she was on a ventilator. Ms. Caggiano, a paralegal who lived in Oceanside, Calif., doted on her two dogs and had recently become a grandmother, died two days later. She was 49.“You don’t really think, if you’re in decent health, that’s going to be what gets you,” her son, Brandon Salgado, said. (Blum, 4/24)

Driving with a case of COVID raised the odds of having a car crash about as much as being at the legal threshold of DUI or running a red light, according to an analysis of pandemic-era public health and transportation records from seven states. (Bettelheim, 4/24)