First Edition: Oct. 11, 2021

KHN: ‘Are You Going To Keep Me Safe?’ Hospital Workers Sound Alarm On Rising Violence 
The San Leandro Hospital emergency department, where nurse Mawata Kamara works, went into lockdown recently when a visitor, agitated about being barred from seeing a patient due to covid-19 restrictions, threatened to bring a gun to the California facility. It wasn’t the first time the department faced a gun threat during the pandemic. Earlier in the year, a psychiatric patient well known at the department became increasingly violent, spewing racial slurs, spitting toward staffers and lobbing punches before eventually threatening to shoot Kamara in the face. (Sable-Smith and Miller, 10/11)

KHN: Community Clinics Shouldered Much Of The Vaccine Rollout. Many Haven’t Been Paid. 
Community clinics in California say they haven’t been paid for at least 1 million covid-19 vaccine doses given since January, creating a “massive cash flow problem” for some and complicating efforts to retain staff. Clinics in other states, including Michigan and Mississippi, are also awaiting payment. The delays stem from the distinct way federally qualified health centers are reimbursed for care under Medicaid, the joint federal-state program providing health coverage for low-income people. Some centers are not even billing for the shots because they say it’s too complicated. Clinics are owed tens of millions of dollars, at minimum, for shots they’ve given since the vaccines received emergency authorization. (Pradhan and Bluth, 10/11)

KHN: New California Law Bans Harassment At Vaccination Sites, But Free Speech Concerns Persist
It’s now illegal in California to harass people on their way into a vaccination clinic, under a law signed Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But First Amendment experts continue to raise legal questions about the law’s constitutionality, including its definition of harassment. The new law, which takes effect immediately, makes it a misdemeanor to harass, intimidate, injure or obstruct people on their way to get a covid-19 or any other kind of vaccine, punishable by a maximum $1,000 fine and/or up to six months in jail. (Bluth, 10/8)

KHN: Journalists Examine Vaccination Rates Among Student Nurses And In Covid Hot Spots 
Contributing writer and former KHN correspondent Michelle Andrews discussed difficulties in providing clinical training to student nurses who refuse to get vaccinated on CBS News on Thursday. (10/9)

AP: US Appeals Court Lets Texas Resume Ban On Most Abortions
A federal appeals court Friday night quickly allowed Texas to resume banning most abortions, just one day after clinics began racing to serve patients again for the first time since early September. A one-page order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the nation’s strictest abortion law, which bans abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. It makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. “Patients are being thrown back into a state of chaos and fear,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents several Texas clinics that had briefly resumed normal abortion services. (Weber, 10/9)

NPR: Federal Appeals Court Temporarily Reinstates Texas' 6-Week Abortion Ban
The Department of Justice now has until Oct. 12 to reply to the ruling, and the ban remains in effect until then. Before a lower court intervened, Texas was allowed to keep its abortion law, Senate Bill 8, in effect for roughly five weeks. In that time, providers say they were forced to turn away hundreds of people seeking abortions. (Lopez, 10/8)

The Daily Beast: Chaos Continues As Court Swiftly Brings Back Texas’ Abortion Ban
Almost as quickly as it was stopped, the infamous Texas abortion law was back again. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a temporary injunction on Texas’ controversial six-week abortion ban Friday, once again barring most pregnant people in Texas from accessing the service. ... The court back-and-forth sent abortion clinics in the state—some of which have stopped providing abortions altogether since the law took effect Sept. 1—into a state of confusion, unsure of how long the reprieve from the restrictive law would last. Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman’s Health, the two largest providers in the state, were both waiting to see what the Fifth Circuit would do before deciding if they would resume abortions past six weeks. (Shugerman, 10/8)

