First Edition: Feb. 7, 2022

KHN: Bounties And Bonuses Leave Small Hospitals Behind In Staffing Wars 
A recent lawsuit filed by one Wisconsin health system that temporarily prevented seven workers from starting new jobs at a different health network raised eyebrows, including those of Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association. “To me, that signifies the desperation that hospital leaders are facing in trying to staff their hospitals,” said Slabach. His concern is for the smaller facilities that lack the resources to compete. (Sable-Smith, 2/7)

KHN: Ready For Another Pandemic Malady? It’s Called ‘Decision Fatigue’ 
Most all of us have felt the exhaustion of pandemic-era decision-making. Should I travel to see an elderly relative? Can I see my friends and, if so, is inside OK? Mask or no mask? Test or no test? What day? Which brand? Is it safe to send my child to day care? Questions that once felt trivial have come to bear the moral weight of a life-or-death choice. So it might help to know (as you’re tossing and turning over whether to cancel your non-refundable vacation) that your struggle has a name: decision fatigue. (Gold, 2/7)

KHN: How The Tiny-Home Movement Is Providing More Than Just A Roof To Homeless People 
Tucked inside a residential neighborhood, and surrounded by a wooden fence and greenery, are nine little houses. With multicolored siding and roofs, they look like people-sized birdhouses. And they fit right in. So does Gene Cox, 48. He hasn’t been homeless in more than seven years. That’s the point of this little development. “This is the longest time I’ve stayed in one place,” said Cox, nursing coffee and a cigarette outside his tiny home after working second shift as a benefits administrator. “I’m very nomadic. I’ve moved around Wisconsin a lot over the last 22 years.” (Bruce, 2/7)

The New York Times: U.S. Covid Death Toll Surpasses 900,000 As Omicron’s Spread Slows 
More than 2,600 Americans are dying from Covid-19 each day, an alarming rate that has climbed by 30 percent in the past two weeks. Across the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has now claimed more than 900,000 lives. Yet another, simultaneous reality of the pandemic offers reason for hope. The number of new coronavirus infections is plummeting, falling by more than half since mid-January. Hospitalizations are also declining, a relief to stressed health care workers who have been treating desperately ill coronavirus patients for nearly two years. (Bosman and Smith, 2/4)

NBC News: 900,000 Dead: Covid Deaths Are Surging In Low-Vaccination States
The country has recorded 100,000 deaths since Dec. 13. During that period, Tennessee, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania have the largest number of deaths when adjusted for population. Of those states, Pennsylvania is the only one to have fully vaccinated more than 60 percent of its population. "Fully vaccinated" means that at least two weeks have passed since a person has received the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine. (Chiwaya, 2/4)

The Washington Post: Biden Marks 900,000 Covid-19 Deaths And Urges: ‘Get Vaccinated, Get Your Kids Vaccinated’
President Biden on Friday urged all Americans to get vaccinated, as he marked another “tragic milestone” in the coronavirus pandemic. “900,000 American lives have been lost to COVID-19,” he said in a late-night statement issued Friday. “They were beloved mothers and fathers, grandparents, children, brothers and sisters, neighbors, and friends. ”The death toll would have been higher without coronavirus vaccines, Biden said, estimating they had “saved more than one million American lives,” as he urged unvaccinated Americans to “get vaccinated, get your kids vaccinated, and get your booster shot if you are eligible.” (Timsit, 2/5)

Politico: Biden Inches Back Toward Michelle Obama’s School Nutrition Standards
The Biden administration today is issuing a new rule asking schools to soon start meeting nutrition standards that were strengthened at the urging of former first lady Michelle Obama — but were suspended during the pandemic as schools struggled to procure more nutritious options. The stricter nutrition standards — which cut sodium, require more whole grains and mandate more fruits and vegetables — were also partially relaxed during the Trump administration. One of former Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s first moves was to “Make School Meals Great Again” by loosening rules for whole grains, sodium and flavored milks. (Evich, 2/4)

The Washington Post: School Lunch Menus To Get Shakeup With New USDA Rule 
The Biden administration will make schools and child-care providers offer low-fat or nonfat unflavored milks, and limit the fat in sweet flavored milks, among other things. At least 80 percent of the grains served in school lunch and breakfast each week must be considered rich in whole grains, under the new policies. And while the weekly sodium limit for school lunch and breakfast will remain at the current level, there will be a 10 percent decrease required for the 2023-2024 school year. These adjustments would mark a change from the direction that the Trump administration took when it came to nutrition standards at schools. Trump aides had rolled back rules, initially easing policies regarding whole grain, nonfat milk and sodium, citing food waste and nonparticipation as key rationales. (Reiley, 2/4)

