(NEW YORK) — New boosters for 5- to 11-year-olds are just weeks away from authorization, the vaccine chief at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Peter Marks, said Tuesday.
While primary vaccines are already authorized for children 6 months and older, the FDA has yet to authorize the newly updated booster shots — designed specifically to combat currently circulating omicron subvariants — for the youngest Americans.
Those boosters, which were authorized at the beginning of the month for everyone 12 and older, will next be authorized for children in the elementary school age range, and then later be authorized for kids under 5.
“I’m confident that we’re only a matter of weeks away” from authorizing the 5-11 age range, Marks said during an event with the COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project. Marks said that the youngest age group, kids under 5, was still “a few months away” from authorization.
“Tailoring a vaccine against the most widely circulating variant is a similar approach used against the influenza virus, and I would not be surprised if this is an approach we see, seasonally, with COVID-19,” said Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Children’s Health and an ABC News medical contributor.
But kids under 5 were just recently authorized for primary vaccines, Marks said, so many are still in the process of getting their first doses and not yet in need of boosters.
Fewer than 40% of 5- to 11-year-olds and 10% of younger children 6 months to 4 years old have started their primary COVID-19 vaccination series, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Marks urged parents to generally get their kids vaccinated because the updated boosters cannot be given to people who haven’t yet received a primary series.
“There are a lot of kids ages 5 to 11 out there who haven’t had their primary series, so you can’t get the updated booster until you’ve had the primary series. So it’s a good idea to think about getting your child vaccinated against COVID-19,” Marks said.
“It’s critical parents not only get their children vaccinated but stay up to date about news on upcoming boosters,” Patel said. “While data and information becomes available regarding the omicron-specific booster for kids, I would encourage parents to make sure their kids have completed their primary vaccine series to prevent any delays.”
(NEW YORK) — Cancer deaths in the United States are continuing to decline, according to a new report from the American Association for Cancer Research.
The report, published Wednesday, found that deaths from cancer have decreased by 2.3% every year between 2016 and 2019.
Overall, there has been a 32% reduction in the U.S. cancer death rate since 1991, which translates into approximately 3.5 million lives being saved, the report said.
Additionally, in 2022, there are more than 18 million cancer survivors living in the U.S., equivalent to 5.4% of the population, the report found. Fifty years earlier, there were just 3 million cancer survivors.
According to the report, the decreasing number of deaths is due to “unprecedented progress” made against cancer within the last decade.
This includes eight new anticancer medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration between August 2021 and July 2022 as well as 10 previously approved medications that have been expanded to treat other types of cancer.
Another reason is due to the decline in smoking, the report says. Rates of smoking among U.S. adults have also decreased from 42% in 1965 to 12.5% in 2020.
The report also highlights the importance of cancer screenings, which can determine if a person has precancerous lesions or cancer in its early stages.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Colorectal Cancer Control Program — which aims to rise cancer screening rates among people between 45 and 75 years of age — saw an average increase of 8.2 percentage points and 12.3 percentage points among clinics that participated in the program for two and four years, respectively, according to the report.
“Basic research discoveries have driven the remarkable advances that we’ve seen in cancer medicine in recent years,” Dr. Lisa Coussens, the president of AACR, said in a statement.
“Targeted therapies, immunotherapy, and other new therapeutic approaches being applied clinically all stem from fundamental discoveries in basic science,” the statement added. “Investment in cancer science, as well as support for science education at all levels, is absolutely essential to drive the next wave of discoveries and accelerate progress.”
However, because cancer continues to be the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. — with an estimated 600,000 lives expected to be lost this year — the AACR is calling on Congress to increase funding for the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health and for the FDA, which oversees the regulation of anticancer medication.
The group also called for more support for programs such as President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, which was relaunched in February 2022, with a goal of slashing the national cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years.
The good news comes despite a recent report that cancers among adults younger than age 50 have “dramatically increased” globally over the last several decades.
Researchers from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital said the sharp rise of several cancers including breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver and pancreas began in the early 1990s.
