Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'There’s A Huge Emotional Toll': How Medical Workers Balance Their Families Alongside Front-Line Jobs
Boston Globe: ‘I Cried In Private’: The Stress Of Being A Doctor And Parent Working In A COVID-19 Unit
Over the past three months, parents around the world have struggled to cope with the physical, emotional, and mental demands of illness, job loss, and uncertainty. For many of us, fulfilling our most basic responsibilities—providing for and protecting our children—has come to feel overwhelming, if not impossible. For parent-health care workers treating COVID-infected patients, the pressures and anxieties are magnified exponentially. If they could afford the considerable financial cost, some, like Baci, chose to live apart from their families. (Mnookin, 6/25)
Houston Chronicle: Joining The Front Lines: Texas Medical Residents Begin Rotations During The Pandemic
Tens of thousands of residents are beginning medical careers as a new wave of coronavirus patients threaten to overwhelm hospitals and the doctors who care for them. It’s not quite what these new doctors signed up for — or expected — when they entered medical school four years ago. But they are providing reinforcements to a stretched corps of health care providers desperate for help as cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, surge in Texas. (Wu, 6/25)
WBUR: Trump's Racial Slurs To Describe Coronavirus Put Health Care Workers, Patients At Risk
President Trump again referred to COVID-19 as the "Kung flu” in Arizona on Tuesday night. The president's press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended his use of the term, saying he was simply characterizing the virus's origin. But others, including those working in health care, say these racial slurs are impacting the Asian American community. (Young and Hagan, 6/25)
KQED: Getting Critical COVID-19 Protective Equipment In The Bay Area Has Been A Mess. Here's Why
As the coronavirus spread early on, more than half of California hospitals had just two weeks of critical N95 masks, though they were already experiencing hiccups in the supply chain, public records show. Now, as the Bay Area reopens, some hospitals and other health care facilities in the region are still fighting to keep enough personal protective equipment, or PPE, at the ready to shield workers against COVID-19. (Peterson, Stark and Pickoff-White, 6/25)
KQED: PPE Is Still A Huge Issue. Here's How Each County Is Handling It
Alameda County has aggressively stockpiled protective gear to support all types of health care facilities, but no two counties have handled the challenge of obtaining PPE the same way. Santa Clara County has distributed around 4 million pieces of equipment so far, according to Dr. Jennifer Tong, who directs the health care surge branch for the county’s Emergency Operations Center. (Peterson and Stark, 6/25)
KQED: Over Half Of Hospitality Workers Lose Their Jobs In San Francisco Area
San Francisco, Redwood City and parts of San Mateo County have one of the lowest unemployment rates in California, 12.6% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The area also had one of the lowest drops in employment. But those numbers mask the stark divide that’s only growing between people who can easily transfer to working from home, and those who can’t. (Sparling, 6/25)
Stat: Hospitals See Shortages Of A Cheap Steroid That Could Help Treat Covid-19
After preliminary release of a study found that a cheap steroid reduced deaths by a third in hospitalized Covid-19 patients, hospitals across the U.S. saw a surge in demand for the drug, and there is a shortage of several injectable versions. Specifically, hospital orders for dexamethasone, a commonly used and inexpensive corticosteroid, spiked 183% on June 16, when study researchers released top-line data that suggested the decades-old therapy could possibly improve the odds of survival in the sickest patients. The study was run by scientists at the University of Oxford in the U.K. (Silverman, 6/25)
