(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory Friday about an increase in an antibiotic-resistant strain of the Shigella bacteria.
Shigella is highly infectious and causes around 450,000 infections in the U.S. every year, according to the CDC.
Shigella is transmitted in several ways, including changing the diaper of a sick infant, by getting the bacteria on your hands and then touching your mouth, through sexual contact or by contaminated food and water, the CDC said in its advisory.
Usually, people recover without treatment, but those with severe cases or with underlying conditions that weaken the immune system may need to be treated with antibiotics.
The bacteria is easily transmissible and there are few antimicrobial treatment options for medical staff treating patients with the drug-resistant XDR strain of Shigella, according to the CDC, which prompted the warning.
The agency has asked health care professionals to be alert about suspecting and reporting cases of the XDR variant of Shigella to local and state health departments “given these potentially serious public health concerns.”
Last year, 5% of Shigella infections reported to the CDC were caused by the XDR strain of the bacteria. In 2015, there weren’t any infections from the XDR strain reported to the public health agency.
The increase in antimicrobial-resistant Shigella infections is primarily among men who have sex with men, people experiencing homelessness, international travelers and people living with HIV, the CDC reported.
The CDC said that health care staff should also educate their patients and communities who are most at risk of infection about prevention and how it is spread.
ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Britney Alba remembers the day she and her husband, Frankie Alba, received the news they were expecting twins. It had only been six months since they had welcomed their twin sons.
“Frankie and I were not trying but it just happened. We just found out we were pregnant … so we go and get our ultrasound,” the mom of four recalled to ABC News’ Good Morning America. “And Frankie was like, ‘Are you sure it’s not two?’ He was joking around and [the ultrasound technician] was like, ‘Let me check one more time.’ And she checked again and sure enough, there was a second heartbeat.”
“I was definitely in shock,” Frankie Alba, 25, recalled. “But I was excited at the same time. They’re definitely a blessing.”
The Albas said twins don’t run in either of their families and for them to expect twins twice was astonishing.
“I would have never guessed in a million years that I would have one set of twins, much less a second set,” Britney Alba, 27, added. “So we were super excited. Super excited. But it was like a laughing-and-crying-at-the-same-time moment.”
The Albas’ first set of twins — Luka and Levi — were monochorionic-diamniotic (MoDi) identical twins, meaning they shared the same placenta but separate amniotic sacs. But their second set of twins — Lydia and Lynlee — turned out to be monoamniotic-monochorionic (MoMo) identical twins. The girls ended up sharing both the same placenta and amniotic sac.
“It was already rare for there to be identical twins back to back, but particularly just my twins because MoMo twins make up 1% of all twin pregnancies. It’s very rare,” Britney Alba said of what her doctors told them. “So just their pregnancy alone was rare. But then to have identical twin brothers right before them made it even more rare, so definitely a unique situation.”
There is not much research data available on the rarity of such twin pregnancies, but one Journal of Perinatology study estimates MoMo twin pregnancies happen once out of every 10,000 pregnancies, while another comparative study estimates MoDi twin pregnancies occur in 0.3% of all pregnancies.
In addition to being rare, a MoMo twin pregnancy is considered high risk. Having to share the same placenta and amniotic sac increases the risk for problems with blood flow to each twin and increases the risk that the umbilical cords could become entangled. Britney Alba was admitted to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Women and Infants Center at 25 weeks and spent over 50 days there before the girls were delivered.
The Albas welcomed Lydia and Lynlee in Oct. 25, 2022 and the newborn girls spent their first six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit under the care of nurses and doctors.
They were able to go home to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for the first time on Dec. 7, according to the Albas, and today, the family of six is settling into what they call their “new normal.”
“It is nonstop, fast paced, but we love it,” Britney Alba said. “The boys are great with the girls. Their main focus is just to play and have fun but when they do see the girls and they’re around them, they’re very sweet. They have gentle hands, sweet hands. And they’re just really good around their sisters.”
Both Albas say they feel “extremely blessed” and “extremely grateful” for their family.
“Even on those nights where we feel like we want to pull our hair out, and none of our children want to sleep, we just have to remind ourselves how lucky and how blessed we are to be able to have these children,” Britney Alba said.
“Life has definitely changed dramatically and very quickly but it’s a huge blessing for us and we are just looking forward to what the future holds with these babies because they’re special,” Frankie Alba added. “We can’t see life without our babies.”
(WASHINGTON) — While no firm conclusion has yet been made among health and government officials as to where COVID-19 came from, the U.S. Energy Department has now reportedly indicated it believes the virus was most likely the result of a lab leak in China — one of two prevailing theories under investigation along with natural human exposure to an infected animal.
The view of the Energy Department, which oversees a network of national labs, some which conduct bioresearch, was reported Sunday by The Wall Street Journal based on a classified intelligence report but has not been confirmed by ABC News.