The Brigham study found the rise is partially attributable to early screenings for some of these cancers. Early life exposures such as people’s diet, weight, lifestyle, environmental exposure, and microbiome may factor into what’s contributing to early-onset cancer, but more information on individual exposures is needed, the study said.
ABC News’ Dr. Evelyn Huang contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — With doctor’s offices and pharmacies now offering seasonal flu shots and updated COVID-19 boosters, experts are urging Americans to get both, with many saying October is the best time.
While experts say October may be an ideal window to boost immunity, they are also emphasizing the importance of getting vaccinated, period — whenever you are able. It’s safe for people to get both shots during the same visit for added convenience, experts say.
White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told ABC News the best time to get a newly updated COVID-19 booster is “no later than the end of October for maximum protection,” which aligns with flu shot timing recommendations.
The “Goldilocks moment” for the flu shot is also October, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. However, anyone who gets the shot in September should still expect protection during the flu season, which typically lasts until spring.
“I think my general advice is, get it [when] it’s convenient,” Chin-Hong said.
Experts also say not to worry if you can’t get your flu shot before Halloween.
“If you for whatever reason cannot get a flu shot by the end of October, it’s not too late,” said Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Children’s Health and an ABC News medical contributor.
Bad flu season on the horizon?
Some experts predict that the seasonal influenza virus — following two years of mild activity during the COVID-19 pandemic — is expected to be back in full force this season.
A typical pre-pandemic year would see around 8% of the U.S. population sick from flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths can exceed more than 50,000, as they did most recently in the 2017-2018 season.
Those most at risk of severe illness from influenza are the elderly and immunocompromised.
“What we’re concerned about, of course, are people who are older, over age 65. They account for about 15-17% of the population but 80% of the [flu] deaths and hospitalizations,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
But even young, otherwise healthy people benefit from the flu shot, which also lowers the risk of spreading the virus to others.
“A lower risk does not mean no risk. By getting vaccinated, you really do reduce the likelihood that you will be the dreaded spreader,” Schaffner said.
Meanwhile, becoming ill with the flu can not only put a damper on holiday plans, but it also often leads to unwanted symptoms that last for multiple days.
“For anybody who’s gotten the flu, it’s definitely not a walk in the park,” Chin-Hong said.
Getting vaccinated in October or early November is ideal because “[you want] your annual vaccination to extend throughout the winter, well through February into March, and even into April,” Schaffner said.
“The only other sort of change with the timing might be for people who are pregnant,” Chin-Hong said.
He explained that pregnant women may want to try and have a flu shot before delivery, which allows the newborn to benefit from the mother’s antibodies, especially given that infants under 6 months old cannot be vaccinated.
Experts say flu shots may be especially important for children this year given concerns about how the relaxation of pandemic-era restrictions may impact children.
“Given the fact that schools are back open, COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, and kids are back to their normal rambunctious selves [they] are at risk of catching influenza this year,” Patel said. “Parents should not generalize influenza as a common cold. Thousands of kids are hospitalized every year from influenza with young infants and kids with underlying medical conditions being at highest risk.”
Updated COVID-19 boosters may also become annual shots
The Food and Drug Administration recently authorized the first updated COVID-19 booster shots — the first major upgrade to COVID-19 vaccines. Because protection from COVID-19 fades slowly over time, the White House has previously stated that variant-specific COVID shots may also become an annual reality, similar to seasonal flu shots.
The new COVID-19 boosters are designed to be a better match against currently circulating COVID-19 variants, and are currently authorized for everyone 12 and older who had their last COVID-19 shot at least two months ago. People previously infected with COVID may also consider waiting 90 days before receiving their booster shot, according to the CDC. The authorization of updated boosters for younger children is expected in “a matter of weeks,” according to Dr. Peter Marks, the director of the group within the FDA responsible for assuring the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Although it is not clear if there will be another COVID-19 surge this fall, more than 350 people still die every day of COVID-19. Compared to young adults, those over the age of 65 are 60 times more likely to die from COVID-19, according to the CDC. The death rate is 340 times higher for those over the age of 85.
Is it safe to get the COVID booster and flu shot at the same time?
Experts say that getting both your COVID booster and flu shot at the same time won’t weaken your body’s immune capacity to fight either virus.
