|
Stay Well
breaking health news & updates
| |
| |
America's Split On Whether The Pandemic Is Over | |
Free COVID tests are over, for now. So are guidelines for infected people to isolate. Half of the country thinks the pandemic is finished.
But, in reality, COVID-19 is still with us. Though the official trappings of the crisis keep fading away and it's increasingly being treated like the flu, the virus remains an ever-present threat that's killing hundreds of Americans every week and consuming health care dollars and resources.
This split screen effect was apparent
this week when the government said
it would stop distributing free COVID
tests amid lower case rates. That followed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention easing isolation guidance from five days to 24 hours.
But just a week before, the CDC recommended that older adults get another booster shot this spring. And many hospitals brought back their mask mandates during a wintertime surge of cases. Axios Read more
| |
"You can kind of feel that pull to just (pretend) that we're back in a world where COVID didn't exist. But alas, we're not."
Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
| |
 |
California Attorney General Boosts Bill Banning Medical Debt From Credit Reports
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday that he is throwing his weight behind legislation to bar medical debt from showing up on consumer credit reports, a Democratic-led effort to offer protection to patients squeezed by health care bills.
Bonta is a sponsor of Sen. Monique Limón’s bill, which seeks to block health care providers, as well as any contracted collection agency, from sharing a patient’s medical debt with credit reporting agencies. It would also prevent credit reporting agencies from accepting, storing, or sharing any information concerning medical debt. Medical debt isn’t necessarily an accurate reflection of credit risk, and its inclusion in credit reports can depress credit scores and make it hard for people to get a job, rent an apartment, or secure a car loan.
“This is a broken part of our current system that needs to be fixed,” Bonta, a Democrat, told California Healthline. “This is California’s opportunity, and we relish the ability to be up in front of key issues.” California Healthline Read more
| | |
Cyber Attack On Payments Processor Affects Bay Area Health Care Providers
Kaiser Permanente and John Muir Health are among the health care providers nationwide affected by a cyber attack on Change Healthcare, a widely used payments processing vendor in the health care industry. A ransomware group calling itself BlackCat hacked into Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth, in February. It shut down parts of Change Healthcare’s electronic operations, rendering hundreds of hospitals and other medical practices unable to pay their bills on a wide range of critical items and services, including rent and lifesaving drugs.
SF Chronicle Read more
| |
Students’ Mental Health Challenges Persist — Bay Area Schools Are Doing Something About It
Sophia, an eighth grader at Monroe Middle School in San Jose, was trying to get through her first class, but her anxiety was making it impossible to calm down. She couldn’t focus on the lesson and worried she would get so upset that she’d cause a scene. So she asked her teacher for permission to leave and headed to the wellness center down the hall for a 15-minute break. Here, the lights were dimmed, peaceful piano music was playing, and a counselor was available. She could take her feelings out on the punching bag in the corner, play with kinetic sand or paint a picture for the Art Wall. Sophia situated herself at the bracelet-making station. Her tension and anxiety started to ease. This space is one of 19 wellness centers throughout Santa Clara County elementary, middle and high schools, providing students with a place to de-stress and learn coping strategies to help them get through the day. Mercury News Read more
| |
UCSF Study: Latinx Children More Prone To Disease Due To Food Insecurity
For Latinx kids, unreliable access to food at age 4 raises the odds of having fatty liver
disease in later childhood by nearly four times, a new UC San Francisco-led study found on Thursday. “We’ve seen studies in adults associating food insecurity with fatty liver disease and liver fibrosis, but very few studies have looked at children,” said Sarah Maxwell, MD, a pediatrician currently completing her pediatric transplant hepatology fellowship at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals and the study’s lead author. “This is especially important for Latinx children, who have both high rates of household food insecurity and fatty liver disease.” KRON4
Read more
| |
Why COVID-19 Patients Who Could Most Benefit From Paxlovid Still Aren’t Getting It
Evangelical minister Eddie Hyatt believes in the healing power of prayer but "also the medical approach." So on a February evening a week before scheduled prostate surgery, he had his sore throat checked out at an emergency room near his home in Grapevine, Texas. A doctor confirmed that Hyatt had COVID-19 and sent him to CVS with a prescription for the antiviral drug Paxlovid, the generally recommended medicine to fight COVID-19. Hyatt handed the pharmacist the script, but then, he said, "She kept avoiding me." She finally looked up from her computer and said, "It's $1,600." The generally healthy 76-year-old went out to the car to consult his wife about their credit card limits. "I don't think I've ever spent more than $20 on a prescription," the astonished Hyatt recalled. ABC News Read more