People who read the report said the assessment was made with “low confidence,” according to the Journal, referring to the lowest of three confidence intervals in the intelligence community.
It’s the latest development in the ongoing work, in the U.S. and internationally, to determine where COVID-19 came from: to both trace back the virus in order to hold any responsible parties to account and to understand its inception in order to prevent the next pandemic.
But with no “smoking gun” and limited access to raw data, discussion of the science has played out in a haze of circumstantial evidence.
At the same time, the virus’ origins have become a contentious wedge issue at home while the Chinese government vehemently denies COVID-19 could have come from one of its labs in Wuhan.
A spokesperson for the Energy Department did not comment Sunday on the Journal’s new article but said in a statement to ABC News that the department “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”
A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee said in their own brief statement that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had “provided a response to Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Select Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup’s February 13th letter requesting information about the origins of COVID-19 and we are reviewing the classified information provided.”
The White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in an appearance on CNN on Sunday that he could not confirm or deny the Journal report but that “right now there is not a definitive answer” from the intelligence community on where COVID-19 started.
“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” Sullivan said. “Here’s what I can tell you. President [Joe] Biden has directed, repeatedly, every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources behind getting to the bottom of this question.”
“If we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress, and we will share it with the American people,” Sullivan said.
The White House declined on Sunday to say if Biden had been briefed on the Energy Department’s view, referring to Sullivan’s comments.
In 2021, the president launched a 90-day push for the U.S. intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to find a more definitive conclusion regarding the source of the virus.
In a declassified summary of that work, released in August 2021, U.S. intelligence agencies said they remained “divided on the most likely origins of COVID-19” but that the two key hypotheses remain possible: either natural exposure to an infected animal or an accidental lab leak.
Consensus among top officials in the Biden administration has similarly been that the pandemic originated in one of those ways.
Four elements of the U.S. intelligence community said in 2021 that they had “low confidence” COVID-19 was initially spread from an animal to a human, while one element assessed with “moderate confidence” that the first human infection was the result of a “laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” and pointing to the “inherently risky nature of work on Coronaviruses.”
The agencies, however, generally agreed that the virus was most likely not developed as a biological weapon and that China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic.
This analysis marked something of an evolution from the earliest prevailing view after the pandemic began in early 2020 when, despite some fringe skepticism — often emanating from voices with a long record of criticizing China — the idea that COVID-19 jumped from animal to human somewhere in nature became the overwhelming consensus.
Political voices in favor of the lab-leak theory, particularly from former President Donald Trump, served to polarize the issue further and largely pushed the scientific community away from a willingness to consider that possibility.
The U.S. intelligence agencies said in their 2021 summary that baring new information, a more definitive explanation would not be possible without Beijing’s cooperation.
“Origins tracing is a matter of science,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said following the report’s release. “China always supports and will continue to participate in the science-based origins study.”
A joint World Health Organization-led team had presented a range of options in its own March 2021 report, calling a lab leak “extremely unlikely” but offering pathways for further investigation.
Team members voiced frustration with the lack of cooperation from the Chinese government — echoed in international criticism that politics had stymied science.
Since then, the WHO has become increasingly receptive to the possibility that the virus resulted from a lab leak. In July 2021, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged that ruling out a lab leak theory was “premature” and recommended audits of the Wuhan labs in further studies.
China’s subsequent rebuff left the WHO to proceed without them as part of the U.N. agency’s recommended phase two study.
ABC News’ Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — The measles outbreak in central Ohio that left 85 children infected has officially been declared over, Columbus Public Health announced Thursday.
“CPH has received the last pending test result, which was negative for suspected measles cases,” the agency tweeted. “We have surpassed 42 days, or two incubation periods, since the last rash onset, which fits the CDC’s definition of the end of an outbreak.”
According to data from CPH, no cases have been recorded since Dec. 24.
Over the course of the outbreak, which began in November 2022 and was seen across several schools and day cares, 80 of the 85 children infected were unvaccinated.
Four had received at least one dose of the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and one patient had an unknown vaccination status.
An overwhelming majority, or 65%, of cases occurred among children between ages 1 and 5 with children under age 1 being the next most affected group.
In total, 36 children were hospitalized, but none of the sickened children died.
“We did have several children that required intensive care,” Kelli Newman, communications director at CPH, told ABC News. “Most cases that were hospitalized were due to dehydration, which is common in young children like that.”
Measles is a very contagious disease with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying every individual infected by the virus can spread it to up to 10 close contacts, if they are unprotected including not wearing a mask or not being vaccinated.
Complications from measles can be relatively benign, like rashes, or they can be much more severe, like viral sepsis, pneumonia or brain swelling.
The CDC says anybody who either had measles at some point in their life or who has received two doses of the MMR vaccine is protected against measles.