“If you give the body two signals, it’s not going to make less [immunity] because it’s concentrating on another signal,” Chin-Hong said.
Although children under 12 are not yet eligible for the new booster shots, many are still getting their original COVID-19 vaccines, which are authorized for children 6 months and older.
Similar to the guidance for adults, pediatricians say it’s safe to give young children COVID-19 shots and flu shots in the same doctor’s visit.
“This may even be a more convenient option for busy parents,” Patel added.
(WASHINGTON) — An internal review of the Food and Drug Administration’s actions leading up to the infant formula crisis finds a combination of human error, antiquated technology, and poor communication and accountability amongst an already threadbare food workforce all contributed to a perfect storm of problems which exacerbated the supply shortage.
The issue was only worsened by the FDA’s lack of a robust mandate to strong-arm industry players’ compliance, the review found.
During more than 40 interviews with over 60 FDA staff and leadership “directly involved with the events that transpired” the review found “inadequate processes and lack of clarity” may have delayed the agency’s response to contamination concerns at at infant formula maker Abbott’s facility in Sturgis, Michigan; and that at several junctures, critical information slipped through the cracks of agency awareness.
In a statement, FDA Chief Robert Califf said the agency didn’t have the power to force the industry’s hand.
“The situation at the Abbott Sturgis facility has highlighted just how little authority the FDA has to compel many companies to ‘do the right thing’ without intervention,” Califf said.
The internal review echoed that sentiment: “a confluence of systemic vulnerabilities” here demonstrated the need for more investment in modern tools and tech to prepare for future public health challenges.
FDA’s limited mandate and resources prevent them from managing “supply chain issues and shortages of critical food products,” the review said, especially when it comes to a supply chain like that of baby formula, which had already been strained by the Covid pandemic — and which Abbott’s recall and pause in production further stressed.
The review also noted that the contaminant and illness at the heart of Abbott’s massive shutdown, Cronobacter sakazakii, is “poorly understood” and lacks thorough federal oversight — and that those “scientific gaps” in understanding Cronobacter “hindered the FDA’s response throughout the incident.”
The discovery of Cronobacter inside Abbott’s Sturgis plant prompted a massive voluntary formula recall in February, after four babies who had consumed Abbott’s formula contracted a Cronobacter infection. Two of the infants subsequently died, although Abbott maintains there has not been conclusive evidence that its formula caused the infant illnesses, since none of the Cronobacter strains found at their plant matched the two samples genetically sequenced from the sickened infants.
Ultimately, it was the combined findings of Cronobacter inside Abbott’s plant — along with a pattern of serious operational deficiencies and consumer complaints — which led to its closure.
In a statement to ABC News regarding the internal review, an Abbott spokesperson said, in part, they “will continue raising the bar” on their formula’s regulatory requirements “by working with FDA and industry partners to further advance infant formula safety and processes.”
Abbott’s shutdown ricocheted across the country, exacerbating the supply shortage and forcing families to scramble for alternatives in the hyper-concentrated formula market.
FDA’s Califf has previously noted some of the points outlined in the report released Tuesday: that the response was “too slow,” with “decisions that were suboptimal along the way,” while warning that FDA’s workforce is “very tired, overworked,” and the agency’s food safety arm is underfunded.
Califf has also previously underscored FDA’s lack of authority to “compel companies to give us information,” and has pointed the finger instead at Abbott’s failure to be upfront about the issues at their plant.
Critics of FDA’s response have previously pointed out that there was a brewing problem in the formula market before Abbott’s shutdown — and that the administration had plenty of warning signs both about the pandemic supply chain issues and about Abbott’s quality control problems long before things reached a boiling point this spring.
But this report contains several new details about repeated fumbles in the response, including crucial delivery system errors and a need for better staff communication at the FDA.
The review says FDA found that some samples taken from Abbott’s Sturgis plant after their contamination concerns came to light “were delayed in transit by third party delivery companies.”
The review comes after FDA leadership revealed this spring that a whistleblower complaint from a former Abbott employee detailing a “litany of violations” at the Sturgis plant had remained in limbo for months. That complaint had been sent to the FDA last October, but was not delivered, seen or escalated until four months later — because of, what the FDA has said, was “an isolated failure in FDA’s mailroom, likely due to COVID-19 staffing issues.”
