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Found 653 results
  1. News Article
    Covid-19 is on the retreat across the American continents but it is too early for the region to let its guard down, warned the Pan American Health Organisation, the World Health Organization’s regional office for the Americas, on 9 March. Reported cases of Covid-19 fell by 26% in the past week and deaths by nearly 19%, as the omicron wave of infections tailed off. But ongoing transmission and future variants could expose the region’s public health priorities once more, said PAHO’s director, Carissa Etienne. A total of 2.6 million people have died from Covid-19 in the Americas, the highest number of any region of the world and almost half of the global total, despite being home to only 13% of its population. “This is a tragedy of enormous proportions, and its effects will be felt for years to come,” said Etienne on the second anniversary of the pandemic. Patchy vaccination coverage has left countries vulnerable to current and future variants of SARS-CoV-2. Around 248 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are yet to receive a single dose of a covid vaccine, with vaccination rates particularly low in hard-to-reach rural areas. In the first two months of 2022 the Americas accounted for 63% of the world’s new cases. Despite a general fall in incidence across the region, new cases rose by 2.2% in the Caribbean, while Bolivia and Puerto Rico reported an increase in deaths in the past week. Michael Touchton, head of the University of Miami’s Covid-19 policy observatory for Latin America, said, “Latin America is perhaps the most vulnerable region in the world to the emergence of a new variant. Vaccine delays have a greater impact in Latin America due to concentrated urban populations, chronic disease burden, and low capacity health systems. Taken together, Latin America is likelier to fare worse than other similarly low and middle income regions.” Read full story Source: BMJ, 14 March 2022
  2. News Article
    Sasha Mallett, Sue Taylor and Kimberly Cooley all have immune deficiencies that make them especially vulnerable to Covid-19, and all have tried to get the same thing: a new treatment that can prevent the disease in people who either cannot produce antibodies after receiving a coronavirus vaccine or cannot get vaccinated at all. Ms. Cooley, a liver transplant recipient in Duck Hill, Mississippi, got the antibody drug, called Evusheld, from her transplant team at the University of Mississippi Medical Center with no trouble. But Ms. Taylor, of Cincinnati, was denied the treatment by two hospitals near her home. And Dr. Mallett, a physician in Portland, Ore., had to drive five hours to a hospital willing to give her a dose. As much of the USA unmasks amid plummeting caseloads and fresh hope that the pandemic is fading, the Biden administration has insisted it will continue protecting the more than seven million Americans with weakened immune systems who remain vulnerable to Covid. Evusheld, which was developed by AstraZeneca with financial support from the federal government, is essential to its strategy. But there is so much confusion about the drug among healthcare providers that roughly 80% of the available doses are sitting unused in warehouses and on pharmacy and hospital shelves. Interviews with doctors, patients and government officials suggest the reasons the drug is going unused are varied. Some patients and doctors do not know Evusheld exists. Some do not know where to get it. Government guidelines on who should be prioritised for the drug are scant. In some hospitals and medical centres, supplies are being reserved for patients at the highest risk, such as recent transplant recipients and cancer patients, while doses in other areas of the country are being given out through a lottery or on a first-come, first-served basis. Hesitance is also an issue. Some doctors and other providers do not know how to use Evusheld and are thus loath to prescribe it. Read full story (paywalled) Source: New York Times, 6 March 2022
  3. News Article
    The White House has announced plans to boost nursing home staffing and oversight, blaming some of the 200,000-plus covid deaths of nursing home residents and staff during the pandemic on inadequate conditions. Officials said the plan would set minimum staffing levels, reduce the use of shared rooms and crack down on the poorest-performing nursing homes to reduce the risk of residents contracting infectious diseases. The White House also said it planned to scrutinise the role of private equity firms, citing data that their ownership was linked with worse outcomes and higher costs. Nursing homes have been an epicenter of covid spread during the pandemic, as the virus initially tore through facilities before vaccines were available in 2020, and then continued to sicken and kill residents at an elevated rate last year. Advocates have demanded better policies to ensure the facilities are prepared for emergencies and follow practices to curb the spread of infections. Under Biden’s plan, officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will propose minimum staffing levels within the next year, which the White House said would improve safety by ensuring residents receive sufficient care and attention. The administration also cited a study that found increased staffing levels were linked with fewer covid cases and deaths. The nursing home industry has warned that the pandemic has exacerbated long-running staffing shortages, noting that roughly 420,000 employees in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, many of whom complained about low pay, have departed over the last two years. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Washington Post, 28 February 2022
  4. News Article