In the decade before the measles vaccine became available, an estimated three to four million people were infected every year, 48,000 were hospitalized and between 400 and 500 people died, according to the federal health agency.
One dose of the measles vaccine is 93% effective at preventing infection if exposed to the virus. Two doses are 97% effective.
Children are recommended to receive their first dose between 12 and 15 months old and their second dose between ages 4 and 6.
According to a report from the CDC published in January, during the 2021-22 school year, 88.3% of kindergartners in Ohio had received two doses of the MMR vaccine, less than the national average of 93%.
“I think this is kind of a wake up call for all of us,” Newman said. “While this outbreak is behind us, and we’re grateful for that, we know that the next outbreak could just be one missed vaccine away.”
Newman said CPH spent a great deal on the ground working with community partners and pediatricians to get the MMR vaccine out into the community, as well as educate on the importance of vaccination, in response to the outbreak. This included setting up special vaccine clinics and having pediatricians call parents whose children were behind the schedule to remind them to bring them in for their second shot.
In 2000, measles was declared eradicated from the U.S. thanks to the highly effective vaccination campaign.
However, last November, a joint report from the CDC and the World Health Organization declared measles to be an “imminent threat” around the world.
The report found that in 2021, nearly 40 million children — a record-high — missed a dose of the measles vaccine. Specifically, 25 million missed their first dose and 14.7 million missed their second dose.
The authors stated much of the progress that was made in beating back the disease was lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the U.S., a May 2022 study found one-third of American parents reported a child with a missed vaccination due to barriers imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Newman said that many parents of the unvaccinated children infected with measles had chosen not to have their kids receive the MMR shot due misconceptions that it causes autism, a theory that has been widely debunked across the scientific community.
“Many of these kids were vaccinated for everything, but MMR because there was a lingering misconception that it caused autism,” Newman said. “That’s what we heard in feedback when we worked with parents during the case investigation and so that was something we had to provide a lot of education and engagement around, and we’re continuing to do that.”
Ceirra Zeager, now 23, survived a heart attack at age 14 and open heart surgery at age 21. — Courtesy Ceirra Zeager
(NEW YORK) — By the time Ceirra Zeager graduated from college last year, she had already survived a heart attack and open-heart surgery.
Now, the 23-year-old is sharing her story to help other people, especially women, know the signs and symptoms of heart disease.
“You really have to advocate for yourself,” Zeager told Good Morning America. “And if you’re feeling something that’s abnormal, you should really get it checked out and just trust your gut that something may be wrong.”
Zeager, who is from Ephrata, Pennsylvania, suffered a heart attack at age 14. She said she began to feel symptoms the morning after she attended her first winter formal dance with friends.
“I remember trying to put my favorite shirt on,” she said. “It was a pink and gray top, and I always remember what it looks like because that moment just changed my life, trying to put that on and realizing that I couldn’t put it on.”
Zeager said she felt like her chest was “closing in,” and the pain got so severe that her parents drove her to a local hospital.
At the hospital, Zeager said she remembers waiting a long time only to have one doctor tell her parents that she had “teenage anxiety.”
“I had a crushing chest feeling and a loss of breath,” she said. “It was such intense pain that I thought to myself, ‘If this is teenage anxiety, I do not want to be here.'”
Without a clear diagnosis, Zeager said she was sent to a nearby children’s hospital, where doctors eventually rushed her into emergency surgery.
“I woke up from surgery and my sister was crying and I asked why, and she said, ‘You had a heart attack,'” Zeager recalled. “I was in shock.”
Zeager said doctors discovered she had an atrial septal defect, or ASD, a type of congenital heart defect where there is a hole in the wall that divides the upper chambers of the heart, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The hole increases blood flow to the lungs, which can damage blood vessels in the lungs over time.
Each year, around 2,000 babies in the United States are born with ASD, but many cases are not diagnosed until adulthood, according to the CDC.
In Zeager’s case, she said she did not know she had ASD until a blood clot had traveled through the hole and lodged in a coronary artery, causing her heart attack.
Though doctors were able to plug the hole, Zeager said the heart attack upended her life.
“I had a pretty difficult transition back into normal life,” she said, adding, “It took me a few years to really grasp what had happened. I was very thankful they figured out what happened, but I was also kind of in a selfish mindset of ‘Why did this happen to me? Why wasn’t this ever caught before?'”
Zeager went onto to recover from the heart attack and graduate from high school, but said while in college, she started to experience symptoms again.
“I was feeling the quality of my life diminishing,” she said. “I was tired and exhausted. I would walk through a short room and be completely out of breath.”
Zeager said she had to advocate for herself to get an echocardiogram, which showed one of her heart valves was leaky.
She then sought a second opinion from another cardiologist, who told her she needed surgery as soon as possible to repair or replace the leaky valve.
