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September 18, 2024

XEC Emerges As COVID Variant To "Keep An Eye On." What That Means For New Vaccines

A new coronavirus variant is rapidly gaining in Europe and could soon spread across the United States. Following a sustained summer swell of COVID-19, driven by the Omicron KP family, health officials anticipate that a more contagious offshoot, named XEC, may become the predominant strain stateside during the expected winter surge. However, since it is an offshoot of currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains, the updated fall vaccines are expected to be effective against it. “At this juncture, the XEC variant appears to be the most likely one to get legs next,” Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla and a leading COVID-19 researcher, wrote in a social media post on Sunday. His analysis aligns with a recent update from Andrea Garcia, vice president at the American Medical Association, who described the variant as “something to keep an eye on.” “XEC could surpass KP.3.1.1 in the coming weeks,” she noted, referring to the strain responsible for about 53% of infections in the U.S.

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So THAT'S Why You Feel Like Crap After Your COVID Or Flu Shot

A new COVID-19 shot is here, and the Food and Drug Administration is recommending everyone 6 months old and up get it. Infectious disease experts have said the new vaccines, which target the KP.2 variant that’s behind the most recent wave of infections, do a better job at preventing serious outcomes like hospitalization and death. If it’s been a second since you’ve gotten a booster shot, then let this serve as a quick reminder that it’s very normal — and common — to feel under the weather for a day or two after you get vaccinated, and flu-like symptoms are a sign the shot is doing its job. “These symptoms may be reflective of a more robust immune response to the vaccine, which leads to longer-lasting and stronger protection,” said Dr. Scott Roberts, a Yale Medicine infectious disease specialist. HuffPost Read more

Research Shows Severe COVID-19 Contributes to Long-Lasting Cognitive Impairment

In a study that followed COVID-19 patients for two years or more, researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine showed the disease contributes to long-lasting brain fog and other cognitive issues. These results could be especially concerning for Hispanic, Black and other underrepresented communities, which are already at higher risk for neurocognitive disorders. The research was published in the journal Plos One. “We’ve been looking at the relationship between subjective cognitive complaints, such as brain fog, and objective cognition in long COVID, particularly in ethnically and racially diverse groups in South Florida,” said Barbara Junco, M.Sc., clinical research project manager and first author on the study. “We found persistent subjective and objective cognitive issues even two years after infection, including brain fog, word-finding problems, working memory deficits and reduced processing speed.”

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Berkeley Shifts Approach To Persistent Homeless Encampments

Long perceived as a haven for the Bay Area’s downtrodden, Berkeley is now caught in a battle over its identity as officials attempt to balance the needs of its unhoused residents with those of a struggling business community. Tents, tarps, wood pallets, RVs and other materials form makeshift shelters along blocks of West Berkeley, most notably its Harrison Street corridor and the area of Second and Cedar streets. Alice Barbee, 53, a former resident of the Harrison Street camp who now lives in an apartment in Oakland, said those who still reside there make up a close-knit community.“They’re my family,” Barbee said. But while concerned parents and business owners shared sympathy for encampment residents during a City Council meeting last week, they implored city officials to take stronger measures to abate the issue. East Bay Times Read more

At A San Francisco Shelter For Unhoused Families, Cooking Helps Heal Trauma

Buena Vista Horace Mann is a Spanish immersion school for students from kindergarten to 8th grade in San Francisco’s bustling Mission District. But by night, it transforms into something completely unique in the city: a homeless shelter for families with children enrolled in the school district. The shelter provides a hot meal, a shower and a place to sleep in the gym or auditorium. It was formed six years ago by some of the parents of the school who, during a particularly rainy winter, asked principal Claudia DeLarios Moran if they could sleep in the hallway or an empty classroom. “They were staying in cars. They were staying in laundromats. They were riding the bus or BART back and forth every night just to pass the time in a place that felt relatively safe ,” Moran said. “And here we had a building that wasn’t in use out of school time.” KQED

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Santa Clara County Sees 24% Spike In New Homeless Residents

A year ago, the emergency homeless shelter in San Jose run by Family Supportive Housing received about 25 calls a day from desperate families needing a roof over their heads. The amount of calls has skyrocketed this year, with at least 50 calls a day as the phones ring nonstop. The number of new households becoming homeless is rapidly rising in Santa Clara County, with one in five or 21% being families with children, according to data provided by nonprofit Destination: Home. From 2022 to end of 2023, there was a 24% increase of people becoming homeless for the first time — 4,300 new households. That’s a significant jump from the prior cycle, which saw only a 9% increase from 2021 to 2022. KRON4 Read more



San Jose Commits Funds To Non-Police Response Alternatives To Mental Health Emergencies

San Jose has struck a deal with Santa Clara County to add another urgent support team to the city, following through on its commitment to provide non-police response alternatives to mental health emergencies. The city will contribute $450,000 towards creating a new Trusted Response Urgent Support Team (TRUST) that includes a first aid responder, crisis intervention and peer support specialists, and a dedicated line for city staff to reach dispatchers and get help to people who need it quicker. This marks the first time San Jose has dedicated funds for these additional services. “We all agree it’s important to invest in an alternative response, making sure that when someone is in crisis or there’s an emergency, that we are sending the right person (or) right resource out,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said. East Bay Times Read more

