First Edition: June 2, 2022

KHN: Despite A First-Ever ‘Right-To-Repair’ Law, There’s No Easy Fix For Wheelchair Users 
Robin Bolduc isn’t the type of person who takes “no” for an answer — particularly when it comes to fixing her husband’s wheelchair. Her husband, Bruce Goguen, 69, is paralyzed from multiple sclerosis. And without his chair, he would be stuck in bed, at risk of developing pneumonia or pressure sores that could lead to sepsis and death. When components of the chair wear out or break down, the road to repair is littered with obstacles. Recently, the Broomfield, Colorado, residents had to replace a button that Goguen presses with his head to control his wheelchair. They considered going through his wheelchair supplier for the repairs. (Hawryluk, 6/2)

KHN: Skirmishes Over Medication Abortions May Renew Debate On State Vs. Federal Powers 
As the Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that guarantees the constitutional right to an abortion, reproductive rights advocates are considering new ways to protect nationwide access to the procedure. One strategy involves preserving the availability of the medication used to initiate an abortion in states poised to restrict access otherwise. Such a move would require that federal law take precedence over a state’s — a concept known as preemption. (Knight, 6/2)

KHN: Computer Glitches And Human Error Still Causing Insurance Headaches For Californians
Since California expanded health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, a large number of people have been mistakenly bounced between Covered California, the state’s marketplace for those who buy their own insurance, and Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program for low-income residents. Small income changes can cause people’s eligibility to shift, but when bad information is typed into a computer system shared by the two programs — or accurate information is deleted from it — enrollees can get big headaches. (Wolfson, 6/2)

KHN: Readers And Tweeters Go To The Mat On Abortion Rights And Perceived Wrongs 
KHN gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories. (Byrne, 6/2)

CNN: Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hospital Shooting: 'It Was Just Madness Inside' St. Francis Campus
Four people were killed in Tulsa on Wednesday after a gunman -- who was later found dead -- opened fire on the second floor of a medical building, authorities in Oklahoma said. "It was just madness inside, with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people trying to get out of the building," Tulsa Police Department Captain Richard Meulenberg told CNN. The mass shooting is the latest instance nationwide of first responders and civilians coming face-to-face with the threat of gun violence, as Tulsa joins several cities mourning recent tragic attacks at public places, places of worship and educational facilities. (Rose, Simonson and Caldwell, 6/2)

AP: 4 Killed In Shooting At Tulsa Medical Building, Shooter Dead 
St. Francis Health System locked down its campus Wednesday afternoon because of the situation at the Natalie Medical Building. The Natalie building houses an outpatient surgery center and a breast health center. Dalgleish said an orthopedic clinic also is located on the second floor where officers discovered the shooter and several victims. ... Philip Tankersley, 27, was leaving his father’s room at nearby Saint Francis Hospital around 5 p.m., when hospital staff said there was an active shooter in the building across the street, locked the doors and warned them to stay away from the windows. Tankersley said he and his mother sheltered in his father’s hospital room for more than an hour, trying to learn scraps of information from the TV news and passing nurses. He said they heard “code silver” and “level 1 trauma” announced on the hospital speakers and wondered if they were safe in the room. (Murphy and Wallace, 6/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Gunman Kills At Least Four People In Shooting At Tulsa Medical Clinic
“We’re an organization that believes in the power of prayer,” Dr. Cliff Robertson, chief executive officer of the St. Francis Health System, said in a statement. “There is nothing more this community can do for us than to pray for the families and the loved ones and the victims of this senseless act.” The shooting took place on the 101st anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a white mob burned a Black neighborhood and as many as 300 people were killed. (Carlton, 6/1)

The New York Times: Medical Worker Rushed To Escape ‘Labyrinth’ Of Offices In Tulsa
Gannon Gill was wrapping up an appointment with a new patient on Wednesday when a loud noise startled him. A few seconds later, he heard it again. Mr. Gill, a physician assistant and a hunter, recognized those sounds as gunfire. “There was an initial ‘What was that?’” said Mr. Gill, who runs an orthopedic urgent care clinic at the facility in Tulsa, Okla., that was the site of a deadly shooting on Wednesday. He turned to his patient and said: “Let’s go. I don’t think this is good.” (Traub, 6/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Less Than 5% Of Violent Acts Are Linked To Mental Illness, Research Shows
Mass shootings in the U.S. have revived discussion around the interplay between mental health and violent acts. Most violent acts are carried out by people with no diagnosed mental illness, say psychologists and epidemiologists. Mental illness can contribute to violence, research shows, but predicting who might act violently is all but impossible. The American Psychiatric Association on Wednesday said stigmatizing people with mental illness could dissuade them from seeking treatment. “The overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators thereof,” the group said. (Wernau, 6/1)