The mental health struggle of heart disease
Zeager said she considers herself one of the lucky survivors as she has to take daily medications to manage her heart health but is expected to live a long and healthy life.
Though she is OK physically, Zeager said she has struggled over the years to cope mentally with her heart condition and is now on a mission to raise awareness of mental health alongside heart health.
“They all prepare you for what you’re physically going to go through, but then they don’t ever mention, ‘This is going to be hard for you to deal with mentally,'” said Zeager, who was named a “2023 Real Woman” by the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign. “There almost should be like a cardiac rehab, but for your brain.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, studies show that people living with heart disease, including heart attacks, are at a higher risk for developing depression.
At the same time, mental health disorders can add stress to the heart and can be associated with heart disease, according to the CDC.
Zeager said she often found herself feeling depressed and “in a rut,” but did not know where to turn for help because she didn’t see people talking about mental health and the heart.
“It can be embarrassing to be in the mindset of ‘I need help,'” she said. “Even after open-heart surgery, when I literally felt myself in a rut, I still didn’t get help because I didn’t know where to go to and who to talk to. I didn’t have those resources.”
Zeager said some of her mental health struggles stemmed from not feeling heard by doctors, so her biggest advice to other women is to be proactive in their medical care and to seek out answers.
Heart disease, which refers to several types of heart conditions, is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, according to the CDC.
Dr. Harmony Reynolds, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City, said women should not be worried about “false alarms” if they feel heart disease symptoms.
“It’s important to walk in and say, ‘I think I’m having a heart attack. Tell me why I’m not,'” said Reynolds, who did not treat Zeager. “If they say, ‘Oh, no, no, you’re just nervous,’ like what happened with Ceirra, then you have to say back, ‘Well, how can you tell I’m not?'”
She continued, “You have to advocate for yourself a little bit … and this way we make sure that everybody gets the attention they need.”
When it comes to symptoms to watch out for, Reynolds said not everyone has recognizable symptoms, but others may feel something noticeable that could be a sign of a heart attack.
“When I’m with patients, I’ll point from my mouth to my belly button and say that the discomfort can really be anywhere between, so the jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, back, upper stomach,” she said. “Any of those areas may be important as a heart disease discomfort.”
Women can often experience symptoms other than chest pain when having a heart attack, including shortness of breath, lightheadedness, nausea and sweating.
(NEW YORK) — Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., is raising awareness for heart health two months after the signing of a new law named for his late wife, who died in June 2020 from a rare condition.
Barr appeared on GMA3 on Wednesday to mark Heart Valve Disease Awareness Day and to discuss the Cardiovascular Advances in Research and Opportunities Legacy Act — or CAROL Act — named for his wife, with whom he shares two daughters.
“This is about Carol’s legacy,” Barr said. “What I want to do is raise awareness and let people know who have this diagnosis, look, this is a big deal. You need to get checked out,” he continued.
His family’s experience had opened his eyes.
He explained that “when she was in seventh grade, Carol was diagnosed with an underlying heart condition, a heart murmur known as mitral valve prolapse. Now, there’s approximately 11 million Americans who have heart valve disease. And for most of them, it’s a benign condition. And we certainly thought it was a benign condition. Our doctors told us that this was no big deal. We just needed to monitor it.”
“But unfortunately, she was one of the 0.2% of Americans with heart valve disease who had a sudden cardiac death event,” Barr said of his wife, who was found dead in their home.
According to the American Heart Association, mitral valve prolapse is a condition that affects the valve between the left heart chambers. Common symptoms include palpitations (bursts of rapid heartbeats), fatigue or chest discomfort.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that if doctor hears a murmur (unusual sound) when listening to your heartbeat, “Depending on the location of the murmur, how it sounds, and its rhythm, the doctor may use echocardiography, a test that uses sound waves to create a movie of the valves to see if they are working correctly.”
Barr said on GMA3 that the money in the CAROL Act is important for scientific advancements.
“We can stop this,” he said. “There’s amazing, amazing research that’s going on. We need to fund that research.”
He also urged people to be mindful of their own health.
“With early detection and intervention, this can be fixed and people who have heart valve disease can live long and healthy lives with surgical intervention and other types of treatments,” he said.
The CAROL legislation annually gives $28 million for research to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which goes toward distinguishing between benign and life-threatening cases of heart valve disease.
There’s also $8 million earmarked annually for the CDC to fund a registry to give workers in health professions data on sudden cardiac events and fund an awareness campaign.
Barr said he hopes his efforts now can help other families and spare them “the same tragedy.”
“Carol was an awesome, awesome mom. She was a great lady. Her life was cut too short. … Through her memory, we’re going to we’re going to help people deal with heart valve disease in a better way,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — A record number of drug overdose deaths were recorded in North Carolina in 2021, according to new data from the state Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2021, a total of 4,041 people died from drug overdoses, the highest figure reported in The Tar Heel State in a single year.