    Pregnancy-related deaths among US mothers climbed higher in the pandemic’s first year, continuing a decades-long trend that disproportionately affects Black people, according to a new government report. Overall in 2020, there were almost 24 deaths per 100,000 births, or 861 deaths total, numbers that reflect mothers dying during pregnancy, childbirth or the year after. The rate was 20 per 100,000 in 2019. Among Black people, there were 55 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, almost triple the rate for white people. The report from the National Center for Health Statistics does not include reasons for the trend and researchers said they have not fully examined how Covid-19, which increases risks for severe illness in pregnancy, might have contributed. The coronavirus could have had an indirect effect. Many people put off medical care early in the pandemic for fear of catching the virus, and virus surges strained the healthcare system, which could have had an impact on pregnancy-related deaths, said Eugene Declercq, a professor and maternal death researcher at Boston University School of Public Health. He called the high rates “terrible news” and noted that the US has continually fared worse in maternal mortality than many other developed countries. Reasons for those disparities are not included in the data, but experts have blamed many factors including differences in rates of underlying health conditions, poor access to quality healthcare and structural racism. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 February 2022
  5. News Article
    Five months after being infected with the coronavirus, Nicole Murphy’s pulse rate is going berserk. Normally in the 70s, which is ideal, it has been jumping to 160, 170 and sometimes 210 beats per minute even when she is at rest — putting her at risk of a heart attack, heart failure or stroke. No one seems to be able to pinpoint why. She’s only 44, never had heart issues, and when a cardiologist near her hometown of Wellsville, Ohio, USA, ran all of the standard tests, “he literally threw up his hands when he saw the results,” she recalled. Her blood pressure was perfect, there were no signs of clogged arteries, and her heart was expanding and contracting well. Murphy’s boomeranging heart rate is one of a number of mysterious conditions afflicting Americans weeks or months after coronavirus infections that suggest the potential of a looming cardiac crisis. A pivotal study that looked at health records of more than 153,000 U.S. veterans published this month in Nature Medicine found that their risk of cardiovascular disease of all types increased substantially in the year following infection, even when they had mild cases. The population studied was mostly White and male, but the patterns held even when the researchers analyzed women and people of color separately. When experts factor in the heart damage probably suffered by people who put off medical care, more sedentary lifestyles and eating changes, not to mention the stress of the pandemic, they estimate there may be millions of new onset cardiac cases related to the virus, plus a worsening of disease for many already affected. “We are expecting a tidal wave of cardiovascular events in the coming years from direct and indirect causes of covid,” said Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association. Read full story (paywalled) Source: Washington Post, 21 February 2022
  6. News Article
    Having Covid-19 puts people at a significantly increased chance of developing new mental health conditions, potentially adding to existing crises of suicide and overdoses, according to new research looking at millions of health records in the US over the course of a year. The long-term effects of having Covid are still being discovered, and among them is an increased chance of being diagnosed with mental health disorders. They include depression, anxiety, stress and an increased risk of substance use disorders, cognitive decline, and sleep problems – a marked difference from others who also endured the stress of the pandemic but weren’t diagnosed with the virus. “This is basically telling us that millions and millions of people in the US infected with Covid are developing mental health problems,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, chief of research and development at the VA St Louis Healthcare System and senior author of the paper. “That makes us a nation in distress.” The higher risk of mental health disorders, including suicidal ideation and opioid use, is particularly concerning, he said. “This is really almost a perfect storm that is brewing in front of our eyes – for another opioid epidemic two or three years down the road, for another suicide crisis two or three years down the road,” Al-Aly added. These unfolding crises are “quite a big concern”, said James Jackson, director of behavioural health at Vanderbilt University’s ICU Recovery Center, who was not involved with this study. He is also seeing patients whose previous conditions, including anxiety, depression and opioid use disorder, worsened during the pandemic. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 18 February 2022
  7. News Article
    US regulators this week have approved the first RSV vaccine for pregnant women so their babies will be born with protection against the respiratory infection. The Food and Drug Administration cleared Pfizer’s maternal vaccination to guard against a severe case of RSV when babies are most vulnerable – from birth through six months of age. The next step: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must issue recommendations for using the vaccine, named Abrysvo, during pregnancy. “Maternal vaccination is an incredible way to protect the infants,” said Dr Elizabeth Schlaudecker of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, a researcher in Pfizer’s international study of the vaccine. If shots begin soon, “I do think we could see an impact for this RSV season.” RSV is a coldlike nuisance for most healthy people but it can be life-threatening for the very young. It inflames babies’ tiny airways so it’s hard to breathe or causes pneumonia. In the US alone, between 58,000 and 80,000 children younger than five are hospitalised each year, and several hundred die, from the respiratory syncytial virus. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 22 August 2023
