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A respiratory virus that doesn’t have a vaccine or a specific treatment regimen is spreading in some parts of California — but there’s no need to sound the alarm just yet, public health officials say.

A majority of Northern California communities have seen high concentrations of human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, detected in their wastewater, according to data from the WastewaterScan Dashboard, a public database that monitors sewage to track the presence of infectious diseases.https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-04/human-metapneumovirus-in-california-what-you-need-to-know?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

A Los Angeles Times data analysis found the communities of Merced in the San Joaquin Valley, and Novato and Sunnyvale in the San Francisco Bay Area have seen increases in HMPV levels in their wastewater between mid-December and the end of February.

HMPV has also been detected in L.A. County, though at levels considered low to moderate at this point, data show.

While HMPV may not necessarily ring a bell, it isn’t a new virus. Its typical pattern of seasonal spread was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its resurgence could signal a return to a more typical pre-coronavirus respiratory disease landscape.

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Minnesota on Monday sued the Trump administration for withholding hundreds of millions in Medicaid funds to the state, alleging it is a “political punishment” that will only serve to harm the more than 1million Minnesotans who are enrolled in the program.

Last week, Vice President Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced a six-month moratorium on $259 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota, pointing to accusations of fraud.

The lawsuit said the federal government had “weaponized Medicaid against Minnesota as political punishment,” despite it being a cooperative program with the state.

“Unless the deferral is quickly reversed, the state will be irreparably harmed. The Administration has already stated that the deferral will recur every quarter, crippling the state budget,” it stated.

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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said Dunkin’ and other companies will need to prove that their ingredients are safe, prompting Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) on Wednesday to reply back, “Come and take it.”

Kennedy, while at a rally at Brazos Hall last week in Austin, Texas, said, “We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s OK for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.'”

He added, as the audience applauded, “I don’t think they’re going to be able to do it.

“The reforms aim to ensure American foods follow the highest safety and nutritional standards globally,” MAHA Action, Kennedy’s nonprofit health advocacy group, said in a statement explaining Kennedy’s announcement.

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The Supreme Court on March 2 backed parents' right to be told if their child changes their name, or pronouns they're using in school, blocking California rules aimed at preventing teachers from outing transgender students to their parents.

"Under long-established precedent, parents − not the State − have primary authority with respect to 'the upbringing and education of children,'" the majority said in an unsigned opinion. "The right protected by these precedents includes the right not to be shut out of participation in decisions regarding their children’s mental health."

The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision to grant the parents' emergency request.

Justice Elena Kagan criticized the conservative majority for making a rushed decision about a case "raising novel legal questions and arousing strong views" that is at an early stage of litigation.

"The Court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly," she wrote of the decision that came without the full rounds of briefing and oral arguments for cases.

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A group of 14 law firms representing nearly 20,000 plaintiffs is seeking to intervene in Bayer’s proposed class-action settlement of Roundup litigation, citing concerns that the deal will not be fair to cancer sufferers.

The group filed both a motion to intervene and a motion for an extension of time for court preliminary approval of the deal in St Louis city circuit court in Missouri late on 24 February.

The law firms say the deal appears “unprecedented” and raises multiple “red flags”.

“It is hard to escape the impression that the proposed settlement would give Monsanto everything it desires – a near-complete release of liability for Monsanto and its parent company, Bayer AG – while giving inadequate consideration to many putative class members, who would surrender their substantive rights in exchange for settlement offers that may never result in payment,” the law firms state in their motion.

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The Food and Drug Administration Monday unveiled the details of a new policy designed to make it easier and quicker for patients with very rare diseases to get cutting-edge treatments.

The new guidance would enable the agency to approve new treatments for rare diseases based on evidence for a "plausible mechanism" for how the treatment would work. The policy aims to speed the use of state-of-the-art technologies like gene-editing to create treatments tailored to individual patients suffering from diseases that are so rare that it would be difficult if not impossible to conduct a traditional study first.

"For decades families heard the same thing: There are not enough patients. The approval will take too long. You just have to wait for the science to catch up with your child, " Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a briefing announcing the proposed new policy. "That ends today. Individualized medicine is no longer theoretical."

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