It’s also a 22% increase from the 3,304 fatal overdoses recorded in 2020.
“North Carolina’s communities and families are meeting the tragedy of overdose deaths and the opioid crisis head on, every day,” NCDHHS Secretary Kody Kinsley said in a statement.
“With the right treatment and support, recovery is possible, and individuals can go on to live full and productive lives. Our goal is to break the costly cycle of addiction and the smartest investment we can make to do that is expanding Medicaid,” the statement continued.
According to the department, a high number of overdose deaths were linked to fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is between 50 and 100 times stronger than morphine.
An estimated 77% of the total overdose deaths in 2021 involved illegally manufactured fentanyl, which was often mixed with other substances.
This is similar to what’s been seen on a macro level across the United. States. In 2021, a record 107,622 Americans died from drug poisoning or overdose, with 66% linked to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, the Department of Justice said in a press release last year.
During his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Joe Biden said he wanted to address the fentanyl crisis with steps including more drug detection machines at the southern border and stronger penalties for those who traffic the drug.
In response, the NCDHHS said it was expanding mobile units that could distribute medication that treats opioid use disorders and naloxone, which can reverse an opioid overdose.
The NCDHHS said the COVID-19 pandemic also exacerbated a crisis that was already in fully swing by the time the virus spread around the world.
Overdose deaths were 72% higher than the 2,352 recorded in North Carolina in 2019, data showed. Fatal overdoses rose by 40% in the state in just the first year of the pandemic.
When it came to breakdown by race/ethnicity, clear disparities could be seen.
Overdose death rates among white North Carolinians rose 53% from 2019 to 2021, from 27.4 per 100,000 residents to 42.0 per 100,000.
By comparison, rates among state residents of American Indian or Indigenous descent spiked by 117% from 43.3 per 100,000 in 2019 to 94.1 per 100,000 in 2021.
Meanwhile, Black residents had the highest overdose death rate increase, going from 16.1 per 100,000 in 2019 to 38.5 per 100,000 in 2021 — a 139% jump.
(NEW YORK) — Drugs such as Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy have been flying off pharmacy shelves across the country, touted as breakthrough drugs for patients looking to lose weight. Celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell, Chelsea Handler, Millionaire Matchmaker star Patti Stanger and social media influencers claimed to have used the medications and credit them with changing their lives.
But with the increased demand have come reports of access problems for diabetic patients with dire health issues, many of whom are scrambling to get the pen-shaped injectors.
“I hear about it every day,” Dr. Veronica Johnson an obesity specialist at Northwestern Medicine, told “Impact x Nightline.” “I saw how many patients today? Every one of them was like, ‘Well, I can’t find that dose anymore, so what am I supposed to do?’ Unfortunately, it’s a daily struggle that we’re dealing with because of shortages of this drug.”
As debates swirl about the drugs on social media and beyond, “Impact x Nightline” explores the controversy surrounding these medications, the concerns over access to Ozempic and Mounjaro and the effects it’s having on patients who have been struggling with weight loss in an episode now streaming on Hulu.
Ozempic and Mounjaro were approved by the FDA in 2017 and 2022, respectively, as treatments for Type 2 diabetes. They are not approved for weight loss but can be prescribed off-label by doctors. Wegovy, meanwhile, is FDA approved for obesity and diabetes.
More than 40% of the U.S. population is obese, which puts tens of millions of Americans at risk of heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, certain types of cancers and even death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The medications mimic a hormone in the body that makes you feel full. Dr. Barrie Weinstein, the medical director and endocrinologist at New York City-based Well by Messer, told “Impact” that patients who take the injections still eat their normal meals but without feeling the need to overeat.
“I hear it time and time again from my patients. They’re not thinking about food. That they can go about their day,” she said.
She added that since digestion is slowed down, it also leads to side effects like constipation, acid reflux and nausea.
Weinstein said the patients to whom she’s prescribed the drugs, like Caley Svensson, have seen improvements in their weight and mental health.
Svensson told “Impact” that she has struggled with mental health issues regarding her weight ever since she was a child and grew more frustrated after multiple diets were not working.
“I was really struggling after my third pregnancy to lose the rest of the baby weight. I was not able to do the things I loved anymore,” she told “Impact.” My life centers around being outside, horseback riding, being with my kids, running around.”
Svensson said she has lost 60 pounds since she started taking Mounjaro last summer. Dr. Weinstein said she’s seen a vast improvement since Svensson started taking the drug.
“She walked into the first follow-up smiling so brightly. That’s what I noticed, her smile and her glow,” Dr. Weinstein said.
However, Svensson said that she’s had to deal with a looming problem that’s hitting a lot of patients who use the drugs: the shortage.