AP: Texas Abortion Law Foes Target Lawmakers' Corporate Donors
Foes of Texas’ strict abortion ban are taking aim at companies that donated money to the bill’s sponsors, hoping consumers will pressure corporate America to join the fight against a surge of restrictions. The television and digital ads begun this past week by the groups Corporate Accountability Action and American Bridge 21st Century, the Democratic Party’s opposition research arm, highlight AT&T’s contributions to Texas Republican lawmakers. There are plans to expand the campaign to Florida, where a similar abortion proposal has been introduced. (Whitehurst, 10/10)

USA Today: Fauci Says Trick-Or-Treating Is Safe This Halloween
Parents can safely allow their children to trick-or-treat outdoors this Halloween, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday. "You can get out there," the nation's premier infectious diseases expert said on CNN’s “State of the Union." "You're outdoors for the most part ... (so) enjoy it." Kids who can get vaccinated for the coronavirus should do so for an “extra degree of protection," he added. The vaccines have been authorized for children 12 and up by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA could provide similar emergency authorization for children ages 5 through 11 in the days before Halloween. "It's a good time to reflect on why it's important to get vaccinated," Fauci said. "Go out there and enjoy Halloween as well as the other holidays that will be coming up." (Bacon, Santucci and Ortiz, 10/10)

Politico: As Covid Trends Down, Fauci Warns Not To 'Declare Victory' 
Covid-19 cases are trending in the “right direction,” but people should be careful to not “declare victory,” the president’s top medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said Sunday. The seven-day average shows cases below 100,000, hospitalizations below 10,000 and deaths below 2,000, he noted. “If you look at the history of the surges and the diminutions in cases over a period of time, they can bounce back,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Plus, he mentioned there are roughly 68 million people eligible for vaccination who have not gotten it. (Farrow, 10/10)

USA Today: Will The US Face Another Bad COVID-19 Winter? Cases Are Falling, But The Virus Isn't Done With Us, Experts Say
COVID-19 rates are finally falling again after a wave nearly as bad as the one last winter. Hopefully, we are through the worst of the pandemic. But experts warn that if we start acting as if COVID-19 is over, we definitely won't be. Behavior has a major impact on what happens with the virus, and if people stop taking precautions, start gathering in large numbers and not getting vaccines or boosters, another wave could strike this winter. (Weintraub, 10/10)

USA Today: Kids Testing Positive At Higher Rates Than Adults
While cases increased across all age groups in the latest wave of COVID, kids have been testing positive for COVID-19 more often than adults, adjusted for population. The increase is due to the highly contagious delta variant, relaxed restrictions and ineligibility for children under 12 to get vaccines. "Definitely over the last eight weeks we’ve seen dramatic increases in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in kids," said Dr. Donna Tyungu, a pediatric infectious disease physician at OU Health in Oklahoma City. "It started right when we started school." (Santucci, 10/9)

Bloomberg: Covid Hospitalizations Rise In Colorado Even With High Vaccination Rate
Covid-19 hospitalizations are rising again in Colorado even with more than 70% of those eligible in the state vaccinated, health officials said Friday. The recent daily average has been around 900 hospitalizations, one of the highest readings since the pandemic started in March 2020, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Two weeks ago, the average was running around 875. (Del Giudice, 10/8)

San Francisco Chronicle: These Charts Show The Incredibly Stark Difference In COVID-19 Death Rates Between Vaccinated And Unvaccinated In California
Unvaccinated Californians were between 15 and 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than vaccinated ones when deaths from the disease most recently peaked at the start of September, according to state data. The California Department of Public Health publishes data on the vaccination status of people who test positive for coronavirus as well as people who are hospitalized with, and die from, COVID-19. Their data shows that the death rate among unvaccinated Californians aged 16 and older soared in early September, reaching a peak of 13 average daily deaths per million on Sept. 6. (Neilson, 10/9)