AP: School Lunch Rules Updated To Help Ease Pandemic Disruptions 
Low-fat chocolate milk instead of only non-fat. Fewer whole-grain offerings. Less severe salt limits. The Biden administration issued transitional standards for school lunches Friday that are meant to ease the path for cafeterias to get back on a more healthful course as they recover from pandemic and supply chain disruptions. Schools have struggled to meet the government’s nutrition benchmarks through the pandemic but have not been punished for falling short. The “bridge” rule announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture extends emergency flexibilities for the next two school years as schools gradually transition back to normal. (Thompson, 2/4)

Stat: Doctors, Public Health Groups Mount A Rare Campaign For Biden’s FDA Pick
Some of the nation’s most influential doctors and public health groups are orchestrating a mad-dash effort to convince senators to confirm Robert Califf, President Biden’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Advocacy groups like the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Friends of Cancer Research are calling lawmakers and their staff. The American Heart Association is organizing an activist call-in campaign. Even celebrity doctors and Califf’s former colleagues at Duke University are phoning Capitol Hill. (Florko and Cohrs, 2/7)

Stat: Biden FDA Pick Vows To Reform Accelerated Approvals To Win Senator’s Vote
President Biden’s pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration promised a key senator that he will crack down on drug companies abusing the so-called accelerated approval pathway within a month of his confirmation. Robert Califf met with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, last week, STAT first reported. In a new letter made public Friday, Wyden provides a clear summation of his discussion with the nominee. Califf promised not to halt the use of the accelerated approval pathway, which allows the FDA to approve drugs without clear evidence they help patients live longer, but instead to discipline drug makers that get drugs approved via the shortcut pathway and then drag their feet on the follow-up clinical trials mandated by the FDA. (Florko, 2/4)

Roll Call: Wyden Probes FDA Nominee's Views On Accelerated Drug Approvals 
Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is pressing the White House's nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Robert Califf, to pledge to crack down on drugmakers' use of fast-track approval pathways as the nominee seeks the chairman's support. Wyden's support of Califf is crucial to his confirmation vote in the closely divided Senate, especially given some other Democrats' concerns over the nomination. But Wyden's requests don't necessarily mean he's a no vote, a Finance Committee staffer said. Several Senate Democrats recently expressed skepticism about voting to confirm Califf, and several, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., have said they will not confirm the Biden administration's nominee. (Cohen, 2/7)

CBS News: Health And Human Services Secretary To Take More Active Public Role In Coming Weeks 
President Biden on Friday phoned a man who, on paper, serves as one of the country's top federal health officials but, in reality, has kept a notably low profile as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage. In a recent phone call from the Oval Office, Mr. Biden told Health and Human Health Services Secretary Xavier Becerra that he is pleased with the former California congressman's oversight of the sprawling department, and that he looks forward to boosting secretary's profile in the coming weeks, multiple people confirm to CBS News. "He just wanted him to know directly that he feels good about the work going on at HHS and that, going forward, he looks forward to working closely together," said one of the people, who, like other administration officials and lawmakers familiar with the situation, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the conversation. (O'Keefe, 2/6)

CBS News: Staff Shortages, COVID Patients Pushing Hospitals To Breaking Point 
In much of the country, the number of COVID cases is falling. The Omicron variant may result in less severe illness, but inside many of the country's hospitals, the work is more demanding than ever. That's largely because - according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - nearly 400,000 health care workers have left since the start of the pandemic. Last month, hospitals in 18 states reported critical staff shortages. (Alfonsi, 2/6)

Modern Healthcare: Healthcare Hiring Ramped Up In January Even As Omicron Raged
Healthcare employment was more resilient than expected in January as companies picked up hiring even as COVID-19 hospitalizations reached a record high. Healthcare companies added an estimated 18,000 jobs in the first month of 2022, up from 14,300 in December, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued Friday. The industry's strong showing contributed to 467,000 new jobs recorded across the economy, which was far more than economists projected. (Bannow, 2/4)

