Weekly Edition: January 8, 2021

Covid ‘Decimated Our Staff’ as the Pandemic Ravages Health Workers of Color
By Danielle Renwick, The Guardian Covid-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic Americans — and those disparities extend to medical workers.

Lost on the Frontline: Explore the Database
By The Staffs of KFF Health News and The Guardian As of Wednesday, the KHN-Guardian project counted 3,607 U.S. health worker deaths in the first year of the pandemic. Today we add 39 profiles, including a hospice chaplain, a nurse who spoke to intubated patients "like they were listening," and a home health aide who couldn't afford to stop working. This is the most comprehensive count in the nation as of April 2021, and our interactive database investigates the question: Did they have to die?

Do-It-Yourself Contact Tracing Is a ‘Last Resort’ in Communities Besieged by Covid
By Brett Dahlberg, WCMU Covid-19 cases are spreading so fast that they're outpacing the contact-tracing capacities of some local health departments. Faced with mounting caseloads, those departments are asking people who test positive for the coronavirus to do their own contact tracing.

As the Vulnerable Wait, Some Political Leaders’ Spouses Get Covid Vaccines
By Laura Ungar Spouses of governors and federal leaders are getting early access to scarce doses of covid-19 vaccines. Some officials have argued their inoculation sets an example for the public and shows the vaccines to be safe and effective. But critics say those doses should go to more vulnerable people first.

In Los Angeles and Beyond, Oxygen Is the Latest Covid Bottleneck
By Rae Ellen Bichell and Lauren Weber The oxygen delivery infrastructure is crumbling under pressure in Los Angeles and other covid hot spots, jeopardizing patients’ access to precious air and limiting hospital turnover.

‘Last Responders’ Brace for Surge in Covid Deaths Across US
By Cindy Loose In some parts of the country, the surge in covid cases is overwhelming coroners, morgues, funeral homes and religious leaders. It has required ingenuity and even changed the rituals of honoring the dead.

Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race?
By Arthur Allen How two effective vaccines on the market make it so much harder to quickly test any competing vaccines.

San Francisco Wrestles With Drug Approach as Death and Chaos Engulf Tenderloin
By Rachel Scheier Covid-19, distrust of police and cheap narcotics have turned parts of the wealthy city into cesspools of filth and drug overdose. City officials and residents profoundly disagree on what needs to be done.

Heading Off the Next Pandemic
By Jim Robbins As long as humans encroach on nature, pandemics are inevitable — making it important to concentrate resources in areas where people and wildlife are linked.

Children’s Hospitals Are Partly to Blame as Superbugs Increasingly Attack Kids
By Laura Ungar A growing body of research shows that overuse and misuse of antibiotics in children’s hospitals is helping fuel superbugs, which typically strike frail seniors but are increasingly infecting kids. And the pandemic is making things worse.

Children’s Hospitals Grapple With Wave of Mental Illness
By Carmen Heredia Rodriguez The disruption to daily life caused by the pandemic has increased the number of children seeking mental health care, further straining a system that already struggled to meet the need.

Black Women Find Healing (But Sometimes Racism, Too) in the Outdoors
By Chandra Thomas Whitfield A Colorado woman formed an adventure group to encourage other Black women to enjoy the outdoors, and now it has chapters across the U.S. and Canada. Yet many Black adventure seekers say they often face racism when partaking in healthy outdoor activities.

Many Health Plans Now Must Cover Full Cost of Expensive HIV Prevention Drugs
By Michelle Andrews Most private insurance will be required to cover drugs, like Truvada, that offer protection against HIV infection, without making plan members share the cost.

Seniors Face Crushing Drug Costs as Congress Stalls on Capping Medicare Out-Of-Pockets
By Harris Meyer While many private insurers cap what members pay in health costs, Medicare does not. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have proposed annual limits ranging from $2,000 to $3,100. But there’s disagreement about how to pay for that cost cap.

Illinois Is First in the Nation to Extend Health Coverage to Undocumented Seniors
By Giles Bruce As the pandemic hits Latino communities especially hard, Illinois is expanding public health insurance to all low-income noncitizen seniors. Advocates hope other states follow its lead.

Hospital Prices Just Got a Lot More Transparent. What Does This Mean for You?
By Julie Appleby Under a rule that kicked in Jan. 1, hospitals are required to make public the prices they negotiate with insurers. That’s a lot more information than was previously required, which was only the posting of “chargemasters” — the hospital-generated list prices that few consumers or health plans actually pay.

‘An Arm and a Leg’: A Look Back at 2020 — What We Learned and Where We’re Headed
By Dan Weissmann T.K. Dutes — a former nurse who is now a radio host and podcast-maker — interviewed ‘An Arm and a Leg’ host Dan Weissmann about what he learned in 2020, and what’s ahead for the show.

Biden’s First Order of Business May Be to Undo Trump’s Policies, but It Won’t Be Easy
By Julie Rovner President Donald Trump made substantial changes to the nation’s health care system using executive branch authority. But reversing policies that Democrats oppose would take time and personnel resources, competing with other priorities of the new administration.

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Georgia Turns the Senate Blue
Democratic victories in two runoff elections in Georgia will give Democrats control of the Senate starting Jan. 20, which means they will be in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House for the first time since 2010. Meanwhile, covid continues to run rampant while vaccine distribution lags. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News and Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.

KHN on the Air This Week
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media in recent weeks to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.

Listen: How Operation Warp Speed Became a Slow Walk
KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal discusses the bottlenecks in distributing covid vaccines on NPR's “On My Mind” podcast with host Diane Rehm.