The new internal review now says that such gaps in coordination between systems (though here, punting accountability to a “third party,”) “makes it difficult for the agency to connect related submissions and rapidly identify emerging safety and quality issues.”
“The FDA should evaluate procedures for shipping and testing samples sent to regulatory laboratories and consider whether changes should be made to analytical capability and capacity, and ways to enable immediate notification and escalation of analytical results for significant public health threats,” the review says.
The review adds that the agency is “collecting an inventory of every entry point for consumers, whistleblowers, other government agencies, clinicians, and other members of the public to facilitate notification to the FDA of their concerns about product safety and quality,” which will help “streamline” safety concerns to “rapidly assess emerging safety signals.”
The internal review ultimately identified five major findings for FDA to improve upon, including the need for more modern data technology which “allows for the access and exchange of data in real time to all the people involved in response.”
“The lack of coordination between systems makes it difficult for the agency to connect related submissions and rapidly identify emerging safety and quality issues,” the report says, and “inadequate processes and lack of clarity related to whistleblower complaints may have delayed the FDA’s response to those complaints.”
The review also underscores the need for FDA to optimize its emergency response capabilities to handle multiple concurrent public emergencies. FDA “lacks procedures for facilitating this complex coordination of staff on response activities that expand beyond the established foodborne outbreak response policies and procedures,” the review found.
The review also blames Covid infections at the manufacturing facility which “delayed the FDA’s in-person response to complaints raised” regarding Abbott’s Sturgis plant, and underscores the need to strengthen FDA’s food workforce including more training, staffing, equipment, funding and regulatory authorities “to fulfill the FDA’s mission.”
It also emphasizes the importance of closing knowledge and oversight gaps on Cronobacter and translating that knowledge into “appropriate control measures.”
Those gaps in understanding “hindered the FDA’s response throughout the incident,” the review said.
It also noted, FDA oversight should focus on accountability within the infant formula industry, which employs “dated technology and record keeping practices that can cause delays in collecting critical information needed to perform and define the scope of recalls.”
Moreover, the FDA lacks robust enforcement teeth to make sure companies are adhering to best practices of strong food safety culture, the review said; manufacturers aren’t required to make Cronobacter isolates available to the FDA for sequencing and uploading into the national database, which “limits the data available to help identify clusters of illness and potential sources of contamination.” Without further authority “it will be difficult for the FDA to identify early signals of potential safety issues and work with manufacturers to mitigate these hazards.”
FDA’s Califf had asked for this review to be done; the agency will “form working groups charged with implementing the recommendations,” and a year from now, FDA’s progress on the above recommendations will be assessed, the review said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General has also launched its own audit into how the FDA responded leading up to the recall and closure of Abbott’s Sturgis plant — and whether they followed proper recall protocol once deadly bacteria had been detected inside the plant. Findings from OIG’s audit are expected sometime in FY 2023.
The FDA says they are working with the OIG and “looks forward” to their “findings and recommendations.”
(FLINT, Mich.) — Five years after a water crisis rocked Flint, Michigan, a significant number of residents are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression and some may be suffering from both conditions, a new study finds.
Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston surveyed a sample of 1,970 residents aged 18 and older living in Flint, which is 430 miles northwest of Detroit, between 2019 and 2019.
They found that nearly one in four — 24.4% — met the criteria within the past year for PTSD and more than one in five — 22.1% — met criteria for depression. An additional 14% met the criteria for both disorders.
That means among a city of more than 80,000 people, 22,600 Flint residents may have had depression, 25,000 may have had PTSD and 14,300 may have had both.
What’s more, the prevalence of depression and PTSD are about three-fold and five-fold higher than the prevalence among the general U.S. population, respectively.
The Flint water crisis, which lasted from April 2014 to June 2016, occurred after emergency managers appointed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder decided to change to the city’s water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River to save costs.
Residents immediately raised concerns about their water quality. The Flint River is highly corrosive to lead plumbing and officials did not apply corrosion inhibitors to the water, resulting in lead being leached from the old pipes.