Modern Healthcare: Recruitment And Retention Is The Top Priority, Hospital Execs Say
UW Health recently had 3,600 nursing shifts to fill over a six-week period. The integrated health system, like so many across country, has turned to staffing agencies to fill workforce gaps. But that created friction between its in-house staff and travel nurses, who are often being paid at least twice as much. On Jan. 16, UW Health implemented a new program for its around 3,400 nurses to ease some of that tension, offering a $100 hourly bonus for nurses who add a 12-hour shift to their normal weekly schedule. The Madison-based system filled 92% of its open shifts within of a week of the program's announcement. (Kacik, 2/4)

NBC News: These Health Care Workers Say They Were Fired After Raising Safety Concerns
Marian Weber says she wanted to make Ketchikan, Alaska, her forever home. With its widespread greenery and rainy days, and waterfront crowded by houses, it was a long-awaited dream. And staying for good seemed like a real possibility. Weber, 47, was a travel nurse contracted to work at the city-owned Ketchikan Hospital, run by PeaceHealth, a not-for-profit health care system. She says she arrived in April 2021, and the hospital renewed her contract in August before promptly terminating it within the same month. (Lee, 2/6)

Texas Tribune: Texas COVID-19 Hospitalizations Down As Omicron Wave Appears To Crest
After an anxious January marked by a wave of COVID-19 infections that pushed Texas hospitals and intensive care units to their limits, the number of Texans in the hospital with COVID-19 across the state has been in a steady decline for over a week, according to state health data. The decrease is the latest in a series of hopeful signs that the surge driven by the highly contagious omicron variant may be starting to abate, forecasters and health officials say. If the trend continues, the state would have passed its peak hospitalizations for this wave on Jan. 20, when Texas hospitals reported 13,371 patients with COVID-19 — a number that has decreased daily since then. That falls short of the record 14,218 hospitalizations the state saw a year ago on Jan. 11, 2021. (Brooks Harper, Essig and Luis Martínez, 2/6)

NPR: The Future Of The Pandemic Is Looking Clearer As We Learn More About Infection
"Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests," a headline from The Guardian alerted back in July 2020. "King's College London team found steep drops in patients' antibody levels three months after infection," the story warned. But that idea was based on preliminary data from the laboratory — and on a faulty understanding of how the immune system works. Now about a year and a half later, better data is painting a more optimistic picture about immunity after a bout of COVID-19. In fact, a symptomatic infection triggers a remarkable immune response in the general population, likely offering protection against severe disease and death for a few years. And if you're vaccinated on top of it, your protection is likely even better, studies are consistently showing. (Doucleff, 2/7)

CBS News: CDC To Ramp Up Wastewater Monitoring Program To Track COVID-19 
Hundreds of wastewater treatment sites across the country will start submitting water samples to laboratories to detect the presence of COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. Data from the water samples can help communities detect the virus early on, and is now published to the CDC's COVID Data Tracker. The updated data tracker allows people to see virus level changes in participating communities' wastewater over the last 15 days and will be updated daily, according to Dr. Amy Kirby, who leads the National Wastewater Surveillance program. The percentage of positive tests over the last 15 days will also be made available using the data tracker. (Powell, 2/5)

USA Today: COVID Testing Sites, Labs Proliferate Amid Easy Money, Lax Oversight
Tents, storage units, trailers, a former barbershop, an old karate studio and worn-down suburban strip malls. The locations are among the hundreds of sites nationwide where pop-up coronavirus testing vendors have set up shop in recent months, capitalizing on lax regulations, financial incentives and high demand for testing. State officials have been warning residents to avoid unregulated sites. But many Americans – without free, quick and accessible alternatives for coronavirus testing – have rushed to the locations anyway. (Alltucker and Hauck, 2/6)

Crain's Detroit Business: Entrepreneurs Launch Goodbill To Target At-Home COVID Test Reimbursement, Negotiate Hospital Bills
Navigating insurers' methods for getting reimbursed for at-home COVID-19 tests can be complicated. It usually involves cutting bar codes off the box, filling out an online form, then printing that form and mailing it to the insurer. Detroit entrepreneur Ian Sefferman and colleagues in Seattle have streamlined that process with a new website called Goodbill. The site, and eventually coordinating mobile app, works by uploading your insurance card and the appropriate bar codes on the tests and automates the reimbursement process for the user. (Walsh, 2/4)

