A US public health expert has warned that though cases of Covid-19 are at their lowest rates for months and much of the country is returning to normal life, young Americans are still “a vulnerable host” for the coronavirus.
Related: Post-lockdown summer: Americans out for fun and with money to spend
Continue reading...A series of federal cases over the pharmaceutical industry’s push to sell narcotic painkillers which created the worst drug epidemic in US history
The trial of the three biggest US drug distributors for illegally flooding West Virginia with hundreds of millions of prescription opioid pills, and driving the highest overdose rate in the country, is due to open on Monday.
Related: Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America
Continue reading...Analysis: rare side-effects mean that confidence in both the Johnson & Johnson and Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines is now shaken
The call in the US for a pause in the use of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine is another blow to hopes of vaccinating the whole world as fast as possible.
Health agencies recommended that US states pause use of the jab while investigations take place into six cases of women who have experienced rare blood clotting events combined with low platelets in the days following vaccination.
Continue reading...The parents and children of doctors and nurses who died from Covid tell of how grief has affected them
Dr Reza Chowdhury was a beloved internist with a private practice in the Bronx and a trusted voice in New York’s Bengali community. His daughter, Nikita Rahman, said despite underlying health issues that put him at higher risk of developing Covid complications, he saw patients through mid-March when he developed symptoms. He died on 9 April.
Nikita Rahman My therapist says grief is the final act of love. Every time I miss him, I think about how that is my love for him, showing up again. I like that framing of it. I think I only recently realized just how much I loved him.
Continue reading...Surgeons in New York City have performed the first windpipe transplant in the US, giving a woman who suffered severe asthma a new trachea, the tube that transports air from the mouth to the lungs.
Doctors say such operations could help Covid-19 patients left with serious windpipe damage from breathing machines.
Continue reading...Measures are among dozens of anti-trans legislation across the US and conservatives have filed more proposals this year than ever before
Arkansas lawmakers have approved a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender children, sending the governor a bill that has been widely criticized by medical and child welfare groups.
Related: How trans children became 'a political football' for the Republican party
Continue reading...Researchers say ‘very low’-quality research led to outdated guidelines on who got the best PPE, leaving those most at risk exposed
Since the start of the pandemic, the most terrifying task in healthcare was thought to be when a doctor put a breathing tube down the trachea of a critically ill Covid patient.
Continue reading...Major health insurers volunteered to cover testing and treatment, while the government introduced new programs – but those assurances haven’t played out
Covid-19 allowed for an experiment in US healthcare: what if doctor’s visits and hospitalizations didn’t cost people money?
In response to the pandemic, major health insurers volunteered to cover coronavirus testing and treatment for their paying customers and the government introduced programs to make care more affordable. But a year after coronavirus was first identified in the US, those assurances haven’t played out as planned.
Continue reading...Officials work to pinpoint doses in pipeline between federal distribution and administration by states
The Biden administration has spent its first week in office attempting to manually track down 20m vaccine doses in the pipeline between federal distribution and administration at clinic sites, when a dose finally reaches a patient’s arm.
The Trump administration’s strategy pushed the response to the coronavirus pandemic to individual states and omitted pipeline tracking information between distribution and when the shot is actually administered, Biden administration officials told Politico.
Continue reading...Elon Musk ought to turn his hand to printers, and if only Anthony Fauci could sort out US healthcare
The first full week under President Biden and life undergoes an immediate improvement: save for a few pieces about plunging membership at Mar-a-Lago, there are almost no photos of Himself on the front pages. The daily anger spike is gone, leaving in its place a flat, sour, hungover feeling, and a sense of not knowing quite what to do.