As a result, tens of thousands of people were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead. There were also outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease — a severe form of pneumonia caused by inhaling Legionella bacteria in small droplets of water or accidentally swallowing water containing the bacteria — that sickened 87 and killed at least 12.
The study found residents who believed the contaminated water harmed their or their family’s health, or had low confidence in public officials, were at higher risk of PTSD and depression. Those with an annual household income of less than $25,000 were also at higher risk.
What’s more only about one-third, or 34.8%, were offered mental health services. Of those offered services, 79.3% used them.
The team did say its study had some limitations, including not accounting for pre-existing mental health conditions and the potential diagnoses not being made through interviews with a psychologist or psychiatrist.
The authors, however, believe people who suffer environmental disasters may require long-term mental health services. Additionally, despite restoring the water supply to Lake Huron and efforts to remove lead from city pipes, the team says mental health services have not matched the need in the community.
“Environmental disasters, such as the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, are potentially traumatic events that may precipitate long-term psychiatric disorders,” they wrote. “The water crisis was associated with acute elevations in mental health problems in the Flint community, but long-term psychiatric sequelae have not yet been evaluated using standardized diagnostic measures.”
The study comes as another city — Jackson, Mississippi — suffers its own water crisis.
Floods in late August caused the city’s main water treatment to fail, leaving all 150,000 without access to clean water for drinking, cooking or cleaning.
ABC News’ Dr. Anna Yegiants contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — There are early signs that new monkeypox cases are slowing down in the U.S.
Experts are optimistic that the virus can be completely eliminated from the U.S. While challenges remain, recent improvement in vaccination efforts could lead to complete elimination but it may take years, experts say.
“Elimination is going to become more challenging because you can imagine that even if we drive cases down, there’s still going to be potentially sustained transmission,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Public health efforts toward behavior modification and vaccination are showing reassuring results with only 78 new cases reported on Sept. 14. Since May, nearly 60,000 cases of monkeypox have been found in over 100 countries globally.
Historically, monkeypox has been found in 10 countries in central and western African, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But in the spring of 2022, the virus began spreading in North America, Europe and other continents that historically haven’t witnessed major, prolonged outbreaks.
“I think the goal is containment by continuing treating and educating,” said Dr. Richard Silvera, an associate program director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship and assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Monkeypox is rarely deadly but often has painful symptoms, including blisters and a rash. The virus primarily spreads through close contact, including hugging or touching someone with a rash.
To contain and hopefully eliminate the virus, experts believe it is important to monitor animals for monkeypox because animals can also carry the virus and pass it to humans.
“The way to eliminate it is to ensure that there’s no domestic animal species that becomes a reservoir,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
In previous testing efforts, several animal species have been found to be susceptible to the monkeypox virus. There is no confirmed reservoir for the virus and experts believe further studies and surveillance will be key in elimination and even global eradication.
“There’s a lot to be encouraged by” but it’s “going to depend upon if we’re able to contain this in the human population,” said Dr. Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In an effort to contain the global outbreak, the WHO released a public health advisory in July for gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. Anyone can get monkeypox but because the current outbreak affected this group first, it has continued to spread among men who have sex with men — now the most at-risk population. The WHO is encouraging people to share only non-stigmatizing information from trustworthy sources in order to combat misinformation and help slow the spread.
Survey and vaccination data suggest that gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men are largely aware of the monkeypox outbreak and taking steps to slow the spread of the virus. Rimoin said this is due to the group being “very willing to talk about things that are complicated.”
As of mid-September, the U.S. has vaccinated nearly 500,000 people against monkeypox.
“We must continue to aggressively respond using our entire toolkit, including vaccination, testing, and education about risk to inform behavior change,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.
Although many experts are cautiously optimistic about the outbreak in the U.S., others say it’s possible monkeypox is here to stay.
“We’re probably going to see monkeypox cases for years to come,” Brownstein said.
(NEW YORK) — Four out of five pregnancy-related deaths in the United States are preventable, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report looked at data from the Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs) across 36 states between 2017 and 2019.
Most of these deaths, or 53%, occurred between seven days and one year after the pregnancy.