Pharmacies around the country said they don’t have enough supply to meet demand, sending some patients into a panic.
Shane Anthony, a 57-year-old diabetic, told “Impact” that Ozempic dramatically dropped his glucose levels.
He said though, that last year he struggled to get a refill and blames, in part, the way the drugs have become popular across social media.
“Things just kind of went crazy,” he told “Impact.” “I had to go to something that was much, much older, and really isn’t working as effectively as the other was.”
Anthony’s wife, Gerilyn Oenning, a nurse, expressed her frustrations with the situation in a viral social media post that blamed people who obtain the drugs but aren’t obese or diabetic for the shortages.
Kaitlyn Wade, who was diagnosed by her doctor as pre-diabetic before being prescribed Mounjaro, said she was lucky to receive a temporary coupon from Eli Lilly, the drug’s manufacturer, to help pay for the medication. When the coupon expires, she and other patients will be forced to pay out of pocket.
“It’s kind of the insurance game to see if I can get my insurance to approve it or if it gets this fast track for approval for weight loss,” Wade, who has lost over 60 pounds since starting the medication, told “Impact.”
Ozempic’s manufacturer Novo Nordisk said in a statement that “intermittent supply disruptions” on its pen are anticipated through mid-March “due to the combination of incredible demand coupled with overall global supply constraints.” The company also makes Wegovy, saying “All dose strengths … became available to retail pharmacies nationwide.”
Eli Lilly, the maker of Mounjaro, said in a statement that its priority is making sure that Mounjaro is available to patients with Type 2 diabetes and that it “does not promote or encourage the off-label use” of its medicines.
Eli Lilly added, “all doses of Mounjaro are available, with no backorders at wholesalers.”
“Lilly is shipping all six doses of Mounjaro on an ongoing basis. As Mounjaro is still a launch product with dynamic demand, some pharmacies may experience an intermittent delay in receiving product from time to time,” the company said in a statement.
Dr. Weinstein said it was not advisable to prescribe Ozempic and Mounjaro to patients who aren’t obese.
“If you’re just looking to lose 10 or 15 pounds and you’re starting on a medication that is just going to lead you into a cycle of gain and loss, why would you go down that pathway if there was something else that would be better for you?” Weinstein said.
Dr. Johnson said there is another issue at play, as there have been reports that people have asked for medications through Groupon ads and med spas instead of pharmacies.
“I would much rather prefer that you get a prescription from me and you actually go to the pharmacy, so we know that you’re getting the FDA-approved product,” she said.
Groupon said in a statement that it is aware of the ads for Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, and reiterated that it “is only available with a prescription.” Groupon added that medical professionals “alone make any decisions regarding the diagnoses and treatments of their patients.”
One of the companies that advertise on Groupon, Take Care Medspa, told “Impact” in order to qualify for the medication, customers need to be obese or be overweight with a weight-related condition.
Groupon says if customers don’t meet those criteria then they’ll get a refund.
Dr. Johnson emphasized that the medications aren’t “miracle drugs” but she says they show much promise and are really needed for patients who are suffering from diabetes and obesity.
Doctors say there may be other reasons to prescribe the drug, and each person’s medical care should involve a nuanced conversation with their doctor.
Beyond the current shortages, Dr. Johnson said many of her patients have trouble getting insurance companies and Medicaid to reimburse the drugs. Many insurance providers do not reimburse for obesity and weight loss.
Johnson said this could lead to a wider disparity around the country between those who can afford and get easier access to the medications and those who can’t.
“Until we can finally allow for all patients to have equal access to the drug, we’re never going to address the obesity epidemic,” she said.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
(PLEASANTON, Texas) — A Texas woman who nearly lost her life after giving birth was reunited at home this month with her now-4-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son.
Krystina Pacheco, 29, of Pleasanton, Texas, gave birth to her daughter Amelia on Oct. 24, 2022, in what she described as an uneventful C-section delivery.
Two days later, on the day she was discharged from the hospital, Pacheco said she started feeling feverish but assumed it was just part of her recovery post-C-section and was given ibuprofen by a nurse.
When she continued to feel unwell at home, Pacheco said she went to see a doctor, who sent her to a local emergency room.
From there, Pacheco was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio, where doctors discovered her body was in septic shock.
“I just remember I couldn’t breathe anymore and I couldn’t see anymore and I just started slowly fading out,” Pacheco told ABC News. “My husband, I could just hear him saying, ‘Please come back to us, please, your babies need you. I need you. I need you to be here and help me with our babies,’ and that’s the last thing I remember.”
Septic shock is the most dangerous stage of sepsis, which occurs when your body has an extreme response to infection. According to the National Institutes of Health, “without quick treatment, it can lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and even death.”
In septic shock, the body has dangerously low blood pressure. Risk factors include recent infection or surgical procedure.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sepsis is the second leading cause of pregnancy-related death in the United States, behind only cardiovascular conditions.