Instagram’s New "Teen Accounts": What Parents And Kids Need To Know

Tens of millions of teenagers with Instagram accounts may soon find their public profiles made private. That’s because, starting this week, Instagram plans to default all new and existing accounts set up by people who have indicated they are under 18 years old to private mode. In that setting, an account holder must approve new followers before they can see, like or comment on their posts. The changes are part of a new effort by Instagram, called “Teen Accounts,” that packages new and existing safeguards for young people on the app. The company said the settings would help create more age-appropriate experiences for minors. Instagram’s privacy and other changes may help address intensifying concerns by lawmakers and parent groups about the effects of social media apps on children. But they also risk irking some teenagers — and teen influencers — who are deeply invested in their public profiles. NY Times Read more

Decades Of National Suicide Prevention Policies Haven’t Slowed The Deaths

When Pooja Mehta’s younger brother, Raj, died by suicide at 19 in March 2020, she felt “blindsided.” Raj’s last text message was to his college lab partner about how to divide homework questions. “You don’t say you’re going to take questions 1 through 15 if you’re planning to be dead one hour later,” said Mehta, 29, a mental health and suicide prevention advocate in Arlington, Virginia. She had been trained in Mental Health First Aid — a nationwide program that teaches how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illness — yet she said her brother showed no signs of trouble. Mehta said some people blamed her for Raj’s death because the two were living together during the COVID-19 pandemic while Raj was attending classes online. Others said her training should have helped her recognize he was struggling. KFF Health News Read more

Fighting Staff Shortages With Scholarships, California Bill Aims To Boost Mental Health Courts

A seemingly innocuous proposal to offer scholarships for mental health workers in California’s new court-ordered treatment program has sparked debate over whether the state should prioritize that program or tackle a wider labor shortage in behavioral health services. Nine counties have begun rolling out the Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment Act, which Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed into law in 2022 to get people with untreated schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders, many of them incarcerated or homeless, into treatment. But often those skilled clinicians have been pulled by counties from other understaffed behavioral health programs. California Healthline Read more



U.S. Overdose Deaths Plummet, Saving Thousands Of Lives

For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S. "This is exciting," said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On Drug Abuse [NIDA], the federal laboratory charged with studying addiction. "This looks real. This looks very, very real." National surveys compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already show an unprecedented decline in drug deaths of roughly 10.6 percent. That's a huge reversal from recent years when fatal overdoses regularly increased by double-digit percentages. Some researchers believe the data will show an even larger decline in drug deaths when federal surveys are updated to reflect improvements being seen at the state level, especially in the eastern U.S. NPR Read more

An Industrial Chemical Is Showing Up In Fentanyl In The U.S., Troubling Scientists

An industrial chemical used in plastic products has been cropping up in illegal drugs from California to Maine, a sudden and puzzling shift in the drug supply that has alarmed health researchers. Its name is bis(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidyl) sebacate, commonly abbreviated as BTMPS. The chemical is used in plastic for protection against ultraviolet rays, as well as for other commercial uses.  In an analysis released Monday, researchers from UCLA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other academic institutions and harm reduction groups collected and tested more than 170 samples of drugs that had been sold as fentanyl in Los Angeles and Philadelphia this summer. They found roughly a quarter of the drugs contained BTMPS. LA Times Read more

Fentanyl Was Killing Their Friends – And No One Was Talking About It. So These Teens Stepped Up

Eli Myers was only 15 when his close friend and classmate Chloe Kreutzerdied from taking a counterfeit Percocet pill filled with fentanyl. Initially, he said, the response from officials at his Los Angeles high school was stony silence. Even years later, the information he and his classmates got about the risks of fentanyl poisoning amounted to little more than a droning lecture in health class, he said. The same thing happened at Kyle Santoro’s northern California high school, when a student was found overdosing in a bathroom and was revived by the principal with Narcan. "Our school never talked about it,” said Santoro, who said the student had just disappeared from campus and most students never even knew what happened. Faced with an information void, Myers and Santoro took matters into their own hands. Today they’re part of a growing cadre of teens stepping up to educate their peers on the dangers of fentanyl, at a time when teen overdose deaths have skyrocketed to all-time highs, often caused by fake pills spiked with the super-potent synthetic opioid. The Guardian Read more



Flavonoid-Rich Foods And Drinks May Cut Risk Of Dementia, Study Finds

Consuming more food and drinks rich in flavonoids, such as berries, tea and red wine, could lower the risk of dementia by 28%, a study suggests. The number of people living with the disease globally is forecast to nearly triple to 153 million by 2050, which presents a rapidly increasing threat to global heath and social care systems. Age and genetics remain the biggest risk factors, but experts say almost half of cases could be prevented or delayed, and there is mounting evidence that diet could play a role in the risk of developing the disease. Research led by Queen’s University Belfast suggests that increasing the intake of flavonoid-rich foods and drinks could help reduce the risk of dementia by more than a quarter. Academics said that flavonoids, primarily found in plant-based foods, have a range of health benefits, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. They have also been linked to a reduced risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, as well as improved cognitive function. The Guardian Read more