A salmonella outbreak linked to a large egg recall has made dozens of people sick in seven states in the West and Midwest, federal health officials said Saturday.

The August Egg Company recalled about 1.7 million brown organic and brown cage-free egg varieties distributed to grocery stores between February and May because of the potential for salmonella, according to an announcement posted Friday on the Food and Drug Administration’s website.

At least 79 people in seven states have gotten a strain of salmonella that was linked to the eggs, and 21 people have been hospitalized, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The recall covers Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington and Wyoming. Plant code numbers for the recalled eggs are P-6562 or CA5330, according to the CDC’s website.

“August Egg Company’s internal food safety team also is conducting its own stringent review to identify what measures can be established to prevent this situation from recurring,” according to comments posted from the company on the FDA’s website. “We are committed to addressing this matter fully and to implementing all necessary corrective actions to ensure this does not happen again.”

Symptoms of salmonella poisoning include diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting, dehydration and stomach cramps. Most people who get sick recover within a week.

Infections can be severe in young children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems, who may require hospitalization.

The CDC advises people to throw away recalled eggs or return them to the store where they were purchased. Consumers should also wash and disinfect any surfaces that came in contact with the eggs.

This is the latest in a string of salmonella-related outbreaks recently involving food.

A tomato recall affecting three southern states was upgraded to a Class I recall, the most severe warning by the Food and Drug Administration. The recall was first announced in May over potential salmonella contamination.

Also, nearly four dozen people across 18 states are sick with salmonella food poisoning tied to recalled cucumbers, according to federal health officials. In an update, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the expanding outbreak led to at least 16 people being hospitalized.

Midwest, one of the largest producers of Black Galaxy Granite, has filed draft papers with markets regulator Sebi to raise Rs 650 crore through an initial public offering (IPO). The Hyderabad-based company’s IPO is a mix of fresh issue of shares up to Rs 250 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of up to Rs 400 crore by promoters. The offer also includes reservation for subscription by eligible employees, according to the draft papers filed on Monday.

The OFS consists of sale of shares worth up to Rs 360 crore by Kollareddy Rama Raghava Reddy and up to Rs 40 crore by Guntaka Ravindra Reddy.

The company may consider raising Rs 50 crore in a ‘pre-IPO’ placement round. If such placement is completed, the fresh issue size will be reduced.

Proceeds from the fresh issuance to the tune of Rs 127.05 crore will be allocated for capital expenditure by Midwest Neostone, the company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, for the second phase of the quartz grit and powder processing plant.

Also, Rs 25.75 crore will be used for purchase of electric dump trucks and Rs 3.26 crore for integrating solar energy at selected mining locations.

An amount of Rs 53.80 crore will be used for payment of debt and the remaining funds for general corporate purposes. Midwest is India’s largest producer and exporter of Black Galaxy Granite, a premium variety of granite, which has a sparkling feature with flakes of a golden hue. It is used in real estate projects for applications including countertops and vanities, flooring, cladding, bathroom walls and floors The company’s revenue from operations increased by 16.54 per cent to Rs 585.62 crore in fiscal 2024 from Rs 502.52 crore in fiscal 2023, while profit after tax increased by 84.30 per cent to Rs 100.32 crore from Rs 54.44 crore.

DAM Capital Advisors, Intensive Fiscal Services and Motilal Oswal Investment Advisors are the book-running lead managers, and KFin Technologies is the registrar of the issue.

Several key COVID-19 trends that authorities track are now accelerating around the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. It’s the first major nationwide uptick in the spread of the virus seen in months.

The largest increases are in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, the agency said in its weekly report updated Friday, though virtually all regions of the country are now seeing accelerations.

Data reported by the agency from emergency rooms and wastewater sampling have tracked some of the steepest increases so far this season in the region spanning Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Rates of infections of nursing home residents across this Midwestern region have also soared in recent weeks, higher than in most other parts of the country, approaching levels not seen since the peak of last winter’s COVID-19 wave. 

“Remember we had a late summer wave of COVID. We came down from that. We are going back up again, which we expect again, after a lot of travel and gathering at Thanksgiving,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said Thursday at a House committee hearing.

Close to 2 million Americans are now living in counties deemed to have “high” levels of COVID-19 hospitalizations, where the CDC urges masking in public and other precautions to curb the threat posed by the virus.

Around 1 in 10 Americans are now in communities with “medium” levels of hospitalizations, where the agency counsels some additional precautions for at-risk Americans.

Cohen said the agency has also been tracking other respiratory illnesses accelerating in recent weeks ahead of COVID-19’s rise, in line with previous fall and winter virus seasons. 

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is now “near peak” in many southern states that first saw cases and hospitalizations rise in young children earlier this year. 

In an updated report this week, the CDC’s disease forecasters said RSV hospitalizations were at levels worse than pre-pandemic seasons, but likely on track to reach a “lower and later peak” than last year.

Flu trends have also been accelerating nationwide, the agency said, with more expected increases into December. However, data from emergency rooms suggest influenza has yet to eclipse COVID-19 levels overall.

“Even though those are both going up and we’re at the peak of RSV, COVID is still the respiratory virus that is putting the most number of folks in the hospital and taking their lives,” said Cohen.

Officials say they have also been keeping tabs on reports of other causes of pneumonia-like illness in kids this year, like the common mycoplasma bacteria that has shared the blame for China’s recent surge in pediatric hospitalizations. Health authorities have also reported seeing mycoplasma pneumonia in the mix among cases of sick children in Ohio. 

Several countries abroad have also seen steeper increases of the bacterial infections in kids this season, which experts said had largely disappeared around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Denmark recently warned it was reaching epidemic levels of mycoplasma.

Cohen said Friday in a briefing with reporters that U.S. trends suggested respiratory illnesses in children were not “atypical” so far.

Health officials in Ohio had also not seen unusual strain on their hospitals, she said, and most children in the outbreaks were “recovering at home.”

“We are seeing COVID and flu and RSV as well as some pneumonia, but nothing outside the typical of what we would see,” Cohen said, citing data analyzed by the agency from testing laboratories and emergency rooms around the country.

Weekly counts of emergency room visits for influenza — which, in a CDC study before the pandemic, had ranked among the most common causes of pneumonia – have surged among school-age kids nationwide in recent months. 

In the opposite of what is seen in adults, rates of influenza in emergency room visits for children remain multiple times higher than for COVID-19.

“At this time, what we are seeing is quite typical of this moment in the winter respiratory virus season,” Cohen said.