CNN: Covid-19 Worsens Pregnancy Complication Risk, Study Shows 
Pregnant women who develop Covid-19 symptoms risk emergency complications and other problems with their pregnancies, according to two new studies. The disease also puts their children at risk. The first study showed that pregnant women with symptomatic Covid-19 had a higher percentage of emergency complications when compared to those who tested positive but didn't have symptoms. This research was part of a presentation given to the Anesthesiology 2021 Annual meeting over the weekend. (Christensen, 10/11)

New York Post: Smoking Marijuana Could Lead To Breakthrough COVID Cases, Study Finds
Heavy marijuana users who are also vaccinated may be more susceptible to breakthrough cases of COVID-19, a new study found.The study, published last Tuesday in World Psychology, found that those with a substance use disorder (SUD) — a dependence on marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, opioids and tobacco — were more likely to contract the coronavirus after receiving both of their vaccination shots. Those without a SUD saw a 3.6 percent rate of breakthrough infections, compared to a 7 percent rate in those with a SUD. At 7.8 percent, those with marijuana use disorder were most at risk for breakthrough infections, the study found. (10/11)

The Washington Post: Hundreds Of Thousands Of U.S. Troops Have Not Complied As Pentagon Deadlines Near 
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Pentagon’s first compliance deadlines near, with lopsided rates across the individual services and a spike in deaths among military reservists illustrating how political division over the shots has seeped into a nonpartisan force with unambiguous orders. Overall, the military’s vaccination rate has climbed since August, when Defense Department leaders, acting on a directive from President Biden, informed the nation’s 2.1 million troops that immunization would become mandatory, exemptions would be rare and those who refuse would be punished. Yet troops’ response has been scattershot, according to data assessed by The Washington Post. (Horton, 10/10)

Stateline: Red States Have Limited Options For Fighting Biden's Vaccine Rules
As Montana intensive care units fill with critically ill, mostly unvaccinated COVID-19 patients, hospital leaders there are caught between two laws that dictate whether they can require their employees to get immunized against the coronavirus. A state law that Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed in May prohibits Montana employers from requiring workers to get vaccinated. But President Joe Biden plans to require health care employers to mandate worker vaccinations at facilities that treat patients with public health insurance. Facilities that don’t comply risk losing federal reimbursement. “It has put, particularly hospitals, in a very difficult position of having a state law that says, ‘You can’t vaccinate,’ and a federal rule that says, ‘If you want to be paid [by the federal government], you have to vaccinate,’” said Rich Rasmussen, president and CEO of the Montana Hospital Association, a Helena-based trade group. (Quinton, 10/8)

NBC News: As Biden's Vaccinate-Or-Test Mandate Approaches, Questions Arise Over Enforcement
President Joe Biden says his sweeping Covid-19 vaccination and testing mandate will boost the economy and save lives, but as businesses prepare for the new requirement, they’re wondering not only what will be in the regulation, but how it will be enforced. The mandate, which will apply to organizations with at least 100 employees and cover an estimated 80 million workers, has already drawn threats of lawsuits from two dozen Republican attorneys general and prompted some people to vow to quit their jobs. But a greater challenge for the administration could lie within the agency tasked with ensuring compliance. (Przybyla and Strickler, 10/11)

AP: Small Businesses Navigate Ever-Changing COVID-19 Reality
For a brief moment this summer, it seemed like small businesses might be getting a break from the relentless onslaught of the pandemic. More Americans, many of them vaccinated, flocked to restaurants and stores without needing to mask up or socially distance. But then came a surge in cases due to the delta variant, a push for vaccine mandates and a reluctant return to more COVID-19 precautions. Now, small business owners are left trying to strike a balance between staying safe and getting back to being fully open. (Anderson, 10/10)