| |
Four Years On, The Mysteries Of COVID Are Unraveling
When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, nearly everything about the novel coronavirus was an open question: How was it spreading so quickly? How sick would it make people? Would a single bout buy you protection from future cases? In the four years since, scientists have unraveled some of the biggest mysteries about COVID. We now know far more about how it spreads (no, standing six feet apart isn’t surefire protection), why it doesn’t seem to make children as sick as adults and what’s behind the strange symptoms it can cause, from brain fog to “COVID toe.” NY Times Read more
| |
Long COVID Could Be Linked To Harsher Hangover Symptoms, Study Finds
Long COVID may be to blame for the worsening headaches, nausea, fatigue and sweats
that accompany hangovers, a study shows. The peer-reviewed study by researchers at Stanford University concluded that SARS-CoV-2 infection could be related to increased alcohol sensitivity. The group at Stanford’s Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome Clinic studied four patients to determine whether their long-term COVID had any effect on them after alcohol consumption. The patients were a 60-year-old man, a 40-year-old woman, a 49-year-old woman and a 36-year-old woman, according to the study. The patients' medical histories and alcohol consumption habits before and after COVID-19 infection were documented in the study.
USA Today Read more
| |
Many Long-COVID Symptoms Linger Even After Two Years, New Study Shows
People who endured even mild cases of COVID-19 are at heightened risk two years later for lung problems, fatigue, diabetes and certain other health problems typical of long covid, according to a new study that casts fresh light on the virus’s true toll. The analysis, published last Monday in the journal Nature Medicine, is believed to be the first to document the extent to which an array of aftereffects that patients can develop — as part of the sometimes debilitating syndrome known as long COVID — linger beyond the initial months or year after they survived a coronavirus infection. Washington Post Read more
| |
State/National/International News | | |
FDA Delays Alzheimer’s Drug For Further Review In Surprise Move
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration delayed regulatory action on an experimental Alzheimer’s drug that was widely expected to be approved this month, citing a need for more review to establish its safety and effectiveness, drugmaker Eli Lilly said Friday. The FDA plans to hold an advisory committee meeting to further scrutinize donanemab, one of the few treatments developed for Alzheimer’s disease, a debilitating and incurable affliction that affects some 6 million Americans. The call for additional scrutiny surprised Eli Lilly executives, who said it is unusual for such a review to occur after the FDA has given an anticipated date to make a decision on approval. Washington Post Read more
| |
Operating In The Red: Half Of Rural Hospitals Lose Money, As Many Cut Services
In a little more than two years as CEO of a small hospital in Wyoming, Dave Ryerse has witnessed firsthand the worsening financial problems eroding rural hospitals nationwide. In 2022, Ryerse’s South Lincoln Medical Center was forced to shutter its operating room because it didn’t have the staff to run it 24 hours a day. Soon after, the obstetrics unit closed. Ryerse said the publicly owned facility’s revenue from providing care has fallen short of operating expenses for at least the past eight years, driving tough decisions to cut services in hopes of keeping the facility open in Kemmerer, a town of about 2,400 in southwestern Wyoming. South Lincoln’s financial woes aren’t unique, and the risk of hospital closures is an immediate threat to many small communities. “Those cities dry out,” Ryerse said. “There’s a huge sense of urgency to make sure that we can maintain and really eventually thrive in this area.” KFF Health News Read more
| |
After Decades Of Failures, Researchers Have Renewed Hopes For An Effective HIV Vaccine
The world needs an HIV vaccine if it ever hopes to beat a virus that still infects over 1 million people a year and contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Despite 20 years of failures in major HIV vaccine trials — four this decade alone — researchers say recent scientific advances have likely, hopefully, put them on the right track to develop a highly effective vaccine against the insidious virus. But probably not until the 2030s. NBC News Read more
| |
Cancer-Causing Chemical Found In Clinique, Clearasil Acne Treatments, U.S. Lab Reports
