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Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, calls on state and federal health inspectors to focus on how facilities keep infections from spreading, especially in areas that have reported coronavirus cases.
Health officials stress that the new coronavirus devastating mainland China continues to pose minimal risk in the United States. The exception involves people who have had “close contact” with someone infected with the virus. So what exactly is close contact?
There is currently no central coordination of the supply of protective garb and masks in U.S. hospital inventories. A CDC project wants hospitals to share that information for the good of all.
KHN Midwest editor and correspondent Laura Ungar shares her expertise on Vice President Mike Pence’s public health track record as he leads the nation’s novel coronavirus response. Ungar covered a 2015 Indiana HIV outbreak and its fallout amid Pence's tenure as governor.
President-elect Donald Trump has made his choices to fill some top jobs at the Department of Health and Human Services. They include controversial figures who were vocal critics of the Biden administration’s handling of the covid pandemic and have proposed sweeping changes to the agencies they would lead. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court heard its first two health-related cases of the term, challenging a Tennessee law barring transgender medical care for minors and, separately, challenging the FDA’s handling of e-cigarettes. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University and Politico, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF Health News’ Bram Sable-Smith, who reported and wrote the latest KFF Health News-Washington Post Well+Being “Bill of the Month” feature, about an emergency room bill for a visit that didn’t get past the waiting room.
The omicron variant has proved adept at finding hosts, often by reinfecting people who recovered from earlier bouts of covid. But whether omicron triggers long covid as often and severe as previous variants is a matter of heated study.
The Homeland Security secretary missed the mark with his estimate of the flu's annual U.S. mortality rate.
California Healthline reporters Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Anna Almendrala spoke with WNHN’s “The Attitude w/ Arnie Arnesen” about the novel coronavirus and its impact on Asian immigrants in the United States.
Hospitals and nursing homes say they are acting to protect students and patients, but nursing educators worry the pipeline of new nurses could be slowed at a time when they may be needed most. Some doctors in training have also seen their clinical rotations canceled.
Biden’s statement leaves out context about how countries decided on which test they’d use to identify the presence of the coronavirus.
As public health departments work on improving their message, the skepticism and mistrust often reserved for covid-19 vaccines now threaten other public health priorities, including flu shots and childhood vaccines.
As the numbers of coronavirus fatalities and infections rise, the threat posed by the outbreak in China can seem frightening. But public health officials say the risk in the United States is low. Experts discuss some important issues that can help U.S. residents understand how the epidemic is unfolding.
Is someone at home sick with covid-19? One simple but effective strategy for keeping the virus from spreading is to make your indoor air as much like the outdoors as possible.
Health care experts thought the battle was won against heart disease, measles, smoking, STDs and other life-threatening conditions and behaviors. Better think again.
Since the beginning of 2017, inspectors have cited more nursing homes for failing to ensure that all workers follow federal prevention and control protocols than for any other type of violation, according to federal records.
While covering the SARS outbreak as a reporter in China, KHN's editor-in-chief saw that common sense is the best defense against viral illness.
To date, the U.S. has multiple confirmed cases of the viral infection that originated in Wuhan, China. That includes cases in which the virus passed from person to person within this country. So why don’t health officials share more information with the public?
Researchers say the billions in pandemic funding available for ventilation upgrades in U.S. schools provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to combat covid-19, as well as making air more breathable for students living with allergies, asthma, and chronic wildfire smoke.
As the country faces a rise in new infections driven by the omicron BA.5 subvariant of the coronavirus, about 70% of people 50 and older who got a first covid-19 booster shot haven't received the recommended second one, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many undervaccinated Americans have lost interest, and others aren’t sure whether to get boosted again now or wait for vaccines reformulated to target newer strains of the virus.
When the first confirmed U.S. patient was pinpointed in Washington state, health clinic workers there weren't rattled. They were prepped by new statewide protocols on contagion containment, in the wake of last year's measles scare.
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