The Hill: Texas Gubernatorial Candidate Says COVID-19 Hospitalization Made Him 'More Dedicated To Fighting Against Vaccine Mandates'
Texas gubernatorial candidate Allen West, who is currently recovering from a case of COVID-19, said his hospitalization with the virus has made him “more dedicated to fighting against vaccine mandates.” West, who announced Saturday night that he has coronavirus-related pneumonia, advocated for monoclonal antibody infusion therapy as a way to combat COVID-19 instead of vaccines. “I can attest that, after this experience, I am even more dedicated to fighting against vaccine mandates. Instead of enriching the pockets of Big Pharma and corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, we should be advocating the monoclonal antibody infusion therapy,” Allen said on Twitter from the hospital Sunday morning. (Schnell, 10/10)

USA Today: COVID Vaccines For Kids Will Be In High Demand, Experts Urge Patience
“In the first four days after 12- to 15-year-olds were eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, we had nearly 28,000 vaccine doses given in the state,” reaching more than 7% of all the adolescents eligible, said Dr. Umair Shah, Washington’s secretary of health. With the expanded authorization, almost double that many children will be able to get in line – a full 8.5% of the U.S. population – and there is pent-up demand as many parents are eager to get their kids vaccinated now that they are back at school. “We’ve already had families inquire when they come in or calling and asking if we’re going to be giving the pediatric dose,” said Dr. Sharon Marshall, a professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University and pediatrician at Wayne Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Michigan in Detroit. (Weise, 10/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Fully Vaccinated And Had Covid-19? No Rush For A Booster Shot, Experts Say 
People who both had Covid-19 and are vaccinated don’t need to rush to get the boosters now rolling out across the U.S., health experts say. Millions of Americans who have received Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 vaccine now qualify for an additional dose, under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation of shots for seniors and certain at-risk adults. Some of those who qualify are people who have been infected with the disease, either before they were vaccinated or after. (Schwartz, 10/10)

Politico: State Leaders Unmoved By College Outrage Over Lax Covid Rules
Thousands of students and educators are pleading with college, state and federal leaders for tighter Covid-19 safety measures in response to campus deaths, widespread outbreaks and growing fears of both. Some professors in Georgia are refusing to teach under lax Covid-19 rules. Students and faculty at the two largest universities in Mississippi asked the state for tougher measures. From petitions in Utah to "die-in" protests in Iowa, thousands are pushing for stricter rules at their institutions. "Nobody else has to die," Neo Koite, who organized the protest after Ahuero’s death and met with campus administrators about Covid-19 safety measures, said in an interview. (Payne, 10/10)

AP: MSU: Nearly 90% Of Students, Staff Vaccinated For COVID-19
Nearly 90% of students, faculty and staff at Michigan State University have been vaccinated for COVID-19, according to university officials. The school issued a requirement in July for everyone expected on campus this fall to be vaccinated by the end of August. Most of the approximately 67,000 students, faculty and staff have filled out a vaccine verification form. (10/10)

The New York Times: Why Air Quality Monitors Are The Hot New Back-To-School Accessory
When Lizzie Rothwell, an architect in Philadelphia, sent her son to third grade this fall, she stocked his blue L.L. Bean backpack with pencils, wide-ruled paper — and a portable carbon dioxide monitor. The device gave her a quick way to assess how much fresh air was flowing through the school. Low levels of CO2 would indicate that it was well-ventilated, reducing her son’s odds of catching the coronavirus. But she quickly discovered that during lunch, CO2 levels in the cafeteria rose to nearly double those recommended by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Anthes, 10/10)

AP: LSU Creates Cellphone App For COVID-19 Contact Tracing
Researchers at Louisiana State University have created a cellphone app to track exposures to COVID-19.The Advocate reports the GeauxTrace contact tracing app uses the signal strength from Bluetooth software available on most cellphones and computers to assess the distance between cellphones. Users who were in the vicinity of someone who recently tested positive for COVID-19 are informed of the possible exposure. (10/10)