The Hill: Gun Groups Ready For Aggressive Effort Against ‘Red Flag’ Legislation
No-compromise gun rights groups are preparing to mount an aggressive campaign against any “red flag” legislation in Congress as a response to the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas. ... Nine states currently have “red flag” laws, protection orders that allow a court to prevent an individual deemed a danger to themselves or others from possessing or obtaining firearms. Those include New York, where it did not stop a shooter from targeting black people at a grocery store in Buffalo last month. It is unclear if such a law would have stopped the shooter in Uvalde. (Brooks, 6/2)

The Atlantic: How News Of Mass Shootings Affects People Psychologically
A horrific news event is a tragedy for those it directly affects, but simply reading and watching coverage of it is associated with an uptick in symptoms of acute stress, such as intrusive thoughts about the event and avoiding reminders of it. For instance, one study published in 2014 found that the more coverage people saw of the Boston Marathon bombings, the more such symptoms they experienced. (Pinsker, 6/1)

The New York Times: U.S. Will Airlift Baby Formula From Abroad As Shortages Grow Worse 
The nationwide shortage of baby formula is getting worse, with an increasing number of retailers and online sellers posting out-of-stock notices even as President Biden met on Wednesday with executives of five baby food companies, and announced new shipments of formula from Europe to help restock American shelves. (Shear and Creswell, 6/1)

CNBC: Reckitt Baby Formula Plants Can Produce 21 Million Bottles For U.S.
Baby formula manufacturer Reckitt has the capacity to produce at least 21 million 8-ounce bottles of infant formula at its plants in Asia and Latin America for the U.S. market if the Food and Drug Administration gives it the green light, a senior company executive said Wednesday. Parents have struggled to find food for their infants after Abbott, previously the largest formula manufacturer in the U.S., was forced to close its plant in Sturgis, Michigan, and recall several batches of formula in February due to bacterial contamination at the facility. (Kimball, 6/1)

ABC News: FDA Accepts Pfizer Application For COVID Vaccine In Kids Under 5, Clearing Way For June Timeline
The FDA said in a statement that it received Pfizer's request for an EUA. "We recognize parents are anxious to have their young children vaccinated against COVID-19 and while the FDA cannot predict how long its evaluation of the data and information will take, we will review any EUA request we receive as quickly as possible using a science-based approach," the agency said. (Kekatos, 6/1)

Bloomberg: Pfizer Submits Covid Shot For Kids Under 5 For FDA Authorization
Pfizer Inc. asked U.S. regulators to clear its Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in children under age 5, an effort to extend protection against the virus to the country’s youngest. The drugmaker and BioNTech SE finalized their rolling application to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency-use authorization of their vaccine in kids ages 6 months through 4 years old, the companies said in a statement on Wednesday. The vaccine partners began the submission process in February. (Griffin, 6/1)

AP: Gridlock Could Delay COVID Funds Until Fall — Or Longer 
The U.S. is headed for “a lot of unnecessary loss of life,” the Biden administration says, if Congress fails to provide billions more dollars to brace for the pandemic’s next wave. Yet the quest for that money is in limbo, the latest victim of election-year gridlock that’s stalled or killed a host of Democratic priorities. President Joe Biden’s appeal for funds for vaccines, testing and treatments has hit opposition from Republicans, who’ve fused the fight with the precarious politics of immigration. Congress is in recess, and the next steps are uncertain, despite admonitions from White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha of damaging consequences from “every day we wait.” (Fram, 6/1)

CNN: New Variants Are Poised To Keep Covid-19 Circulating At High Levels Throughout The Summer 
Even as the US grapples with its most recent wave of Covid-19, new research suggests that variants on the horizon may keep case levels high. The next influx of infections will probably come from the newer Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, two closely related viruses that were first characterized in South Africa and that landed in the United States around late March, according to the gene sequence sharing site GISAID. These variants are gaining ground against BA.2, particularly in the central part of the country. Recent research suggests that they escape immunity created by vaccines and past infections. (Goodman, 6/1)