One-quarter of the deaths occurred during the pregnancy and the remaining 22% occurred on the day of delivery.
Mental health conditions — such as deaths linked to suicide or an overdose from a substance use disorder — made up the plurality of deaths at 23%, the report found.
Other underlying causes of pregnancy-related death included hemorrhaging; heart conditions; infections; thrombotic embolism, which is a type of blood clot; cardiomyopathy, which is a disease of the heart muscle; and high blood pressure.
The report also looked at deaths broken down by race and ethnicity and found that Black Americans made up a disproportionate percentage of pregnancy-related deaths.
White Americans make up 59.3% of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau but accounted for 46.6% of deaths. Comparatively, Black Americans make up 13.8% of the population but 31.4% of deaths.
Leading underlying causes varied by race and/or ethnicity. For Black Americans, the leading underlying cause was heart conditions. For white Americans and Hispanic Americans, the leading underlying cause was mental health conditions.
The CDC recently awarded $2.8 million across the U.S. to support additional MMRCs in efforts to prevent future pregnancy-related deaths.
“The report paints a much clearer picture of pregnancy-related deaths in this country,” said Dr. Wanda Barfield, director of the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, in a statement.
“The majority of pregnancy-related deaths were preventable, highlighting the need for quality improvement initiatives in states, hospitals, and communities that ensure all people who are pregnant or postpartum get the right care at the right time,” the statement continued.
(NEW YORK) — It’s the first day of fourth grade for Yara Valerio. As her mother, Emma Mercado, packs her lunch in the kitchen, Yara is finishing up her remaining summer school homework in their New York City apartment.
In a few minutes, they will walk hand-in-hand to P.S. 123 Mahalia Jackson School where Yara will soon meet her new teacher and reunite with friends.
The day marks more than two years since COVID-19 forced students and schools across the country to abruptly switch education plans, including remote learning. Yara said she’s glad that’s finally in the rearview.
“In person, you can talk to your teacher, and it would be way more easier to learn better,” Yara told ABC News.
However, data showing the full extent of COVID-19’s long-term impact on elementary students’ learning is only just starting to emerge.
Earlier this month, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that math and reading test scores among America’s 9-year-olds plummeted during the first two years of the pandemic, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress results. In addition, reading scores decreased by the largest margin in more than 30 years, erasing decades of progress, the report said.
The decline was seen across all races and regions, but students of color, who were more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time, were impacted most.
Mercado said Yara, who has mild ADHD and a sensory disorder, found it challenging to focus during her online classes.
“It was a constant battle, her not wanting to pay attention to what I was saying because I wasn’t a teacher, or if she wanted to go play with her friends, or she wanted to take a break,” Mercado said.
After noticing Yara falling behind in reading, Mercado enrolled her in Reading Partners, a children’s literacy nonprofit that offers free tutoring for elementary students in disadvantaged communities in 12 regions across the U.S. Ninety-five percent of participating students are Black and Latinx, the organization’s CEO Adeola Whitney told ABC News.
Whitney said the pandemic didn’t create but rather exacerbated and exposed existing educational inequities, including “the digital divide,” referring to socioeconomic disparities in access to reliable internet service and working devices.
April Stewart, who also enrolled her twin sons Elias and Josiah in Reading Partners, told ABC News their initial school-provided laptops were often “faulty.”
Elias and Josiah, now sixth graders at Samuel P. Massie Academy in Maryland, said they frequently faced technical difficulties while attempting to navigate unfamiliar software as elementary students.
“Everything started crashing,” Josiah told ABC News. “I had to reboot my computer. I had to get a new computer because the other one wasn’t working.”
“When the teacher was talking to us in person, I can write it down,” Elias told ABC News. “But then on the laptop, I had to try to type, and she was talking too fast.”
Whitney also noted the disproportionate burden remote learning placed on working parents with multiple children and limited resources — the case for many of Reading Partners’ participants.
Facing these obstacles, parents had to get creative.
During the pandemic, Stewart said she often had four children in the house doing online schooling, including her eldest son and nephew. Elias usually took classes upstairs on a laptop and Josiah on a desktop computer in the downstairs living room.