Fox News: CDC Weighs Increasing Time Between Vaccine Doses To Lower Risk Of Heart Inflammation
U.S. health officials are considering new changes to vaccine guidance that would lengthen the amount of time between doses in order to lower the risk of heart inflammation for immunocompromised people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told a panel of outside advisers on Friday these proposed changes would apply to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Immunocompromised people, who generally don’t respond as well to vaccines, are the only population advised to get four vaccine jabs. (Betz, 2/6)

Stat: Animal Study Suggests Omicron Boosters May Not Provide A Benefit 
A new study conducted in primates suggests there may not be a benefit from updating Covid-19 vaccines to target the Omicron variant at this time. The work, by scientists at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s Vaccine Research Center, shows that animals boosted with the original vaccine had similar levels of protection against disease in the lungs as did primates that received an updated booster based on the Omicron strain. The work was done with Moderna’s licensed vaccine and a booster shot based on the Omicron variant. Study of blood from the animals showed that many of the measurable immune responses — rises in neutralizing antibody levels, for instance — were not substantially different, regardless of which booster shot they were given. (Branswell, 2/4)

CIDRAP: Adults Living With HIV In New York Had Lower COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake
COVID-19 vaccine uptake among adults living with HIV in New York was lower than that of the rest of the state's population as of October 2021, according to a study today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). New York public health agencies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studied COVID-19 vaccination rates among 101,205 state residents living with HIV as of October 24, 2021, using HIV surveillance and immunization registry data. (2/4)

CIDRAP: New Conditions Common 1 To 5 Months After Positive COVID Test 
A cohort study of Americans tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection shows that new-onset shortness of breath, heart rhythm abnormalities, and type 2 diabetes were more common 31 to 150 days after testing positive for COVID-19 than among those with negative results. The research was published today in JAMA Network Open. (Van Beusekom, 2/4)

NBC News: Low-Income, Uninsured Face Hurdles To Obtain Covid Antivirals
When Regina Schearack and her 85-year-old father began to develop Covid symptoms last month, they went to get tested at a pharmacy in Midway, Georgia. After the tests came back positive, their pharmacist, Pete Nagel, said they had two options if they wanted treatment: Get a doctor to write a prescription and then return to the pharmacy for the newly authorized antiviral drugs or get four monoclonal antibody shots right away — two in the arms and two in the stomach. (McCausland, 2/6)

The Washington Post: N95, KN95 Masks Provide Best Protection Against Covid, CDC Study Shows
Wearing any kind of mask indoors is associated with significantly better protection from the coronavirus, with high-quality N95 and KN95 masks providing the best chance of avoiding infection, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday. In indoor public settings, surgical masks reduce the chances of testing positive by 66 percent, the CDC estimated. Top-of-the-line N95 and KN95 masks, the tightfitting face coverings often worn by health-care workers, cut the odds of infection by 83 percent, the health agency said. (Bernstein and Sellers, 2/4)

AP: Fed Up With Their County, Upstate Towns Consider Secession 
Some towns in upstate New York opposed to mask mandates and other public health measures put in place during the pandemic are considering voting with their feet and switching counties. The Buffalo News reported representatives from Marilla, Wales, Holland and Grand Island were among a group that met last week to discuss leaving Erie County for Wyoming or Niagara counties. (2/6)

The New York Times: 2 Men In Miami Sentenced For Stealing 192 Ventilators Bound For El Salvador 
Two men in Miami have each been sentenced to 41 months in prison for stealing medical ventilators bound for a Covid-19 care facility in El Salvador as part of a U.S. aid program, federal authorities in Florida said on Friday. The crime occurred in August 2020, according to a news release issued by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Florida after the sentencing of the second of the two men. (Medina, 2/5)

ABC News: Parents Name Baby Boy After Doctor Who Treated Mom For COVID-19 
A couple in Texas have paid the ultimate tribute to a doctor who went above and beyond to help their family last year. Diana Crouch, 28, and Chris Crouch, 37, welcomed a baby boy last November and named him Cameron, after one of Diana’s doctors. The couple credit Dr. Cameron Dezfulian, the medical director of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease, ICU unit at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, with helping to save both Diana and Cameron’s lives. (2/7)

Albany Times Union: After 130 Days In The Hospital, A New York COVID-19 Patient Finally Gets To Go Home
Tommy Raus arrived home Friday morning. That's a major accomplishment, considering that on Sept. 13, 2021 he began a harrowing COVID-19 journey that saw him face death numerous times during a 130-day stay at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany. The 47-year-old Raus went from being unable to breathe on his own or even move his toes in the hospital as his health collapsed to where he is now moving and talking and settling into completing his recovery at home with visits from nurses and therapists. “I’m on oxygen now. I was in such bad pain,” Raus said in a telephone interview Thursday from Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital in Schenectady where he spent 14 days after leaving St. Peter’s. “It’s just so hard to deal with this." (Crowe II, 2/6)

