Hospitals in Montana and Idaho reported threats and harassment from public officials and family members of patients who were denied treatment with a drug not authorized to treat covid-19.
This new variant has set off alarm bells in the public health community, but much remains to be learned about it.
President Joe Biden’s social spending budget is on its way to the U.S. Senate, where Democratic leaders are (optimistically) hoping to complete work by the end of the year. Meanwhile, covid is surging again in parts of the country, along with the political divides it continues to cause. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Joanne Kenen of Politico and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and Mary Agnes Carey of KHN join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner previews next week’s Supreme Court abortion oral arguments with Florida State University law professor Mary Ziegler.
The promising antiviral drugs to treat covid can halt hospitalizations and deaths, but only if they’re given to patients within three to five days of their first symptoms, a narrow window many people won’t meet. Here’s why.
You probably won’t be testing everyone at your Thanksgiving table for covid because the tests are expensive and hard to find. Why? The federal government is partly to blame.
Some business owners, wondering whether it’s too soon to ease the requirement, long for more guidance and support from the mayor.
But state and local officials embrace the requirement because it creates a safer workplace while allowing employees to continue working.
Health officials hope the rollout of covid shots for young children and other initiatives will boost routine vaccine rates that dropped during the pandemic and narrow socioeconomic disparities.
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A health center with clinics on Chicago’s southwest side that serves mostly Hispanic patients has provided the most covid shots to kids in the city by being accessible, (literally) speaking the language of the community and setting up pop-up clinics at schools and parks. It provides a few lessons as the nation gears up to vaccinate 5- to 11-year-olds.