“Sometimes people will be walking back and forth, and [Josiah] would get distracted,” Stewart said. “So I’d get a blanket, and I put it over the top of the desktop, so it’s like a tent, and he would just be sitting under there.”
Mercado, who was working as a property manager, said she often had to take Yara “on the go” in the middle of the remote school day while she responded to tenants’ emergencies, setting up a hotspot in the car so Yara could continue her classes uninterrupted.
“As a mom, I had to figure it out. It’s either my job that’s paying for my rent, so I can keep my daughter under the roof, and have food in the refrigerator,” she said. “And also being there for her to do her work.”
Despite these challenges, Whitney said the pandemic was also an impetus for innovation.
During remote learning, Reading Partners developed an online curriculum called Reading Partners Connects, now offering students the option to meet with tutors virtually and in person.
“It’s easy to look at the pandemic and think about all of the challenges. But I’m also amazed at children’s resilience,” she said. “The fact that they learned anything during this time, I think, is huge.”
The nonprofit encourages teachers and parents to take advantage of Reading Partners’ resources. It also hopes to recruit more volunteer tutors and expand to more cities.
In addition to programs like Reading Partners, students should also join their local public library’s free workshops and reading groups, parenting and educational psychologist Reena B. Patel told ABC News.
With the new school year in full swing, Mercado and Stewart said they’re proud of their children’s progress and are both excited for the fresh start the return to in-person learning will bring.
“I’m not stuttering anymore, and it’s easier for me to read big words,” Yara said.
Elias and Josiah said they feel similarly.
“I’m the second-best reader in my class right now,” Elias said.
“That’s because I’m the first best,” Josiah added.
(NEW YORK) — Even as healthcare professionals battle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 300 Americans dying each day on average from the virus, doctors nationwide are raising awareness about the growing epidemic of suicide within their ranks.
Saturday, Sept. 17, is National Physician Suicide Awareness Day. It’s a day marking a sobering fact: physicians have a higher suicide rate than the general population, according to an article published in the science journal PLOS One.
Doctors dying by suicide means that patients lose good physicians. The growing number of suicides is a public health crisis, health professionals say.
According to a 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, depressed physicians may also commit more medical mistakes. Many physicians are hesitant to seek treatment due to the stigma and fear of losing their jobs.
“It’s a culture that rewards toughness” and “the emphasis is on caring for others, not for yourself,” said Dr. Mimi Winsberg, a psychiatrist and chief medical officer of Brightside, an online therapy organization.
Dr. Sansea Jacobson, a psychiatrist and program director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, says suicide is more likely to occur when multiple risk factors pile up.
“And most importantly, when they’re unaddressed or under addressed mental health issues,” said Jacobson.
She added, “We know as doctors that we have all the stressors and risk factors of the general public. Plus, we have our own unique stressors, like the pandemic, patient deaths, medical errors, and malpractice lawsuits.”
In response to the crisis, President Joe Biden signed the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act into law in March. The law establishes grants to promote and study ways to improve mental health for health care providers.
The bill was named after Dr. Lorna Breen, an emergency medicine physician who died of suicide in April 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. She may have feared losing her medical license and did not get help, according to a foundation set up in her honor.
The Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation recently helped to launch ALL IN, a campaign that hopes to remove mental health questions from forms that doctors fill out prior to getting a medical license.
There are several steps that a physician, or anyone dealing with a mental health crisis, can take, experts say.
“The first thing to do is to take an assessment. I always say that’s what gets measured gets managed, so I think understanding the scope of what you’re feeling is really important. And then the second thing is to seek help,” said Winsberg.
One silver lining of the pandemic is that it raised awareness of these issues, Winsberg said. She added, “Reducing stigma has made it more normal to express feelings of loneliness and depression and anxiety. I hope that that will spill over into the medical profession as well.”
Doctors can reach out on the Physician Support Line at 1 (888) 409-0141. The free and confidential hotline connects physicians to psychiatrists from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. Eastern, 7 days a week.
Anyone struggling with mental health is also encouraged to dial 988, a nationwide number to connect to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Evelyn Huang, MD is a resident physician in emergency medicine from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and a member of the ABC News Medical journalism rotation.
