Covid ‘Decimated Our Staff’ as the Pandemic Ravages Health Workers of Color
Covid-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic Americans — and those disparities extend to medical workers.
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Covid-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic Americans — and those disparities extend to medical workers.
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.
As long as humans encroach on nature, pandemics are inevitable — making it important to concentrate resources in areas where people and wildlife are linked.
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.
Yolanda Coar was 40 when she died of COVID-19 in August 2020 in Augusta, Georgia. She was also a nurse manager, and one of nearly 3,000 frontline workers who have died in the U.S. fighting this virus, according to an exclusive investigation by The Guardian and KHN.
In a fracas between a largely rural county and neighboring cities, class and politics are just as relevant as the coronavirus. People are getting “stupid and mean,” as one mayor put it.
It typically takes years of persuasion to change habits in the name of health safety. Local officials who are stuck with the responsibility of enforcing statewide pandemic-related mandates are trying to transform behavior fast.
There are already signs that the distribution of the COVID vaccines will be messy, confusing and chaotic.
The National Academy of Sciences cites journalists’ “Lost on the Frontline” project in a push to expand federal tracking of worker fatalities.
At least 2,900 health workers have died since the pandemic began. Many were minorities with the highest levels of patient contact.
Months before federal officials authorized experimental vaccines to ward off the coronavirus in humans, scientists tried a veterinary vaccine in endangered ferrets. Drugmakers are researching similar efforts for other animals proving vulnerable to the virus, such as farmed minks, in part to guard against virus mutations that could pose new risks to people.
The federal government expects vaccinations to be available to everyone who wants them by summer — though glitches are inevitable. If enough of us get vaccinated, we could wave goodbye to the pandemic in 2021.
Recent deaths on a small Native American reservation in Montana have underlined the heightened risks for Indigenous youths and how suicide prevention programs are struggling to operate during the pandemic.
After missteps in Washington, each state and county is left to juggle where to send vaccines first and how to get them to each nursing home, hospital local health department and even school.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in July that California would target businesses that flagrantly violate public health orders. But the state’s strategy of education over enforcement means that businesses that don’t comply face few — if any — consequences.
Fears about lingering coronavirus at the White House are prompting a massive disinfection initiative before the Bidens move in.
A UCSF emergency room physician reflects on California’s response to COVID-19 and on lessons learned — or not — as the coronavirus makes its second devastating surge.
Howard University Hospital officials are eager to get their 1,900 employees vaccinated, but so far few are showing up.
Scientists learned the wrong lesson from past outbreaks, but Dr. Anthony Fauci doesn’t cast blame.
As some patients linger near death, staffers at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center seek ways to expand capacity for a surge of cases that isn’t letting up.
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