Maternal Mortality Rate Has Increased, And Covid’s Mostly To Blame

Columbus Dispatch: COVID-19 And Pregnancy: More New Mothers Die Amid Pandemic
From 2019 to 2020, the rate of maternal mortality in the U.S. increased by nearly 20%, a potential indication of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on maternal health outcomes. The maternal death rate in the U.S. rose from 20.1 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 23.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2020, marking an 18% increase, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's a nearly 37% increase since 2018, when there were 17.4 deaths for every 100,000 live births, a figure which was already more than double the rate of most other wealthy, developed nations, according to a report by the Commonweath Fund, a private U.S. foundation whose stated purpose is to "promote a high-performing health care system." (Henry, 3/31)

In other news about the spread of covid —

The New York Times: William Burns, Head Of The CIA, Tests Positive For Covid 
William J. Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday, a day after meeting with President Biden. The meeting was not considered a close contact for Mr. Biden because the two practiced social distancing and Mr. Burns was wearing an N95 mask, according to a C.I.A. statement. Mr. Biden tested negative on Wednesday when he was screened as part of regular health monitoring, an administration official said. (Barnes, 3/31)

Bloomberg: New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy Tests Positive For Covid
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy tested positive for Covid. On Thursday his office said a positive result came up during a regularly scheduled test and that the 64-year-old Democrat was “currently asymptomatic and feeling well.” He plans to cancel in-person events and isolate for the next five days. Murphy, who started his second term in January, ended his routine Covid briefings on March 4 2020, two years after New Jersey’s first Covid-19 case was reported. That day, Murphy awoke from successful cancer surgery to learn that New Jersey had its first reported case. Follow-up tests show he is in good health, with no recurrence, he told Bloomberg News this month. (Young, 3/31)

AP: Hawaii Sees Increase In COVID-19 Omicron Variant Cases 
Mirroring much of the U.S. and the world, Hawaii is seeing an uptick in the more transmissible BA.2 omicron variant. According to a state Department of Health report, BA.2 now makes up four out of every 10 new coronavirus cases in Hawaii. (3/31)

CIDRAP: Unhealthy Lifestyles Linked To Poor COVID-19 Outcomes
Unhealthy lifestyles are associated with more severe COVID-19 outcomes, according to a large UK study yesterday in BMC Infectious Diseases. The study was based on UK-Biobank, a prospective cohort of 502,536 participants aged 37 to 73 years recruited from 2006 to 2010 and followed up in the ensuing years. The cohort tracks nine unhealthy lifestyle traits, including smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, poor diet, physical inactivity, sleep duration, and television viewing time. (3/31)

CIDRAP: Hospitalized US Indigenous Patients Had Higher COVID-19 Death Rates
Hospitalized American Indian and Alaska Native COVID-19 patients died at a significantly higher rate than their Black and White peers early in the pandemic, despite being younger and having lower rates of underlying illnesses, shows a study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. (3/31)

Also —

New Hampshire Public Radio: State And Hospitals Don’t See Eye To Eye On Counting COVID Hospitalizations 
It looked like exceptionally good news Wednesday when the state reported just seven COVID-19 hospitalizations, far fewer than the 20 to 25 reported over the prior week. It was good news – just not the whole picture. That drop reflected the state’s new way of defining COVID-19 patients, not the number of COVID-19 patients hospitals say they are treating. They put that number at 104 Wednesday – 74 of whom are no longer infectious but too ill to be discharged. That more complete count is crucial, hospitals say, to measure the true burden COVID-19 is putting on the hospitals, especially when that burden limits their ability to care for non-COVID-19 patients. (Timmins, 3/31)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Hospitals Face Residual Effects Of COVID-19
Bed capacity in intensive care units remains low in the Cincinnati region as hospitals attempt to recover from the omicron surge that staggered the community just two months ago. Area health experts say residual effects of the latest spread such as lingering COVID-19 patients, and the return of many non-COVID patients and procedures, are the main reason why ICU and medical-surgical beds are still stuffed with sick patients even while virus-related hospitalizations continue to plummet. (Sutherland, 3/31)

KHN: As US Nears 1 Million Covid Deaths, One Hard-Hit County Grapples With Unthinkable Loss 
Connie Houtz didn’t think covid would be that bad. She’d seen many people in this rural hamlet in central Pennsylvania get infected yet recover within a few days. She did not get vaccinated because she worried about how a new vaccine, developed in record time, might affect her heart condition. Last October, her youngest son, 45-year-old Eric Delamarter, developed a chest cold. He put off going to the doctor because he had customers waiting at his shop where he repaired cars, she said. When he finally went to the emergency room at Geisinger Lewistown Hospital, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and covid. (Galewitz, 4/1)

Salt Lake Tribune: Updated: New Records Detail Complaints Against TestUtah, From ‘Piles’ Of Ignored Samples To ‘Contaminated’ COVID Tests
Flawed work by the TestUtah initiative run by Nomi Health poses an imminent threat to public health and safety, federal investigators concluded earlier this month. At one TestUtah site in January, an inspector saw a “pile” of processed rapid tests ignored for an hour and a half, even though results are only valid for a 5-minute window. At another, an inspector found “contaminated” test kits sitting on a laboratory table right next to yogurt, rice cakes and a bag of Cheez-Its. At a third, a regulator noticed swabs with patient samples and unused swabs stuffed together in a cart outside in below-freezing temperatures. (Alberty and Rodgers, 3/31)