Bloomberg: Astra’s Antibody Prevents Severe Covid In Boon For Drugmaker
AstraZeneca Plc’s antibody cocktail was effective at preventing people with mild or moderate Covid-19 infection from worsening in a study that bolsters the drugmaker’s ambitions for the product. The cocktail halved the risk of developing severe illness or death compared with a placebo in 822 participants who had been symptomatic for a week or less and weren’t hospitalized, Astra said in a statement Monday. The results are another boon for the injected product after it was also found to be highly effective at preventing symptomatic disease in high-risk people. The news comes after Merck & Co. fueled optimism that it will soon have the first Covid pill. Both treatments could offer a simple way to treat patients before they ever reach the hospital. (Ring, 10/11)

NBC News: What Would A Covid Memorial Look Like? Designers Share Ideas For 'Unprecedented' Tribute
There is no memorial to the estimated 675,000 people killed in the U.S. in the 1918 Influenza pandemic on the National Mall. But if there were, some think, the country would have done a better job handling Covid-19. "I think we could have been much better prepared had we been more culturally aware about what happened in 1918," said Spencer Bailey, the author of a recent book about memorials who has an unusually personal connection to memorials. "One of the reasons that we've found ourselves in our scrambled response to Covid is there are barely any memorials to the flu of 1918."Many now intend to make sure this pandemic doesn't get lost to history like the last one. While it will most likely be years before anyone builds a Covid memorial in Washington, architects, artists and people touched by the pandemic from around the world are already thinking about ways to remember it, which might require reinventing the idea of memorials. (Seitz-Wald, 10/11)

Stat: Rates Of Depression And Anxiety Climbed Across The Globe In 2020
Rates of depression and anxiety climbed globally by more than 25% in 2020, a devastating ripple effect of the Covid-19 pandemic that has particularly affected women and young people, according to a new study. “We knew Covid would have an impact on these mental disorders, we just didn’t know how big the impact was going to be,” said Alize Ferrari, a lead researcher at the Queensland Center for Mental Health Research in Australia and co-author of the study, published Friday in the Lancet. (Gaffney, 10/8)

Axios: 90% Of Medicare Advantage Enrollees Enrolled In Highest-Quality Plans 
Nine out of 10 Medicare Advantage members are enrolled in plans that earned the government's highest quality marks for 2022, according to new federal data. Health insurers were quick to tout the quality scores in press releases. But the federal government went easy on the grades during the pandemic, and experts have long considered MA's quality system to be "flawed and inconsistent." (Herman, 10/11)

Modern Healthcare: Some Hospitals Will Opt To Pay Fine For Not Publishing Prices, Lawyers Say
While most providers say they agree with the intent of the price transparency law, smaller hospitals are struggling to gather the data and present them in a useful format. Hospitals were required as of Jan. 1 to post machine-readable files of the rates they negotiate with payers, gross charges and discounted cash prices, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hopes will curb higher-than-average prices. CMS recently sent a second round of warning letters to hospitals that haven't disclosed the rates of 300 "shoppable services" in a consumer-friendly form, threatening a maximum yearly fine of more than $2 million for larger hospitals and almost $110,000 for those with fewer than 30 beds. (Kacik, 10/8)

Modern Healthcare: Healthcare Employment Plummeted In September
Healthcare hiring nosedived in September as it declined for the third time this year, according to the latest federal jobs report. Employment in the healthcare sector fell by an estimated 17,500 jobs last month, preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show. The decline is the second-biggest this year, overshadowed only by January, when hiring contracted by 80,500 jobs. (Christ, 10/8)

AP: NH Hospital Reaches Contracts With Major Insurance Carriers
For the first time, New Hampshire’s only state-run psychiatric treatment facility has negotiated contracts with all major insurance carriers in the state. Carriers now under contract with New Hampshire Hospital include Aetna, Ambetter, Anthem, Cigna, Harvard Pilgrim and United Health Care, state officials said. “Over the past few years, we have made significant strides to rebuild New Hampshire’s mental health system, and those critical efforts will continue,” Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. (10/10)