High levels of cancer-causing chemical benzene were detected in some acne treatments from brands including Estee Lauder's Clinique, Target's Up & Up and Reckitt Benckiser-owned Clearasil, said independent U.S. laboratory Valisure. Valisure has also filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, calling on the regulator to recall the products, conduct an investigation and revise industry guidance, the New Haven, Connecticut-based lab said on Wednesday. Benzene was also detected in Proactiv, PanOxyl, Walgreens' acne soap bar and Walmart's Equate Beauty acne cream among others, according to Valisure. Benzene could form at "unacceptably high levels" in both prescription and over-the-counter benzoyl peroxide acne treatment products, Valisure said. Reuters Read more
| |
Say That Again: Using Hearing Aids Can Be Frustrating For Older Adults, But Necessary
It was an every-other-day routine, full of frustration. Every time my husband called his father, who was 94 when he died in 2022, he’d wait for his dad to find his hearing aids and put them in before they started talking. Even then, my father-in-law could barely hear what my husband was saying. “What?” he’d ask over and over. Then, there were the problems my father-in-law had replacing the devices’ batteries. And the times he’d end up in the hospital, unable to understand what people were saying because his hearing aids didn’t seem to be functioning. And the times he’d drop one of the devices and be unable to find it. How many older adults have problems of this kind? Mercury News Read more
| |
Domestic Violence May Leave Telltale Damage In The Brain
María E. Garay-Serratos was about 4 years old when she first saw her father assault her mother. "My mom was hit a lot," says Garay-Serratos. "There was choking, a lot of shaking, objects thrown at her, shoved against the wall, thrown against appliances, dragged by her hair in the yard." Garay-Serratos was still a child when she realized that the abuse was affecting her mother's brain. The insight came while her family watched a boxing match on TV. "I remember seeing some of the symptoms that these boxers exhibited while they were in the ring," she says, "and I thought, 'Oh my God, that's my Mom.'" Today, several decades later, Garay-Serratos runs a nonprofit in Southern California that's devoted to studying traumatic brain injury (TBI) from domestic violence. NPR Read more
| |
Hundreds Flock To Mission Church, Demanding SF End Child Homelessness
Whether it’s raining or cold, Carolina and her daughter Diana have to leave home at 6:30 a.m. every weekday and can only return after 7 p.m. In the time between, their home serves as a gym for other children. In the past five months, Venezuelan immigrant Carolina has been living in the Stay-over Program at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School, a shelter for San Francisco Unified School District students and their families who are unhoused. About 4.3 percent of the district’s 55, 537 students are believed to be homeless, according to a 2023 report. Mission Local Read more
| |
South Bay Medical Clinic For Homeless People Expands To Provide Thousands Of Health Care Visits
A medical clinic in one of the South Bay’s largest homeless shelters has expanded to provide thousands of health care visits for local unhoused residents. Santa Clara Valley Healthcare recently doubled the size of its shelter clinic at 2011 Little Orchard St. in San Jose to almost 4,000 square feet, local officials announced this week. The added space will allow staff to offer additional medical, mental health and social work services and accommodate around 3,000 appointments annually. Patients do not have to be staying at the shelter to receive care. “This allows the county to provide the proper medical and support services to those most in need,” County Supervisor Cindy Chavez said in a statement. “No matter what their current situation, everyone deserves access to critical health care needs.” Mercury News Read more
| |
California May Face More Than $40M In Fines For Lapses In Prison Suicide Prevention
California could face more than $40 million in fines after it failed to improve suicide prevention measures in state prisons despite a federal judge’s warning that she would impose financial penalties for each violation. Chief U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller told state officials over a year ago that she would start imposing fines unless they implemented 15 suicide prevention protocols that had been lacking for nearly a decade. But court expert Lindsay Hayes reported March 1 that the state continues to lag on 14 of the 15 safeguards. The state even regressed in such areas as failing to house prisoners in suicide-resistant cells when they are first placed in segregation, often including solitary confinement, in which prisoners are particularly vulnerable. The special cells lack hooks, wire grates, or other protrusions from which prisoners can hang themselves, for instance. California Healthline Read more
| |
When Teens Visit Doctors, Increasingly The Subject Is Mental Health
Increasingly, doctor visits by adolescents and young adults involve mental health diagnoses, along with the prescription of psychiatric medications. That was the conclusion of a new study that found that in 2019, 17 percent of outpatient doctor visits for patients ages 13 to 24 in the United States involved a behavioral or mental health condition, including anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm or other issues. That figure rose sharply from 2006, when just 9 percent of doctor’s visits involved psychiatric illnesses. The study, published Thursday in JAMA Network Open, also found a sharp increase in the proportion of visits involving psychiatric medications. In 2019, 22.4 percent of outpatient visits by the 13-24 age group involved the prescription of at least one psychiatric drug, up from 13 percent in 2006. NY Times Read more