The Boston Globe: Protesters Gather Outside Brigham And Women’s Hospital Over Patient Dropped From Transplant List
About 100 protesters gathered outside Brigham and Women’s Hospital Sunday afternoon in support of a Massachusetts man whose family has said he was dropped from its heart transplant waitlist because he hasn’t been vaccinated for COVID-19. David Ferguson Jr., who is known as D.J., has been hospitalized since November, according to an online fund-raiser. His mother, Tracey Ferguson, has said he has been suffering complications from atrial fibrillation and deteriorating heart failure and has been treated at hospitals around Boston. Brigham and Women’s Hospital has told Ferguson that he was ineligible for a transplant because he was not vaccinated against COVID-19, according to his family. Ferguson’s father, David, told WBZ last month that vaccination against COVID-19 went against his son’s “basic principles. He doesn’t believe in it.” (Brinker and Hilliard, 2/6)

AP: UChicago Medicine To Build $663M Cancer Hospital In City
A $633 million and 500,000-square-foot cancer hospital through University of Chicago Medicine has been pitched for the city’s South Side. Hospital officials have submitted an application for site planning to the state Health Facilities and Services Review Board. Construction wouldn’t begin until next year and the hospital could open to patients by 2026. (2/6)

Modern Healthcare: Home Care Startup ConcertoCare Nabs $105 Million To Expand Palliative Services
ConcertoCare raised a $105 million to expand its home care services beyond the eight states where it currently operates, the company announced on Thursday. Wells Fargo Capital led the Series B round, with participation from Obvious Ventures, Vast Ventures, the Schusterman Family Foundation, SteelSky Ventures, Pennington Partners and Deerfield Management. The startup has raised nearly $150 million in total funding. (Tepper, 2/4)

Stat: FDA Regulator Gives Cool Reception To Drug Lilly Licensed From Chinese Firm
A Food and Drug Administration meeting scheduled for next week to review a Chinese-developed cancer immunotherapy is likely to be challenging for drug sponsor Eli Lilly, following skeptical comments published Friday evening by the U.S. agency’s top cancer regulator. Writing in Lancet Oncology, the FDA’s Richard Pazdur described imported cancer drug data from China as a “bridge over troubled waters.” As an example, Pazdur singled out sintilimab, an anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor developed by the China-based drugmaker Innovent and licensed to Lilly. (Feuerstein, 2/4)

Press Association: Scientists Create Spinal Cord Implants That Could Allow Paralyzed People To Walk
A scientific breakthrough may enable paralysed people to walk again as researchers have created human spinal cord implants in a world first. The 3D implants, made using human cells, had an 80% success rate in restoring the ability to walk in paralysed mice in the laboratory, researchers said. Tissue samples from patients are transformed into functioning spinal cord implants through a process that mimics the development of the spinal cord in human embryos. Over the next few years the scientists plan to be able to create personalised implants to repair tissue damaged from injury, and without the risk of rejection by the body. (2/7)

NPR: Depression Responds To Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Treatment In Studies
At the end of the first day, an unfamiliar calm settled over Emma. Even when her partner picked her up to drive home, she stayed relaxed. "I'm usually hysterical," she said. "All the time I'm grabbing things. I'm yelling, you know, 'Did you see those lights?' And while I rode home that first night I just looked out the window and I enjoyed the ride." The remedy was a new type of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) called "Stanford neuromodulation therapy." By adding imaging technology to the treatment and upping the dose of rTMS, scientists have developed an approach that's more effective and works more than eight times faster than the current approved treatment. (McClurg, 2/6)

CIDRAP: US Flu Markers Decline Further, H3N2 Still Dominant
US flu levels dropped further and dipped below the national baseline last week, though sporadic activity continues across the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest weekly update. The percentage of outpatient visits for flulike illness declined from 2.8% to 2.0% last week, putting it below the national baseline of 2.5%. (2/4)