Stat: Relay Therapeutics Touts Data On Bile Cancer Drug 
Relay Therapeutics will present data at a medical meeting Friday that give investors and oncologists the first look at RLY-4008, its drug to treat a form of liver cancer. “So far in the clinic, 4008 has done everything we designed it to do from the outset,” Don Bergstrom, Relay’s chief medical officer, told STAT. Relay uses a supercomputer designed at the research firm run by hedge fund billionaire David E. Shaw to better understand proteins and design drugs that target them. The company has a market capitalization of $2.4 billion. (Herper, 10/8)

Bloomberg: Vectura’s Inhaler Sales May Suffer Over Philip Morris Backlash
Vectura Group Plc faces a growing backlash over its acquisition by a tobacco company, with some doctors and patients signaling they may switch to treatments made by rivals such as AstraZeneca Plc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Respiratory organizations plan to issue guidance within the coming weeks on how health-care providers should handle Philip Morris International Inc.’s purchase of the U.K. company that makes treatments for lung illnesses. Some are already voicing discomfort. “At my next hospital appointment I’ll be asking my consultant to switch,” said Edinburgh-based Olivia Fulton, 35, who suffers from severe asthma and has been using GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Ellipta device that Vectura receives royalties for. “I do not want a tobacco company to profit from my ill health.” (Gretler, 10/11)

The Hill: EPA Closer To Unveiling Plan For Tackling 'Forever Chemicals' 
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will soon unveil a plan to address what it sees as “inadequate” regulations on a class of toxic chemicals that disproportionately affects vulnerable groups, according to documents obtained by The Hill. The agency’s forthcoming effort to crack down on the chemicals called PFAS, which have been linked to health problems such as kidney and testicular cancer, were previewed in a slideshow recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. (Frazin, 10/10)

AP: Team Gets $32.7M For Colorectal Cancer Prevention Study
A Dartmouth-Hitchcock research team has been approved for $32.7 million for a colorectal cancer prevention study of older adults. The study will compare colonoscopy and stool-based testing for the prevention of the cancer in adults 70 and older with prior small colon polyps, said Audrey Calderwood, who leads the research team. (10/10)

NBC News: Black Covid Patients Receive Fewer Medical Follow-Ups, Study Shows
Black Covid patients are less likely to receive medical follow-ups after being hospitalized and more likely to experience longer waits until they can return to work, according to a University of Michigan study published Tuesday. The study surveyed the health outcomes of 2,217 Covid patients in Michigan 60 days after hospitalization. The results found that more than 50 percent of patients of color were readmitted to the hospital within 60 days after being released. Patients of color were also more than 65 percent more likely to experience moderate to severe financial impact because of Covid-19. (Phillips, 10/8)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Health Officials Report A Measles Case At Children’s Hospital Of Philadelphia, But No Threat To Public
Health officials said Friday that people recently inside Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia may have been exposed to measles, but the exposure was limited to the hospital and there was no outside threat to the public. The people with possible exposure were receiving notifications, officials said. No further details about the measles case were provided. “We believe there is no threat to the public associated with this case of measles,” acting Philadelphia Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said in a statement. (Moran, 10/9)

Fox News: Exercise Lowers The Risk Of Breast Cancer, Studies Show
Exercise is well-known to benefit a person's physical and mental well-being, and research also suggests exercise may lower the risk of developing breast cancer. According to the Cleveland Clinic, one study demonstrated that increasing exercise and decreasing body fat lowered the risk of breast cancer for postmenopausal women. The findings, published in JAMA Oncology in 2015, involved a 12-month long randomized trial, and ultimately found that 300 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous exercise was more effective than 150 minutes per week in reducing total fat among postmenopausal women. (Lencki, 10/9)