The Mercury News: Here's Why New COVID Variants Are Driving Surprise Surge
In its evolutionary fight for survival, the COVID virus is switching strategies: It’s becoming a master at slipping past our immune systems. And that, say experts, is largely why we’re dealing with an unexpected surge. Powered by two mutations, new lineages of the omicron variant — called BA.2 and its more recent descendants BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 — are increasing rates of vaccine breakthrough and reinfection, according to an analysis published Saturday by Trevor Bedford, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who studies the evolution of viruses. These latest strains are succeeding “not because they’re more contagious, as much as they are more immune evasive,” Dr. Paul Offit, an FDA adviser and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said at a recent presentation at UC San Francisco. “This is something that surprises virologists.” (Krieger, 6/1)

AP: US Interior Secretary Haaland Tests Positive For COVID-19 
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has tested positive for COVID-19 and has mild symptoms, the agency said Wednesday. Haaland, 61, is isolating in Nevada where she took part in a roundtable discussion Tuesday in Las Vegas about clean energy production on public lands, the Interior Department said in a statement. (6/1)

CIDRAP: Chest CT Shows COVID-19 Vaccines Protect Against Pneumonia
According to research published yesterday in the American Journal of Roentgenology, chest computed tomography (CT) scans of adults fully vaccinated against COVID-19 were less likely to show pneumonia frequency and severity during breakthrough infections, compared to unvaccinated patients. (6/1)

NBC News: Postal Service Sued For Seizing Black Lives Matter Masks During 2020 Protests
A California screen printer is suing the U.S. Postal Service for seizing shipments of Black Lives Matter masks intended to protect demonstrators from Covid-19 during protests following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. The cloth masks, with slogans like "Stop killing Black people" and "Defund police," were purchased by the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and were meant to be shipped to D.C., St. Louis, New York City and Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by a police officer. But four boxes containing about 500 masks each were marked as "Seized by law enforcement" and their shipment was delayed more than 24 hours. (Reilly, 6/2)

The New York Times: Doctors Transplant 3-D Printed Ear Made Of Human Cells
A 20-year-old woman who was born with a small and misshapen right ear has received a 3-D printed ear implant made from her own cells, the manufacturer announced on Thursday. Independent experts said that the transplant, part of the first clinical trial of a successful medical application of this technology, was a stunning advance in the field of tissue engineering. (Rabin, 6/2)

The New York Times: Reprogrammed Cells Attack And Tame Pancreatic Cancer In One Woman 
Researchers have managed to tame pancreatic cancer in a woman whose cancer was far advanced and after other forms of treatment had failed. The experiment that helped her is complex and highly personalized and is not immediately applicable to most cancer patients. Another pancreatic cancer patient, who received the same treatment, did not respond and died of her disease. Nonetheless, a leading journal — The New England Journal of Medicine — published a report of the study on Wednesday. (Kolata, 6/1)

AP: Novel Genetic Experiment Shrinks Tough-To-Treat Cancer
In a novel experiment, a woman with advanced pancreatic cancer saw her tumors dramatically shrink after researchers in Oregon turbocharged her own immune cells, highlighting a possible new way to someday treat a variety of cancers. Kathy Wilkes isn’t cured but said what’s left of her cancer has shown no sign of growth since the one-time treatment last June. “I knew that regular chemotherapy would not save my life and I was going for the save,” said Wilkes, of Ormond Beach, Florida, who tracked down a scientist thousands of miles away and asked that he attempt the experiment. (Neergaard, 6/1)

Stat: How Companies Are Responding To Cancer Immunotherapy Shortage 
The shortage of manufacturing slots for CAR-T cells, which has left myeloma patients dying on a wait list, came as a surprise to drugmakers and clinicians alike. When the Food and Drug Administration approved the first myeloma CAR-T product from Bristol Myers Squibb in spring of 2021, there were already four other lymphoma and leukemia CAR-T therapies on the market. Those weren’t facing severe supply constraints so people hadn’t expected there to be issues supplying ide-cel, Bristol’s myeloma CAR-T, said Yi Lin, the director of the cell therapy program at the Mayo Clinic. But after the approval, the demand quickly overwhelmed Bristol’s ability to create CAR-T for myeloma — and supply chain issues during the pandemic made it more difficult to ramp up production. (Chen, 6/2)

The New York Times: Coffee Drinking Linked To Lower Risk Of Dying, New Study Finds 
That morning cup of coffee may be linked to a lower risk of dying, researchers from a study published Monday in The Annals of Internal Medicine concluded. Those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30 percent less likely to die during the study period than those who didn’t drink coffee. Those who drank unsweetened coffee were 16 to 21 percent less likely to die during the study period, with those drinking about three cups per day having the lowest risk of death when compared with noncoffee drinkers. (Blum, 6/1)