In Pacheco’s case, the condition began to affect her heart, lungs and kidneys, according to her husband, Jacob Pacheco.
Jacob Pacheco said his wife was simultaneously put on dialysis to help her kidneys and on an ECMO machine, a lifesaving device that removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends back blood with oxygen to the body, allowing the heart and lungs time to rest and heal.
“They didn’t want to tell us how close she was [to death] but you could see it in their faces every time I asked,” Jacob Pacheco said, adding that doctors at the time gave his wife a 20% survival rate. “It was scary.”
Jacob Pacheco, a coach and teacher, who met Krystina because they both work in the special education field, said he relied on family and friends for support as he stayed by his wife’s bedside while also needing to care for their newborn daughter and young son.
“We would bring them to the hospital and our families would meet there and we would take care of them in the lobby,” he said of their children, Amelia and Owen. “It was, you know … living just day by day, just trying to take care of Krystina.”
For the two weeks Krystina Pacheco remained in the intensive care unit and on dialysis and the ECMO machine, Jacob Pacheco said he and his mother-in-law and father-in-law took turns sitting by her bedside.
In mid-November, Krystina Pacheco began to turn a corner and improved enough that doctors were able to take out her breathing tube so she could speak.
“The first thing she said to me was, ‘What happened to me? Did I almost die?,'” Jacob Pacheco recalled. ” And we had a moment of tears — tears of sadness, tears of joy, just a bunch of emotions coming over us.”
Though Krystina Pacheco was now awake, she still had to face what she now describes as the “hardest thing” she’s been through.
Just before Thanksgiving, she said doctors told her they would need to amputate both of her feet and hands because of the damage they had sustained while she was in intensive care.
One of the risk factors of an ECMO machine is poor blood flow to the limbs, which can result in the need for amputation, according to the Cleveland Clinic, which was not involved in Krystina Pacheco’s medical care.
“My hands and feet were black. They looked like a person who had gotten frostbite,” she said, adding that her medical team “tried to do everything they could” to avoid having to amputate.
“I was just breaking down and being absolutely crushed that that’s where we were at, at that point,” Krystina Pacheco said of learning amputations were necessary. “And crying with my family, crying with Jacob, and just being sad that my life would no longer be the same.”
In addition to undergoing an initial surgery to amputate both arms below the elbows followed by a second surgery days later to amputate both legs below the knees, Krystina Pacheco said she underwent nearly one dozen skin grafts over the next several weeks because the skin around her amputations was so damaged.
“Every day I woke up and thought about my babies and every time I went into a surgery, my thought was, I have to get home to be with my babies, so if that means going through one more surgery, then ultimately I have to go through another surgery,” she said. “They were my number one motivation, hands down.”
In late January, three months after she was admitted, Krystina Pacheco was discharged from the hospital and moved to TIRR Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation center in Houston.
There, Krystina Pacheco, who previously taught group fitness classes outside of her full-time job, spent several weeks healing her amputation wounds and learning to live as a double amputee, while also rebuilding her strength after a three-month hospital stay.
“Any task, any exercise, I tried it and I gave it my 100%,” she said, adding that she started applying the motivation she had taught in group fitness to herself. “I would self-talk to myself, like, ‘Come on. You’ve got this. Just get this,’ so I would push a little. I even surprised myself some of the time.”
Dr. Vinay Vanodia, medical director of the amputee and limb loss rehabilitation program at TIRR Memorial Herman, said Krystina Pacheco’s self-motivation helped her progress really quickly in rehab.
“When she first came in, I had received a message about this young patient who came in with these unfortunate amputations after pregnancy and her baby was at home while she was here,” Vanodia told ABC News. “But when we went to see her, she was such a bright light and it just changed the whole mood.”
He continued, “Any challenge we put in front of her, she was able to accomplish. She just gave 100% and was able to make a lot of progress while she was with us.”
On Feb. 11 — more than 100 days after she was hospitalized and away from her newborn daughter and son — Krystina Pacheco was able to return home.
“I cried,” she said of the moment she arrived home. “I hugged [Jacob] really right. He knew I was overcome with emotions.”
Krystina Pacheco said she has no lingering medical complications from her septic shock scare beyond her amputations. She is currently doing workouts at home to rebuild her strength and will start outpatient rehabilitation soon so she can get stronger and be self-sufficient in tasks like transferring herself from her bed to a chair and the shower.
The Pachecos said they have been overwhelmed with the help they’ve received from friends, family and their community over the past several months, from helping to take care of their children to raising money to help them cover medical costs and costs associated with making their home wheelchair-friendly.
Jacob Pacheco said that new challenges have arisen as his wife has settled in at home, but they are moving forward, looking at each new challenge as a new “chapter” in their story.