Continue reading...The Biden administration is increasing vaccination efforts with a goal of protecting 300 million Americans by early fall, as the administration surges deliveries to states for the next three weeks following complaints of shortages and inconsistent supplies. 'This is enough vaccine to vaccinate 300 million Americans by end of summer, early fall,' Biden said. 'This is a wartime effort,' he added, saying more Americans had already died from the coronavirus than during all of the second world war
Dr Anthony Fauci made not-so-veiled critiques of the Trump administration during a White House press briefing on Thursday. He said the new administration meant he did not need to ‘guess’ when he didn’t know the answer to questions.
The health expert said the new administration felt ‘liberating’ and he did not take pleasure correcting the president and facing consequences for doing so.
But Fauci pushed back against the characterization from some Biden officials that the new administration has to start ‘from scratch’ on coronavirus vaccine distribution
Continue reading...Thousands more deaths expected this season as more transmissible strain spreads and vaccinations move slowly
More than 400,000 Americans have now been killed by the coronavirus, a horrific marker of the misery the virus has spread across the country, as the rate of deaths from Covid-19 increases.
The latest death toll comes as thousands more deaths are expected in a bleak American winter with widespread Covid transmission, as a more transmissible strain spreads across the country and a mass vaccination campaign gets off to a slow start.
Continue reading...Los Angeles sees a person infected every six seconds. In a predominantly Latino neighborhood, Martin Luther King Jr community hospital faces ‘a sea of illness’
Husbands and wives, twin brothers in their 20s, parents and their children. Family members are turning up one after another at Martin Luther King Jr community hospital (MLKCH) in South Los Angeles. The deaths have been piling up.
Patients have been arriving at MLKCH terribly sick, and at higher rates than anywhere else in the region – the impoverished Latino and Black neighborhood is one of the worst Covid hotspots in America. Inside the hospital, staff face a dire scramble to ensure they have the supplies, the healthcare workers and the physical space needed to take care of the overwhelming crush of Covid victims.
Continue reading...The project has counted 2,921 healthcare worker deaths, with the majority of people who died under the age of 60
As of 6 January, Lost on the frontline has counted 3,132 healthcare worker deaths. The pandemic is not over, and this project is therefore a work in progress, with new names added weekly.
Continue reading...US has almost twice as many confirmed coronavirus cases as the next worst-hit country, India, and almost 350,000 have died
The US marked the first day of 2021 by surpassing the dismal landmark of 20 million coronavirus cases, as hospitals, undertakers, vaccine administrators and ordinary families struggled across the nation.
More than 10,000 Americans died in the last three days of 2020 as the year finished with the pandemic, which has never been under control in the US since the start of the outbreak last January, breaking all the wrong world records.
Continue reading...Yolanda Coar was 40 when she died of Covid-19 in August this year in Augusta, Georgia. She was also a nurse manager, and one of nearly 3,000 frontline workers who have died in the US fighting this virus, according to an exclusive investigation by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News.
The Guardian has profiled hundreds of healthcare workers in a year-long project. Read their stories here
Continue reading...An exponential surge is crushing Los Angeles hospitals, with desperate nurses warning ‘there’s no place to take care of you’
Los Angeles is becoming the center of America’s out-of-control coronavirus pandemic in these final days before the new year, with officials warning that a meteoric rise in infections is crushing the healthcare system in one of the country’s largest metropolitan regions.
LA county has faced an onslaught of terrifying Covid developments in recent days, including a surge in deaths, dire shortages of hospital resources, and fears that doctors will have to make agonizing choices to ration care.
Continue reading...New analysis shows a far higher number of healthcare worker deaths than those reported by the government
More than 2,900 US healthcare workers have died in the Covid-19 pandemic since March, a far higher number than that reported by the government, according to a new analysis by the Guardian and KHN.
Healthcare worker fatalities from the coronavirus skew young, with the majority under age 60 in the cases for which there is age data. People of color were disproportionately affected, and account for over 65% of fatalities in cases in which there is race and ethnicity data. After conducting interviews with relatives and friends of about 300 victims, Guardian and KHN learned that one-third of the deaths involved concerns over inadequate PPE.
Continue reading...A look into the battle against Covid-19 in hospitals across the United States
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