AP: Wray: FBI Blocked Planned Cyberattack On Children's Hospital 
The FBI thwarted a planned cyberattack on a children’s hospital in Boston that was to have been carried out by hackers sponsored by the Iranian government, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday. Wray told a Boston College cybersecurity conference that his agents learned of the planned digital attack from an unspecified intelligence partner and got Boston Children’s Hospital the information it needed last summer to block what would have been “one of the most despicable cyberattacks I’ve seen.” (Tucker and Suderman, 6/1)

Modern Healthcare: Understaffing Associated With Higher Sepsis Mortality Rates, Study Finds
Hospitals with fewer nurses on staff saw a greater likelihood of elderly patients dying due to sepsis, according to a new study that shined a light on how understaffing affects care quality. About 26% of Medicare patients with sepsis die within 60 days of admission. Each additional hour of care that nurses provide to sepsis patients is linked to a 3% decrease in mortality within 60 days of admission, the study published in JAMA Network Open on May 27 found. (Devereaux, 6/1)

The Washington Post: Florida Abortion Providers Seek To Block State’s New 15-Week Ban 
Abortion providers in Florida filed a lawsuit Wednesday to try to block the state’s new law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which is slated to take effect July 1. The constitutional challenge in Florida comes as Republican-led states have moved to restrict abortion access and weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to issue a major abortion ruling that is expected to undermine if not overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. (Marimow, 6/1)

NPR: California Prepares To Welcome Patients From States That May Soon Ban Abortion
While 26 states in the U.S. are likely to ban or restrict abortion care if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, California is positioning itself to be a sanctuary for abortion access, preparing to welcome and support people from around the country who are seeking that care. The state's Democratic-led legislature is considering a package of 13 bills designed to ease access to abortion and reduce the costs. It includes proposals to protect people from law enforcement action if they have an abortion or help provide one. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged $125 million in state funds to back these efforts. (Dembosky, 6/2)

AP: Limits On Early Abortion Drive More Women To Get Them Later
An 18-year-old was undergoing treatment for an eating disorder when she learned she was pregnant, already in the second trimester. A mom of two found out at 20 weeks that her much-wanted baby had no kidneys or bladder. A young woman was raped and couldn’t fathom continuing a pregnancy. Abortions later in pregnancy are relatively rare, even more so now with the availability of medications to terminate early pregnancies. Across large parts of the United States, they are also increasingly difficult to obtain. (Ortutay, 6/2)

AP: With Roe In Doubt, States Weigh Letting Nurses Do Abortions
The various proposals authorize advance practice clinicians to provide medication abortions, in-clinic abortions or both. Abortion rights advocates say these clinicians often perform more complicated procedures such as IUD insertions, early miscarriage management and endometrial biopsies, a procedure where a small piece of the lining of the uterus is removed to check for cancer or other issues. Supporters say randomized trials have shown that aspiration abortions — a common early term abortion that involves a suctioning procedure — can be safely performed by these clinicians. (Haigh, 6/2)

AP: California Bid To Create Legal Drug Injection Sites Advances
California moved a step closer Wednesday to creating sites where people could legally use drugs under supervision designed to save them from dying if they overdose, over the objections of opponents who said the state would be enabling dangerous and illegal activity. The full Assembly will now consider allowing test programs in Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco, more than a year after the proposal narrowly passed the state Senate. (Thompson, 6/1)

AP: California Child Abuse Database Lacks Half Of County Reports
More than half of substantiated California child abuse reports in recent years were not in the state’s database, which could result in child abusers being allowed to care for children, state auditors said Tuesday. The unreliability of the database “puts children at risk,” auditors said. The database is used by state and county social services and welfare departments, adoption agencies, medical workers treating possible victims of child abuse, agencies conducting background investigations of applicants for law enforcement jobs, and agencies conducting background investigations on those who want to work or volunteer in positions that would give them access to children, like day care centers or group homes. (Thompson, 5/31)

Modern Healthcare: 1,300 California Doctors Authorize Union To Call A Strike 
Members of a union representing 1,300 resident physicians and fellows at three Los Angeles County hospitals have voted to authorize a strike," the labor organization announced Tuesday. Doctors at Los Angeles County+University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles, Harbor-University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center in West Carson and Martin Luther King, Jr. Outpatient Center in Los Angeles voted 99% in favor of allowing their bargaining committee to call a strike over what they deem to be unfair labor practices. Voting took place between May 16 and May 30. (Christ, 6/1)