  8. News Article
    The United States is in the middle of a maternal health crisis. Today, a woman in the US is twice as likely to die from pregnancy than her mother was a generation ago. Statistics from the World Health Organization show the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the developed world. Women in the US are 10 or more times likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than mothers in Poland, Spain or Norway. Some of the worst statistics come out of the South - in places like Louisiana, where deep pockets of poverty, health care deserts and racial biases have long put mothers at risk. Dr Rebekah Gee: The state of maternal health in the United States is abysmal. And Louisiana is the highest maternal mortality in the US. So, in the developed world, Louisiana has the worst outcomes for women having babies." A third of Louisiana's parishes are maternal health deserts – meaning they don't have a single OB-GYN, leaving more than 51 thousand women in the state without easy access to care and three times more likely to die of pregnancy related causes. Read full story Source: CBS News, 20 August 2023
  9. News Article
    Roughly three in 10 adults have been addicted to opioids or have a family member who has been, and less than half of those with a substance use disorder have received treatment, according to a new survey conducted by KFF, a health policy research group. The survey, which polled more than 1,300 adults in July, underscores the broad and often harmful influence of opioid addiction across the nation, which recorded around 110,000 fatal drug overdoses last year alone. And the findings suggest that some proven medications for helping curb drug cravings, such as buprenorphine and methadone, are still not getting to those who need them. Only 25 percent of participants in the poll who said they or someone in their family had an opioid addiction reported receiving medication for themselves or family members. Mollyann Brodie, the executive director of KFF’s polling program, said that the numbers might be an undercount, as some survey participants might have been hesitant to share histories of opioid addiction. Addiction cuts across class, race and geography, the KFF researchers found. Rural and white Americans were the likeliest to report personal or family opioid addiction, but significant percentages of Black, Hispanic, urban and suburban families did, as well. White families were more likely than Black or Hispanic families to say that they had received treatment. Overdose fatality rates among Black Americans have climbed substantially in recent years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found in a study last year. Dr. David Fiellin, an addiction physician at the Yale School of Medicine, said the survey showed the need for a stronger federal response to substance use disorders, akin to the one for AIDS. He said, “There’s often a misunderstanding of what treatment actually looks like and what it is—people often look to a quick fix,” he said, referring to a detox strategy. “Effective treatment tends to be much more long term and requires addressing the denial that can be part of the condition.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: New York Times, 15 August 2023
  10. News Article
    Vanderbilt University Medical Center is facing a federal civil rights investigation after turning the medical records of transgender patients over to Tennessee’s attorney general, hospital officials have confirmed. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ investigation comes just weeks after two patients sued VUMC for releasing their records to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti late last year. “We have been contacted by and are working with the Office of Civil Rights,” spokesperson John Howser said in a statement late Thursday. “We have no further comment since this is an ongoing investigation.” VUMC has come under fire for waiting months before telling patients in June that their medical information was shared late last year, acting only after the existence of the requests emerged as evidence in another court case. The news sparked alarm for many families living in the ruby red state where GOP lawmakers have sought to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth and limit LGBTQ rights. The patients suing over the release of their information say VUMC should have removed personally identifying information before turning over the records because the hospital was aware of Tennessee authorities’ hostile attitude toward the rights of transgender people. Many of the patients who had their private medical information shared with Skrmetti’s office are state workers, or their adult children or spouses; others are on TennCare, the state’s Medicaid plan. Some were not even patients at VUMC’s clinic that provides transgender care. “The more we learn about the breadth of the deeply personal information that VUMC disclosed, the more horrified we are,” said attorney Tricia Herzfeld, who is representing the patients. “Our clients are encouraged that the federal government is looking into what happened here.” Read full story Source: NBC News, 10 August 2023
  11. News Article
