Health Experts Decry Efforts To Bar Asylum Seekers Over Fears They Spread COVID
Also, reports on two Navajo Nation sisters who worked side by side and died of COVID, mental health issues for trauma surgeons, and on people of color on the front line of the pandemic who are dying.
Georgia Health News:
Health Experts’ Letter Slams Proposal That Can Bar Asylum-Seekers
Dozens of health experts in Georgia have signed a letter to federal officials protesting a Trump administration proposal that would place a new obstacle for some people seeking asylum in the United States. The rule aims to bar entry to some individuals based on the threat of spreading diseases. If adopted, it would add to the administration’s effort to tighten border control policies. (Miller, 8/24)
WBUR:
'Forever Altered': Health Care Workers Face Mental Health Struggles After Caring For COVID Patients
Boston Medical Center trauma surgeon Dr. Tracey Dechert is used to tragedy. She has to rush into operating rooms to perform complex surgeries on people who've been in terrible accidents or shot, or have suffered other trauma and the outcome isn't always good. But when she oversaw a COVID-19 intensive care unit at BMC for a couple of months, she was overwhelmed by the quiet of the floor. Patients were walled off in their rooms, alone, with no family. Dechert and her colleagues had to cover themselves from head to toe in personal protective equipment to enter the rooms and approach the patients. (Joliocoeur and Mullins, 8/25)
Kaiser Health News and The Guardian:
Many People Of Color, Immigrants Among 1,080 US Health Workers Lost To COVID
More than 1,000 front-line health care workers reportedly have died of COVID-19, according to Lost on the Frontline, an ongoing investigation by The Guardian and KHN to track and memorialize every U.S. health care worker who dies from the coronavirus. Earlier this month, the organizations published a major interactive database. It is the most comprehensive accounting of U.S. health care workers’ deaths in the country. (Renwick and Dubnow, 8/26)
Kaiser Health News:
Two Navajo Sisters Who Were Inseparable Died Of COVID Just Weeks Apart
Cheryl and Corrina Thinn were almost joined at the hip. The sisters, both members of the Navajo Nation, shared an office at Arizona’s Tuba City Regional Health Care. Cheryl conducted reviews to make sure patients were receiving adequate care. Corrina was a social worker. Their desks were just inches apart. They lived together, with their mother, Mary Thinn. They helped raise each other’s children. And they died just weeks apart, at ages 40 and 44, after falling ill with COVID-19. (Dobnow, 8/26)
Explore The 'Lost On The Frontline' Interactive Database: Over 1,400 U.S. health care workers have died fighting COVID-19. KHN and The Guardian count them and investigate why.