AP: NC Health Bill With Medicaid Expansion Gets First Senate OK 
A wide-ranging health care access bill penned by Republicans that includes covering hundreds of thousands of additional North Carolina adults through Medicaid received initial approval Wednesday from the state Senate. Support was nearly unanimous in the chamber for the measure, which also loosens practice restrictions on specialty nurses and eases government scrutiny of medical construction and equipment. (Robertson, 6/1)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio Transgender Athlete Bill Quietly Passes House For Second Time
House Republicans passed a bill late Wednesday that would prohibit transgender girls from joining female sports teams in high school and college, shoving the proposal into an unrelated bill before taking off for summer break. Wednesday's vote, which came on the first day of Pride Month, marked the second time Republicans sought a back-door path for the controversial measure. The House initially added it to a bill to allow college students to profit off their name, image and likeness, a move criticized by Gov. Mike DeWine when it passed last year. (Bemiller, 6/1)

AP: West Virginia Governor Confirms Lyme Disease Diagnosis 
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said blood tests confirmed that he has Lyme disease. Justice announced the diagnosis Wednesday night, more than a week after he began feeling ill after events in Wheeling and Blacksville. The Republican governor said he will remain on antibiotics for several weeks to continue fighting the infection. (6/2)

AP: Pfizer To Conduct Lyme Disease Vaccine Trial In Maine
Pfizer has partnered with a Maine health care system to conduct the third phase of a Lyme disease clinical trial to test the efficacy of the company’s vaccine. The trial, held at Northern Light Health system in Brewer, will span over 13 months and require patients to take two shots two months apart. In March, the patients will need to take a booster shot before the next summer’s tick season , The Bangor Daily News reported last week. (6/1)

Stateline: Wheelchair Users Say States Should Spend New Road Money On Safety
On a Sunday afternoon in May 2021, Patsy Ellison left her Knoxville, Tennessee, apartment in her motorized wheelchair and started to cross a nearby street, as she often did. She never made it. Even though there was a stop sign, a Dodge Ram pickup truck turning into the intersection struck and killed Ellison, who was 62. The driver told police he didn’t see her in the roadway. “We were just devastated. She was such a good person. It’s still hard,” her great-niece Destiny Dozard said in an interview with Stateline. “I have a 5-year-old, and he talks about it every day. He’s still traumatized.” (Bergal, 6/1)

AP: Pinkett Smith Talks Hair-Loss 'Shame,' Outcome Of Oscar Slap
Jada Pinkett Smith turned her husband’s Oscar-night blowup into a teachable moment about alopecia areata, the hair-loss disorder affecting her and millions of others that, in some cases, can impact a person’s sense of identity. ... The actor said she chose to use “this moment to give our alopecia family an opportunity to talk about what it’s like to have this condition” and what it is. Her guests included the mother of a 12-year-old girl, Rio Allred, who was bullied over her hair loss and died by suicide, and a physician who explained the different types of the disorder. Before tackling the subject, Pinkett Smith addressed events at the March 27 Academy Awards. She and husband Will Smith, a best-actor nominee, were in the audience as presenter Chris Rock cracked a joke at Pinkett Smith’s expense. (Elber, 6/1)

AP: EXPLAINER: Alopecia Affects Millions, Including Kids
Alopecia can come on quickly, is unpredictable and can be incredibly tough to deal with mentally, said Brett King, a hair loss expert at Yale Medicine, told The Associated Press in March. “Imagine if you woke up today missing half of an eyebrow,” he said. “That unpredictability is one of the things that’s so mentally treacherous and awful because you have no control of it ... it’s a disease that strips people of their identity.” (Whitehurst, 6/1)

The Washington Post: ‘Body Doubling,’ An ADHD Productivity Tool, Is Flourishing Online
One day in April of 2021, Lindsey Bee decided it was time to deal with the laundry “doom piles” that had formed around her house. So she did what many people do when faced with a boring task. She turned to TikTok. But she wasn’t there to procrastinate. For an hour, Bee, a teacher in her 30s, live-streamed herself sorting the clothes on her account dedicated to ADHD: brainsandspoons. As the live stream went on, viewers jumped in to do their own laundry “with” her. “Everybody was so encouraging,” said Bee, who learned she has ADHD as an adult. “It made it really feel like a group project, not just me by myself on camera. It definitely made the time go by faster.” The ADHD community calls the practice “body doubling.” (Ables, 6/1)