    America is facing an intensified push to pass stalled federal legislation to address the US’s alarming maternal mortality rates and glaring racial disparities which have led to especially soaring death rates among Black women giving birth. Maternal mortality rates in the US far outpace rates in other industrialised nations, with rates more than double those of countries such as France, Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany. Moms in the US are dying at the highest rates in the developed world. Overall maternal mortality rates in the US spiked during the pandemic. Maternal deaths in the US rose 40% from 861 in 2020 to 1,205 in 2021, a rate of 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. For Black women, these maternal mortality rates were significantly higher, at 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021. These racial disparities in maternal health outcomes have persisted and worsened for years as the number of women who die giving birth in the US has more than doubled in the last two decades. The CDC noted in a review of maternal mortalities in the US from 2017 to 2019, that 84% of the recorded maternal deaths were preventable. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 23 July 2023
  12. News Article
    The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first over-the-counter contraceptive pill, allowing millions of women and girls in the country to buy contraception without a prescription at a time when some states have sought to restrict access to birth control and abortion. FDA officials said on Thursday it cleared Perrigo’s Opill – an every day, prescription-only hormonal contraception first approved in 1973 – to be sold over-the-counter. The pill will be available in stores and online in the first quarter of next year, and there will be no age restrictions on sales. The regulatory approval paves the way for people to purchase the pill without a prescription for the first time since oral contraceptives became widely available in the 1960s. “Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDA’s center for drug evaluation and research, said in a statement. “When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 13 July 2023
  13. News Article
    Black women in the Americas bear a heavier burden of maternal mortality than their peers, but according to a report released Wednesday by the United Nations, the gap between who lives and who dies is especially wide in the world’s richest nation — the United States. Of the region’s 35 countries, only four publish comparable maternal mortality data by race, according to the report, which analyzed the maternal health of women and girls of African descent in the Americas: Brazil, Colombia, Suriname and the United States. And while the United States had the lowest overall maternal mortality rate among those four nations, the report said Black women and girls were three times more likely than their U.S. peers to die while giving birth or in the six weeks afterward. “The risk factor is racism,” said Joia Crear-Perry, an OB/GYN and founder of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, a nonprofit group dedicated to eliminating racial inequities in birth outcomes and one of the report’s co-sponsors. “This report drives this home over and over. When your pain is ignored, when your blood pressure is ignored, you die, and that happens across the Americas.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: The Washington Post, 12 July 2023
  14. News Article
    Maternal mortality rates have doubled in the US over the last two decades - with deaths highest among black mothers, a new study suggests. American Indian and Alaska Native women saw the greatest increase, the study in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) said. Southern states had the highest maternal death rates across all race and ethnicity groups, the study found. In 1999, there were an estimated 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births and in 2019 that figure rose to 32.2 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019, according to the research, which did not study data from the pandemic years. Unlike other studies, this one examined disparities within states instead of measuring rates at the national level, and it monitored five racial and ethnic groups. Dr Allison Bryant, one of the study's authors, said the findings were a call to action "to understand that some of it is about health care and access to health care, but a lot of it is about structural racism". She said some current policies and procedures "may keep people from being healthy". Read full story Source: BBC News, 4 July 2023
  15. News Article
    A Colorado surgeon has been convicted of manslaughter in the death of a teenage patient who went into a coma during breast augmentation surgery and died a year later. Emmalyn Nguyen, who was 18 when she underwent the procedure 1 August 2019, at Colorado Aesthetic and Plastic Surgery in Greenfield Village, near Denver, fell into a coma and went into cardiac arrest after she received anaesthesia, officials said. She died at a nursing home in October 2020. Dr. Geoffrey Kim, 54, a plastic surgeon, was found guilty of attempted reckless manslaughter and obstruction of telephone service. At Kim’s trial, a nurse anesthetist testified that he advised Kim that the patient needed immediate medical attention in a hospital setting and that 911 should be called, prosecutors said. An investigation determined Kim failed to call for help for five hours after the patient went into cardiac arrest, prosecutors said. The obstruction charge was linked to testimony that multiple medical professionals, including two nurses, requested permission to call 911 to transfer care for Nguyen, but Kim, the owner of the surgery centre, denied the request, prosecutors said. Read full story Source: ABC News, 15 June 2023