| |
Girls Are Starting Puberty Earlier Than Ever. For Some, That Comes With Major Mental Health Risks
Zaria was just 9 years old when a nurse practitioner delivered news that rocked her world: The young girl was already showing signs of puberty development, and she was on track to get her period within the next year. Surprised by this timeline, Zaria’s mother, Chanell, worked with a pediatrician to plan healthier meals, hoping that managing her daughter’s weight gain could give her a couple more precious years with her childhood unchanged. Puberty came for Zaria anyway. She developed breasts in the fourth grade, and her weight began to fluctuate in new, unexpected ways. She balked at the idea of needing to carry around pads at school, worried that classmates would judge her. STAT Read more
| |
Single Dose Of LSD Provides Immediate And Lasting Relief From Anxiety, Study Says
A clinical trial’s encouraging results won US Food and Drug Administration breakthrough therapy status for an LSD formulation to treat generalized anxiety disorder, Mind Medicine Inc. announced Thursday. The biopharmaceutical company is developing the drug. “A breakthrough designation is a recognition that a drug has demonstrated evidence of clinical efficacy in meeting an unmet medical need with morbidity and mortality associated with it,” said Dr. Daniel Karlin, assistant professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and chief medical officer for MindMed. CNN Read more
| |
Fentanyl Crisis/Drug Trends | | |
Scanners That Spot Smuggled Fentanyl At The Border Sit Unused Because Congress Hasn't Provided The Cash To Install Them
Customs and Border Protection has spent millions on the most up-to-date high-tech scanners to spot fentanyl crossing the southern U.S. border, but many scanners are sitting in warehouses unused because Congress hasn’t appropriated funds to install them, acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller told NBC News. Miller gave NBC News a tour of a port of entry in Nogales, Arizona, where half of all fentanyl seized at the border is stopped on its way into the U.S. from Mexico. Officers in Nogales have found fentanyl hidden inside crates of Coca-Cola, where bottles are painted black to look like liquid, sawed in half and filled with fentanyl pills; they’ve confiscated millions in fentanyl pills stuffed inside the water barrel of a commercial bus’ bathroom; they’ve even found fentanyl in cars carrying young children in the back in car seats. More than 95% of fentanyl seized at the border, Miller said, is actually brought into the U.S. in personal vehicles. NBC News Read more
| |
Why Women Are Now Bearing The Brunt Of The Opioid Epidemic
Chelsey Moore’s back started hurting when she was in high school. She wasn’t sure how or why, but the pain wouldn’t stop. Finally, an MRI revealed a herniated disc, and a doctor told Chelsey that she was developing degenerative disc disease. He wrote her a Percocet prescription. Back at home, Chelsey realized that when she took more than one Percocet at a time, she felt really good. Sometimes, she’d swallow five or six in a row. “I always knew I should stay away from drugs,” she says. She’d smoked cigarettes and weed with her mom — who struggled with substance use disorder — but never anything harder. “Taking something prescribed by my doctor, it didn’t even register that there was a risk there. I didn’t think something like that could or would happen to me.” Women's Health Read more
| |
Is Exercising When You're Sick Safe Or Can It Help? Experts Weigh In
Questions about the safety of working out when sick with an upper respiratory infection are a common concern, according to doctors. Many folks pressure themselves to exercise even when they aren’t feeling 100% well — or hope a good workout will help sweat out their illness. (Spoiler alert: It won’t.) It is frustrating when a cold or seasonal virus disrupts your weekly workout plan, especially if you’re training for a competition or race. So what can you do if you have the sniffles? “Generally speaking, it’s probably safe to exercise if you only have symptoms above the neck ... like nasal congestion, runny nose, sneezing, sore throat,” said Eliza Gollub, a nurse practitioner at the health care service One Medical. HuffPost Read more
| |
About Eden Health District | | |
The Eden Health District Board of Directors are Chair Pam Russo, Vice Chair Ed Hernandez, Secretary/Treasurer Roxann Lewis, Mariellen Faria and Surlene Grant. The Chief Executive Officer is Mark Friedman.
The Eden Health District is committed to ensuring that policy makers and community members receive accurate and timely information to help make the best policy and personal choices to meet and overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other health issues.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor Lisa Mahoney.
| | | | | |