CBS News: Pandemic Has Exacerbated "Diaper Need" In The U.S. 
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, one in three families in the U.S. struggled to afford to buy enough diapers for their young children. But while "diaper need," as it's referred to, has long been a condition of living in poverty, it has become even more pervasive over the course of the pandemic, according to the National Diaper Bank Network (NBDN), a coalition of 240 member diaper banks — sites that distribute diapers to community organizations — across the U.S. "The issue of diaper need has existed for a long time," Joanne Goldblum, chief executive of NDBN, told CBS MoneyWatch. "But during COVID, some of our member diaper banks have seen upward of a 500% increase in people asking for product." (Cerullo, 10/8)

Fox News: Increase In Accidental Burns Seen For Kids At Home During Pandemic
A new study shows that accidental burn injuries among children increased during the coronavirus pandemic compared to 2019. According to Dr. Christina Georgeades, a pediatric surgery research fellow at Children's Wisconsin, stay-at-home orders "created a new dynamic between their social environment." "Understanding specific factors that contributed will be key in minimizing the risk of future burn injuries as we continue to navigate the pandemic environment," Georgeades said in an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) study. U.S. News reports that most burns occurred with unsupervised children. The study shows that fireworks share some of the blame too. (Jones, 10/9)

The Washington Post: Video Shows Officers Pull A Man Who Is Paraplegic From His Car During A Traffic Stop
Civil rights activists are condemning the arrest of a Black man with paraplegia in Dayton, Ohio, who was seen in newly released body-camera video being pulled from his car during a traffic stop last week as he yelled for help and told officers he cannot use his legs. (Bellware, 10/9)

AP: Tennessee Prisons Announce Suicide Prevention Hotline
The Tennessee Department of Correction now has a suicide prevention hotline which friends and family of inmates can call if they are concerned about their loved one, the department announced. Calls will be will be routed to the department’s Central Communication Center, which is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Analysts at the center will notify the facility where the inmate is housed so intervention can take place immediately. (10/11)

AP: Sydney Opens To Vaccinated After 100-Plus Days Of Lockdown
Sydney hairdressers, gyms, cafés and bars reopened to fully vaccinated customers on Monday for the first time in more than 100 days after Australia’s largest city achieved a vaccination benchmark. Sydney planned to reopen on the Monday after 70% of the New South Wales state population aged 16 and older were fully vaccinated. By Monday, 73.5% of the target population was fully vaccinated and more than 90% have received at least one dose. (McGuirk, 10/11)

Politico: The Lost Summer: Central And Eastern Europe Pays Price For Slow Coronavirus Vaccination 
While Western Europe celebrates the results of successful vaccination campaigns, a very different picture is emerging in Central and Eastern Europe as a wave of coronavirus cases and deaths threatens to overwhelm already overstretched health systems. A summer of sluggish vaccination, the relaxation of most restrictions and, in some countries, political upheaval have created a perfect storm for the highly infectious Delta variant. And unlike in previous waves, there is no appetite for further restrictions, leading some experts to warn that some countries are headed for Lombardy-like scenes. (Furlong, 10/8)

AP: Russians Flock To Serbia For Western-Made COVID-19 Vaccines
When Russian regulators approved the country’s own coronavirus vaccine, it was a moment of national pride, and the Pavlov family was among those who rushed to take the injection. But international health authorities have not yet given their blessing to the Sputnik V shot. So when the family from Rostov-on-Don wanted to visit the West, they looked for a vaccine that would allow them to travel freely — a quest that brought them to Serbia, where hundreds of Russian citizens have flocked in recent weeks to receive Western-approved COVID-19 shots. (Gec and Litvinova, 10/9)

The New York Times: Pfizer To Vaccinate Entire City In Brazil As Part Of Study
In the southwestern Brazilian city of Toledo, you won’t find much vaccine skepticism. About 98 percent eligible residents there have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, according to municipal officials. Most received the vaccine offered by Pfizer, and this week the drug maker said that presented an opportunity: Pfizer announced that it would fully vaccinate everyone in the city over the age of 12 so it can carry out a study of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. (Hassan, 10/11)