“It’s not easy, and it’s not going to be easy,” he said. “We were definitely crying yesterday and … it’s okay to feel those things. It’s not easy, but if we’re sticking together, it makes it that much better.”
Krystina Pacheco said she plans to return to work as a licensed specialist in school psychology, and wants to share her story to inspire other people and raise awareness of limb differences. She will soon be able to use state-of-the-art prosthetics for both her hands and feet, according to Vanodia.
When it comes to her kids, she described them as “resilient” and said her 2-year-old son Owen is always by her side and willing to help his mom with everyday tasks like pushing up her sleeves and opening her makeup.
Her 4-month-old daughter Amelia is now catching up on the bonding time she missed with her mom in the very first months of her life.
“That’s one of the things that does break my heart a little bit still and that I’m working through is that mommy guilt of not being able to be with my baby every day for her first three months of her life,” Krystina Pacheco said. “But you know, I’m home now and we’re making those adaptations as we go and we’re adjusting and being a little family again.”
(NEW YORK) — As the pandemic seemingly enters a new phase with the public health emergency ending in early May, many COVID data trackers are shutting down, no longer sharing data such as number of cases or hospitalizations, despite about 500 Americans dying each day from the disease.
Experts interviewed by ABC News detail how the onset of the pandemic brought a slew of data trackers to monitor numbers to inform officials. They warn that investments in epidemiological tracking can’t dwindle, especially as respiratory illnesses like influenza and RSV placed a heavy burden on some hospitals across the nation this past winter.
John Hopkins University reported their Coronavirus Resource Center will be shut down in early March. The site was one of the first to track real-time COVID data and was widely appreciated — even the White House relied on the site in the very beginning of the pandemic to learn about the outbreak that was occurring abroad, explained Dr. Blythe Adamson Ph. D., CEO and founder of infectious economics and former member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, told ABC News.
“Clearly the challenges, especially at the earliest outset of a pandemic, was that there was not really good data infrastructure to report aggregate data, like case counts. The Johns Hopkins tracker played a real vital role in filling in some of those gaps,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Other trackers, like the one managed by the Department of Health and Human Services are being shut down as well, in favor of the dashboard managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Accurate data has been essential for public health officials and policymakers to develop and adjust COVID policies. Yet, almost no jurisdiction is widely imposing any policies like mask-wearing or social distancing.
“These trackers are only as valuable as the actions that they inform and where we’re at in the pandemic. There are still a lot of important decisions that need to be made, actions that can be taken and I would argue that the type of information that we need to make those decisions is different now than it was at the beginning of the pandemic,” Adamson said.
Losing momentum on the investments made in public health data may place communities in vulnerable positions, experts say.
“The investments that took place in COVID should extend out to other public health crises and I think that has always been a worry, that post-response we’d be left with a graveyard of software code that would basically be never utilized and that would be such a shame,” Brownstein said.
At-home tests have now made case numbers less reliable, although officials continue to encourage anonymously reporting tests to MakeMyTestCount.org — a site led by the National Institutes of Health. Experts say tracking cases can still help inform public health agencies.
“For infectious diseases, it’s very important for public health agencies – I’m really referring to state and local health departments and CDC – to continuously monitor how many people are getting sick, who is getting sick and of course to evaluate the pathogen itself,” said Dr. Jay Varma, director of the Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response.
Tracking cases is also important because it alerts officials of potential surges. There have been some notable ones like the Delta surge in the summer of 2021 which impacted many hospitals.
Yet, the Omicron surge obliterated its predecessors in terms of the sheer numbers of cases. Since then, small rises in cases have all been attributed to offshoots of the variant.
“I don’t think we fully know the intrinsic versus extrinsic factors that are influencing these cycles. There’s absolutely a behavioral component. There’s an intrinsic biological component. We’re seeing waves of different magnitude, at three to six months increments,” Brownstein said.
“The reality is sometimes it can take many years after a new pathogen enters the world for us to understand what these patterns are, and what the factors are that drive them,” Varma said.
COVID numbers will continue to ebb and flow, yet a serious surge would most likely require a completely new variant, experts believe.
“I think, without a doubt, we will have surges. The frequency and size of those surges is still very hard to predict. In all likelihood, we will see a bigger surge at some point in the coming year or two. We will likely be challenged with a new variant, no mitigation strategies and waning immunity and I think that recipe will lead to a surge,” Brownstein said.
In general, predicting COVID numbers — just like predicting how the stock market will do — is an almost impossible task.
“One of the most important lessons of the COVID pandemic has been that subject matter experts, like myself, have to be very humble about making predictions for the future,” Varma said
However, experts are optimistic that things will get better.
“The most likely scenario is that through repeated infections, and through vaccination, COVID will overtime cause fewer hospitalizations and deaths than it has over the past few years,” he added.