To optimize protection ahead of another pandemic winter, White House COVID coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said Friday people should consider getting the newly-updated COVID-19 booster before Halloween.
The sooner the better, Jha said, urging people to get a booster between mid-September and mid-October, “but no later than the end of October for maximum protection” ahead of the holidays, he said in an interview with ABC News following his own vaccination.
For people who have recently had COVID, Jha suggested following the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and waiting at least 90 days, or three months, before getting the updated vaccine. Other experts have suggested that waiting four to six months will allow people to mount a stronger immune response to the vaccine.
Waiting longer, Jha said, increases the chance of getting reinfected — and ultimately, “it’s very hard to time the market,” he said.
Jha, who got his updated shot on Friday morning at a clinic in Washington, D.C., alongside second gentleman Doug Emhoff, described the new vaccine as a vital lever in the forecast for this winter’s COVID spread.
While some modeling shows a potential for a large surge this winter, Jha said, others show only a “modest bump” — and the difference could be determined by how many people get an updated vaccine ahead of the colder winter months, a time when the virus has ticked up the past two years.
“If you go get these vaccines, you actually can influence what happens,” Jha said.
“There is nothing fated about what’s going to happen. If a large proportion of Americans go out and get these vaccines, it will have a significant beneficial effect on keeping infections low.”
So far, the government has made 30 million vaccines available to states for distribution, out of an overall order of around 170 million vaccines between both companies Pfizer and Moderna.
Twenty-five million vaccines have shipped out as of Friday, according to the White House, and Jha said he’s been pleased to see that states are already submitting reorders.
But the latest numbers on just how many people have actually rolled up their sleeves for a shot aren’t expected until next week, Jha said. And while the booster campaign is expected to ramp up over the coming weeks, past metrics show Americans are booster fatigued: slightly less than half of vaccinated people have gotten a first booster shot, while one-third of people over 50 have gotten a second booster shot after becoming eligible this past spring.
The newest shot, which targets both the most dominant variant, BA.4/BA.5, and the original COVID strain, carries the potential of being the only shot Americans need this year, similar to an annual flu shot, and offering greater protection against COVID because it matches the virus that’s circulating now.
While experts caution that another new variant could always buck the plan, introducing new factors like heightened spread or evasion of immune protection, Jha said the country is already in a position of giving young, healthy people one shot a year and doesn’t think even a new variant would change that.
For people under the age of 50, they last became eligible for boosters in the fall of 2021, just as omicron was gaining steam. Those people have only just become eligible for another booster shot with the introduction of the updated bivalent booster this fall — one year later.
“I feel very confident based on everything we have that for the average-risk person, even an Omicron-like variant is unlikely to lead us to suggest that [young, healthy] people are going to benefit from a second shot within a year,” Jha said. “I think that is both unrealistic and not necessary.”
That said, older people may see a faster waning of protection from their vaccines, as has been the case throughout the pandemic, warranting another shot to re-up protection sometime in the spring, Jha said.
Though there isn’t evidence from a large-scale clinical trial yet to demonstrate just how much better protection will be from the bivalent boosters, Jha said he believed there was “strong consensus” that they would be better.
He pointed to evidence on safety and efficacy about the millions of vaccines that have already been distributed, as well as a clinical trial on bivalent vaccines that targeted BA.1, an earlier omicron subvariant, which vaccine companies later forgoed in favor of the newer strains, BA.4 and BA.5.
“If you look at the totality of the evidence, everything we know about the initial shots, if you look at the way the BA.1 bivalent clinical trials, what they showed us about how it generates immune response, everything suggests that BA.5 bivalents should provide a much higher degree of protection,” Jha said.
The CDC signed off on bivalent booster shots at the beginning of September and the rollout began in earnest after Labor Day weekend. Pfizer bivalent booster are available to everyone over 12, while the Moderna bivalent booster is available to everyone over 18.
Shots for people under 12 are expected this fall, though vaccine companies must first submit data on the younger age groups to the Food and Drug Administration, which will then review the data for authorization and eventual recommendation from the CDC.