Fox News: Limiting Screen Time In Infants May Decrease Risk Of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Study Finds
Male toddlers who watched more television at age one were more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at age 3, compared to those without any screen time, according to a recent multi-site Japanese study published in JAMA Pediatrics. "[A]mid the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid change in lifestyles, with electronic devices being used as the main channels of communication and social interactions," the authors wrote.  "Amid this social climate, examining the associations of screen exposure with a child's health is an important public health issue." (Sudhakar, 2/4)

AP: Nashville Expanding Mental Health Worker, Police Partnership 
Nashville announced that it will expand a pilot project that pairs mental health professionals with police after the program’s first seven months yielded promising results. The announcement comes roughly a week after nine law enforcement officers — including six from Metro Nashville Police — fatally shot a man walking on Interstate 65. Officers speaking to him for about 30 minutes failed to de-escalate the situation. Landon Eastep’s wife, Chelesy Eastep, later told reporters her husband had woken up “agitated” and decided to go for a walk to calm down. Eastep’s death sparked a call for greater focus on mental health crisis response. (2/6)

AP: Millions In Tax Dollars Flow To Anti-Abortion Centers In US 
Anti-abortion centers across the country are receiving tens of millions of tax dollars to talk women out of ending their pregnancies, a nearly fivefold increase from a decade ago that resulted from an often-overlooked effort by mostly Republican-led states. The nonprofits known as crisis pregnancy centers are typically religiously affiliated and counsel clients against having an abortion as part of their free but limited services. That practice and the fact that they generally are not licensed as medical facilities have raised questions about whether it’s appropriate to funnel so much tax money their way. (Kruesi, 2/5)

AP: Australia To Open Borders To Vaccinated Travelers On Feb. 21 
Australia will open its borders to all vaccinated tourists and business travelers from Feb. 21 in a further relaxation of pandemic restrictions announced Monday. Australia imposed some of the world’s toughest travel restrictions on its citizens and permanent residents in March 2020 to prevent them from bringing COVID-19 home. (McGuirk, 2/7)

AP: Russia Hits New COVID-19 Record; 10x More Than A Month Ago
Russia is reporting a record daily count of new coronavirus infections, a tenfold spike from a month ago as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads through the country. The figure of 189,071 new infections released by the state coronavirus task force on Sunday was about 2,800 cases more than the previous day and continued a surge that began in mid-January, when daily new cases were around 17,000. (Heintz, 2/6)

USA Today: US Closely Tied To Protests Against COVID Mandates In Canada
A former American diplomat says U.S. anti-vaccination groups must stop efforts to fuel protests in Canada – and GoFundMe shut down a funding page set up by U.S. groups in support of Canadian truckers and others protesting COVID-19 measures there. “Under no circumstances should any group in the USA fund disruptive activities in Canada. Period. Full stop,” said Bruce Heyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada under President Barack Obama, on Twitter. "How is it many Republicans are publicly more 'concerned' about events in Canada than Russia?" (Bacon, Ortiz and Thornton, 2/6)

Fox News: Unvaccinated Dad Loses Custody Of Kids; Judge Waves Away Dad's Research On Jabs
An unvaccinated father in New Brunswick, Canada, lost custody of his children, including an immunocompromised 10-year-old, after a judge ruled in favor of the mother late last month, according to reports. The parents, who were not identified in the court ruling, had separated in 2019 but shared custody of their three kids. Last year, the mother asked to have the custody agreement changed because the father and his new wife refuse to be vaccinated and in light of their daughter’s ongoing treatment for non-cancerous tumors in her blood vessels, according to CBC News. Justice Nathalie Godbout said she made the decision with a "heavy heart" but it was necessary for the child’s health amid the coronavirus pandemic and the recent effects of the omicron variant. (Stimson, 2/5)

ABC News: Pope Decries Genital Mutilation, Sex Trafficking Of Women 
Pope Francis on Sunday decried the genital mutilation of millions of girls and the trafficking of women for sex, including openly on city streets, so others can make money off of them. In remarks to the public in St. Peter’s Square, the pope noted that the day was dedicated worldwide to ending the ritual mutilation, and he told the crowd that some 3 million girls each year undergo the practice, “often in conditions very dangerous for the health.” (D'Emilio, 2/6)

The Washington Post: Urban Air Pollution Affects 2.5 Billion People Worldwide, Study Says 
About 86 percent of people living in urban areas worldwide — 2.5 billion people — are being exposed to air pollution levels roughly seven times greater than World Health Organization guidelines, according to new research, led by George Washington University researchers and published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal. (Searing, 2/6)