New Covid Cases Plunge 25% or More as Behavior Changes
End of holiday gatherings or fear of the virus may be at play – or hope for the vaccine
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Christina Jewett was a senior correspondent for KFF Health News until November 2021.
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End of holiday gatherings or fear of the virus may be at play – or hope for the vaccine
The National Academy of Sciences cites journalists’ “Lost on the Frontline” project in a push to expand federal tracking of worker fatalities.
At least 2,900 health workers have died since the pandemic began. Many were minorities with the highest levels of patient contact.
Four workers died at a facility with one of the largest U.S. outbreaks, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration never conducted an inspection. It’s a pattern that’s played out across the nation, a KHN investigation finds.
The debate over how the coronavirus spreads heated up Friday when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conceded that the virus spreads through tiny particles, but then took down guidance that could have forced big changes in hospitals.
COVID patients have been commingled with uninfected patients in California, Florida, New Jersey, Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, New York and beyond. While officials have penalized nursing homes for such failures, hospitals have seen less scrutiny.
“Lost on the Frontline” is an ongoing project by Kaiser Health News and The Guardian that aims to document the lives of health care workers in the U.S. who died from COVID 19, and to investigate why so many are victims of the disease.
Harvard research shows minorities are most likely to report inadequate PPE and to work with COVID-positive patients.
Democrats want to bind employers to follow a safety plan, while Republicans seek to shield employers and doctors from lawsuits.
Attorneys say some state workers’ compensation laws leave workers and families struggling for benefits after a COVID illness or death.
As health workers were dying of COVID-19, federal work-safety officials filed just one citation against an employer and rapidly closed complaints about protective gear.
The Guardian and KHN release new figures Saturday showing the harsh toll that the pandemic is taking on the front-line health workers.
Because high-end N95 masks are scarce, medical centers are using surgical masks that have been linked to considerably higher infection rates.
Former officials from the federal agency criticize OSHA for a slow and timid response to a “worker safety crisis of monstrous proportions” unfolding in hospitals, nursing homes.
Daisy Doronila had a different perspective than most who worked at the Hudson County Correctional Facility, a New Jersey lockup 11 miles from Manhattan. It was a place where the veteran nurse could put her Catholic faith into action, showing kindness to marginalized people.
Jeff Baumbach, 57, was a seasoned nurse of 28 years when the novel coronavirus began to circulate in California. He’d worked in the ER, the ICU and on a cardiac floor. Hepatitis and tuberculosis had been around over the years but never posed a major concern.
Infection-report forms rarely indicate who is a health worker or whether they survived. States and hospitals tend to keep quiet, citing patient privacy.
As states scour the world for masks and other protective medical equipment, the federal government has repeatedly invoked a little-known clause in the Defense Production Act to step to the front of the line for sought-after health supplies.
As President Donald Trump called the nation “in good shape” to handle COVID-19, a cache of emails released by officials in Washington state show that top public health authorities feared gear shortages and doctor safety in the early epicenter of sickness and deaths.
As the coronavirus sweeps the nation, a new survey reveals widespread medical gear shortages while hospitals give up on a fractured supply chain and take matters into their own hands with planes sprinting past cargo ships.
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