  16. News Article
    Recently Minneapolis-based Allina Health was highlighted by The New York Times for pulling back from its policy of denying nonemergency care to some indebted patients. However, a recent investigation showed it is not the only health system to allegedly have engaged in the practice. According to KFF Health News, about 20% of US nationwide hospitals in a random sample pursued similar policies of care denial. The Lown Institute went further, naming major health systems including Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic, St. Louis-based Ascension, Indianapolis-based Indiana University Health, Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health and Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai as operating facilities where the practice is followed. IU Health, Ascension, Trinity Health and Cedars-Sinai denied they have such practices. "We do not restrict medically necessary non-emergency care for patients with unpaid bills," an Ascension spokesperson said. Read full story Source: Becker Hospital Review, 26 June 2023
  17. News Article
    U.S. News & World Report's Best Children's Hospital list for 2023-2024, released 21 June, said 11 children's hospitals are at the top of their game when it comes to 10 pediatric specialties. This year, 11 children's hospitals are included on this list due to a tie in the diabetes and endocrinology category. U.S. News gathered subjective data from more than 15,000 pediatric specialists and clinical data from close to 200 children's hospitals to develop its Best Children's Hospitals 2023-2024 listings. For the first time, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center took the top spot on the list. The hospital has the only level 4 neonatal intensive care unit, which offers care to infants at all level 3 NICUs in the area. The hospital discovered a "super antibody" it believes will inform new vaccines and offered a specialized approach to reduce stays in the NICU for opioid-exposed newborns. Steve Davis, MD, president and CEO: "This distinction only confirms what we have always known — that we have outstanding, talented team members who are unmatched in their dedication to ensuring that all children have access to exceptional care." Read full story Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 23 June 2023
  18. News Article
    The American Medical Association and three other major health groups have warned that patients across the nation could suffer “irreparable harm” due to the shattered legal landscape left in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. In a statement, co-authored with the American Pharmacists Association, the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists and the National Community Pharmacists Association, the groups said they were deeply concerned by state efforts to limit access to medically necessary medicine. Ongoing questions about state laws are already impacting patients, and language in newly enacted rules is “vague,” “unclear” and “disrupting care,” they said. “Physicians, pharmacists, and other health care professionals face a confusing legal landscape due to state laws’ lack of clarity, confusing language, and unknown implementation by regulatory and enforcement bodies,” the statement reads. “Without such guidance, we are deeply concerned that our patients will lose access to care and suffer irreparable harm.” The groups pointed to reports that some hospitals had prioritised caution over healthcare, others that have removed emergency contraceptives from kits for victims of sexual assault and pharmacies that have imposed “burdensome” steps for prescriptions. Read full story Source: HuffPost, 9 September 2022
  19. News Article
    About 15,000 nurses in Minnesota walked off the job Monday to protest understaffing and overwork — marking the largest strike of private-sector nurses in U.S. history. Slated to last three days, the strike spotlights nationwide nursing shortages exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic that often result in patients not receiving adequate care. Minnesota nurses charge that some units go without a lead nurse on duty and that nurses fresh out of school are delegated assignments typically held by more experienced nurses, across some 16 hospitals where strikes are expected. The nurses are demanding a role in staffing plans, changes to shift scheduling practices and higher wages. “I can’t give my patients the care they deserve,” said Chris Rubesch, the vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a nurse at Essentia Health in Duluth. “Call lights go unanswered. Patients should only be waiting for a few seconds or minutes if they’ve soiled themselves or their oxygen came unplugged or they need to go to the bathroom, but that can take 10 minutes or more. Those are things that can’t wait.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: Washington Post, 12 September 2022
  20. News Article
    Nurses in North Carolina, USA, can now be sued for patient harm that results from them following physicians' orders, the state Supreme Court ruled last month. The 19 August ruling strikes down a 90-year-old precedent set by the 1932 case Byrd v. Marion General Hospital, which protected nurses from culpability for obeying and executing orders from a physician or surgeon, unless the order was obviously negligent. The North Carolina Supreme Court overturned this ruling in a 3-2 opinion as part of a separate case involving a young child who experienced permanent anoxic brain damage during an ablation procedure at a North Carolina hospital in 2010. The ruling means the certified registered nurse anaesthetist involved in the ablation could be held liable for the patient's harm. "Due to the evolution of the medical profession's recognition of the increased specialization and independence of nurses in the treatment of patients over the course of the ensuing ninety years since this Court's issuance of the Byrd opinion, we determine that it is timely and appropriate to overrule Byrd as it is applied to the facts of this case," Justice Michael Morgan wrote in the opinion. Read full story Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 6 September 2022