Stat: Can Wearables Turn Temperature Into A Pregnancy Test?
Your smartwatch can ping you about an irregular heartbeat. Your phone can assess your fall risk. And now, research suggests temperature trends picked up by wearables can tell you if you’re pregnant before you even think to take a test. Looking at temperature data from 30 women who became pregnant while wearing an Oura ring, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, found that nightly maximum temperatures were noticeably higher two to nine days after sex that ultimately led to conception. Retrospectively, they showed how that temperature shift could have been used as a passive pregnancy notification — one that, for these users, would have popped up about nine days before they received a positive test. (Palmer, 6/2)

AP: Harris Calls Water Security A Foreign Policy Priority
Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday the U.S. is safer if people in other countries have sufficient water to drink, grow food and safely dispose of sewage, emphasizing that water access is a foreign policy priority. Harris said making sure that every country has enough water will prevent conflicts, improve health outcomes and boost local economies. Working towards those goals will make the world more stable and secure, according to a newly released White House plan to address issues facing global water supplies and quality. (Naishadham and Phillis, 6/1)

Bloomberg: Vietnam Works With US To Make First African Swine Fever Vaccine
Vietnam has collaborated with US experts to produce the world’s first commercially viable vaccine against African swine fever, a disease that has killed millions of hogs across Asia and pushed up global pork prices. The country partnered with scientists at the Agriculture Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture to develop the vaccine, which is now being produced in Vietnam, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Phung Duc Tien said on the government website. (Ngoc Chau, 6/2)

The Washington Post: Italy Lifts All Pandemic Entry Restrictions
Italy lifted its remaining pandemic-era entry restrictions Wednesday, making it easier for foreign tourists to visit as the busy summer-travel season ramps up. “As of June 1, 2022 a Green Pass or equivalent certificate is no longer needed to enter Italy,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation said in an announcement. Previously, travelers had to show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus, proof of recovery from the disease or a negative test result, to bypass a five-day quarantine. (Diller, 6/1)

AP: Nightclub Needle Attacks Puzzle European Authorities
Across France, more than 300 people have reported being pricked out of the blue with needles at nightclubs or concerts in recent months. Doctors and multiple prosecutors are on the case, but no one knows who’s doing it or why, and whether the victims have been injected with drugs — or indeed any substance at all. Club owners and police are trying to raise awareness, and a rapper even interrupted his recent show to warn concert-goers about the risk of surprise needle attacks. (Deley, 6/2)

Axios: Portugal, Spain At Center Of Monkeypox Outbreak As Cases Exceed 250
Spanish and Portuguese health authorities said Wednesday that the total confirmed cases of monkeypox across both nations have exceeded 250, Reuters reports. The Iberian Peninsula has served as the epicenter of the recent outbreak, which has swept across several European countries as well as the U.S. The emergence of the virus is notable as it is rarely found outside of Africa. Spain has documented 142 cases, up from 132 the previous day. Portugal reports a total of 119 cases, also an increase from 100 the previous day. (Chen, 6/1)

AP: Africans See Inequity In Monkeypox Response Elsewhere
As health authorities in Europe and elsewhere roll out vaccines and drugs to stamp out the biggest monkeypox outbreak beyond Africa, some doctors acknowledge an ugly reality: The resources to slow the disease’s spread have long been available, just not to the Africans who have dealt with it for decades. Countries including Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Israel and Australia have reported more than 500 monkeypox cases, many apparently tied to sexual activity at two recent raves in Europe. No deaths have been reported. (Cheng and Asadu, 6/1)

CIDRAP: Experts: Monkeypox Highlights Animal-Human Interface Threats
As monkeypox cases continue to surge in countries once unfamiliar with the pox virus, Mike Ryan, MD, MPH, executive director for health emergencies at the World Health Organization (WHO) warned today that the ecological pressures of climate stress, drought stress, and animal food-seeking behavior will lead to more and more spillover events and new transmission chains of diseases that were once endemic in only small pockets of the world. (Soucheray, 6/1)

Fox News: Monkeypox And Endemic Diseases Becoming More Persistent, WHO Says
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Wednesday that outbreaks of endemic diseases are becoming more frequent. The United Nations health agency's emergencies director, Dr. Mike Ryan, said that climate change is contributing to this issue, with drought forcing animals and humans to alter food-seeking behavior. As a result of this change, he noted that diseases that typically circulate in animals are increasingly jumping into humans. (Musto, 6/1)