  21. News Article
    Trying to strike a balance between free speech and public health, California’s Legislature on Monday approved a bill that would allow regulators to punish doctors for spreading false information about Covid-19 vaccinations and treatments. The legislation, if signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, would make the state the first to try to legislate a remedy to a problem that the American Medical Association, among other medical groups and experts, says has worsened the impact of the pandemic, resulting in thousands of unnecessary hospitalisations and deaths. The law would designate spreading false or misleading medical information to patients as “unprofessional conduct,” subject to punishment by the agency that licenses doctors, the Medical Board of California. That could include suspending or revoking a doctor’s license to practice medicine in the state. While the legislation has raised concerns over freedom of speech, the bill’s sponsors said the extensive harm caused by false information required holding incompetent or ill-intentioned doctors accountable. “In order for a patient to give informed consent, they have to be well informed,” said State Senator Richard Pan, a Democrat from Sacramento and a co-author of the bill. A paediatrician himself and a prominent proponent of stronger vaccination requirements, he said the law was intended to address “the most egregious cases” of deliberately misleading patients. Read full story (paywalled) Source: New York Times, 29 August 2022
  22. News Article
    The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years. The reduction has been particularly steep among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) reported. Average life expectancy in those groups was shortened by four years in 2020 alone. “Even small declines in life expectancy of a tenth or two-tenths of a year mean that on a population level, a lot more people are dying prematurely than they really should be,” said Robert Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the NCHS. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The New York Times (31 August 2022)
  23. News Article
    The Biden administration plans to offer the next generation of coronavirus booster shots to Americans 12 and older soon after Labor Day, a campaign that federal officials hope will reduce deaths from Covid-19 and protect against an expected winter surge. Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator for the Food and Drug Administration, said in an interview on Tuesday that while he could not discuss timing, his team was close to authorizing updated doses that would target the versions of the virus now circulating. Even though those formulations have not been tested in humans, he said, the agency has “extremely good” data showing that the shots are safe and will be effective. “How confident am I?” he said. “I’m extremely confident.” Read full story Source: The New York Times (23 August 2022)
  24. News Article
    Nurses at 15 hospitals in the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis-St Paul) and Duluth, Minnesota, that are negotiating new union contracts with their respective hospitals have overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike. A date for the work stoppage has not been set yet by the union, the Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents about 15,000 nurses who voted on the strike authorization, but a 10-day notice must be given ahead of any strike. If a strike is carried out, it would be one of the largest nurses’ strikes in US history. Jayme Wicklund, a registered nurse at the Children’s hospital in St Paul, Minnesota, and member of the negotiating committee, said, “We need more resources to take care of the patients. The hospitals are very focused on wages. We have to be comparable to other places. But that’s all that they focus on. Once you start talking about wages, they don’t want to talk about the other important issues around patient safety or actually, other ways to save money.” Read full story Source: The Guardian (23 August 2022)
  25. News Article
    At the beginning of this year, there was a thrum of excitement among global health experts: Eradication of polio, a centuries-old foe that has paralyzed legions of children around the globe, seemed tantalizingly close. But there were several ominous setbacks. Malawi in February announced its first case in 30 years, a 3-year-old girl who became paralyzed following infection with a virus that appeared to be from Pakistan. Pakistan itself went on to report 14 cases, eight of them in a single month this spring. In March, Israel reported its first case since 1988. Then, in June, British authorities declared an “incident of national concern” when they discovered the virus in sewage. By the time New York City detected the virus in wastewater last week, polio eradication seemed as elusive as ever. “It’s a poignant and stark reminder that polio-free countries are not really polio-risk free,” said Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay, deputy director for polio at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest supporter of polio eradication efforts. The virus is always “a plane ride away,” he added. Read full story (paywalled) Source: The New York Times (18 August 2022)
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