Health

(NEW YORK) — After the omicron wave of COVID-19 receded earlier this winter, states and cities across the country moved quickly to ease mitigation measures, leaving many officials hopeful that the virus would soon be in the rear-view mirror, ahead of the looming midterm elections in November.

Much of the public rejoiced when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it would update its guidance for face coverings, giving the vast majority of Americans the green light to ditch masks indoors, if they lived in an area of low or medium risk.

However, for some high-risk populations, like the 7 million Americans living with weakened immune systems from cancer treatment, transplants or immune deficiencies, a return to pre-pandemic normalcy is still not on the horizon. The CDC’s new guidance came with a caveat for the immunocompromised; the agency is still recommending that those at increased risk keep face coverings on.

With concert halls at full capacity again, largely maskless classrooms and social distancing stickers no longer visible in shopping outlets, many members of the immunocompromised and disabled communities are now appealing directly to the CDC and other federal health agencies in an effort to voice their frustrations.

“The fact that we have to just say over and over again, that our lives are worth saving — it’s really soul crushing,” Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, told ABC News.

Moderately or severely immunocompromised people, or individuals who have a weakened immune system, are at increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness and death, according to the CDC.

As concerns over a new COVID-19 resurgence grow, advocates like Town have been pushing back on the administration’s decision to roll back recommended restrictions and are urging officials to reconsider implementing restrictions such as masking.

“There’s a constant questioning of what can we be doing differently, what can we be doing more of and after two years of having to defend our humanity, it becomes even harder to answer those questions,” Town said.

‘Seen this pattern before’

Last month, the American Association of People with Disabilities, alongside a group of more than 100 disability organizations, penned a letter to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, urging her to revise the agency’s latest COVID-19 guidance on masking, in an effort to protect high-risk populations in the U.S.

Under the CDC’s new risk levels, most Americans living in areas with low or medium community spread levels were no longer recommended to wear masks indoors. However, the agency suggests that under the medium risk level, high-risk Americans should consider consulting with their physicians over whether or not to wear a mask.

“We have seen this pattern before. When protections that are key to lowering transmission, such as universal masking, are removed too soon after a peak and before low transmission is demonstrably sustained, new variants emerge, causing cases to spike and putting the lives of all Americans – particularly disabled, chronically ill, immunocompromised, people of color, and older people – at greater risk once again,” the organizations wrote.

A month after the original letter from the disability organizations was sent, two representatives from the CDC​, John Auerbach, director of intergovernmental and strategic affairs, and Dr. Karen Remley, director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, responded to the coalition, on behalf of Walensky.

“Dr. Walensky and CDC commit to moving forward together with people in the disability community with regular engagements between senior leadership and disability groups,” the representatives said in a letter, dated Apr. 7, that was shared with ABC News.

“We know this pandemic has been particularly challenging for those who are at increased risk’ of severe illness due to advanced age, certain disabilities, immune state, chronic medical conditions, or for other reasons… and it is important that we recognize this is not a small group among us — tens of millions of people are at an increased risk of getting severely ill if infected with the virus that causes COVID-19.”

Even if CDC community transmission levels remain low, Auerbach and Remley noted that people can choose to wear masks based on “personal preference” or “level of risk.”

Further, they said that public health officials, including schools, should take into account all community members when considering whether to “strengthen or add layered prevention strategies, not only for effective disease control, but also to protect those persons at greatest risk for severe illness or death.”

The letters come amid a multitude of meetings between a coalition of disability advocacy organizations, and several representatives from the CDC, Health and Human Services as well as the White House.

Although members of the coalition said they are glad to be in more regular communication with the agencies, there is growing frustration among advocates, who believe that the CDC, in particular, is not fully doing its part to protect immunocompromised and vulnerable Americans.

The CDC, as a federal agency, does not have the authority to issue federal mandates for masking requirements or other mitigation measures outside a federal context, such as in an airport or public transportation setting. Although states and localities are responsible for setting their own public health guidelines, many follow the CDC’s lead in what requirements should be set to keep the public safe and COVID-19 under control.

“We have seen some kind of movement as a result, but not nearly to the extent that we would have liked,” Town explained.

Meetings with the CDC have been “infuriating”, “emotional” and “devastating” to watch, a coalition member who has participated in meetings, and did not wish to be identified, told ABC News.

The CDC told ABC News in a statement that the agency is actively working with a number of disability organizations, officials on the federal, state, local, level and community-based organizations to help “people with disabilities access information, vaccination, and prevention resources” in an effort to protect against the deadly impacts of the virus.

“CDC has made it a priority to engage in dialogue with disability advocates to hear their concerns and identify areas where we can enhance protection for people with disabilities who are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes,” a representative said. “We are committed to continuing the dialogue and addressing the systematic inequities that effect the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans that have been exacerbated during the pandemic.”

‘Fighting for crumbs’

When President Joe Biden took office last year, Matthew Cortland, a disability rights advocate, was hopeful that although the pandemic was certainly not over, there might truly be a light at the end of the tunnel with COVID-19.

“I was hopeful that they would be much more willing to pursue and implement policies that really demonstrated a commitment to valuing the lives of chronically ill, disabled, and immunocompromised people. Unfortunately, that wasn’t really the case,” Cortland said.

When asked by ABC News to identify some of the work the Biden administration has done to protect the lives of disabled and immunocompromised Americans since the President took office, the White House pointed to its COVID-19 preparedness plan, which they stress addresses the “needs of individuals with disabilities and older adults”, prioritizes “protections for individuals who are immunocompromised,” and accelerates “efforts to detect, prevent, and treat long COVID.”

Cortland lives with Crohn’s disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease, and takes immunosuppressant drugs. He said has been dismayed by the CDC’s recent change in masking guidance.

He and other advocates have been pushing the CDC and other agencies to consider addressing disability bias in health care, ensure that people with disabilities — and other communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 — are not only at the center of CDC COVID-19 guidance, but also have increased access to high-quality masks, testing, vaccines, therapeutics, information and collect and report disability data for COVID-19.

“It feels like we are fighting for crumbs,” Cortland said. “The thing is the threat is so grave, and so pervasive and extends over the entire country that we have to fight for these crumbs, because these problems are going to keep some number of people alive.”

Thanks to key treatments and vaccines, a representative from the CDC told ABC News that the risk of becoming severely ill is now much lower for many people in the U.S. However, the agency noted that there are still people who are at high risk of falling ill from COVID-19.

“For many people in the U.S., the risk for severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19 is now much lower. Vaccination and testing levels are high, treatments are more advanced and available, and the population has increased immunity through vaccination or previous infection,” the CDC representative said. “But some people are still at higher risk for serious effects of COVID-19 — this includes people who are immunocompromised, have underlying health conditions, have disabilities, or are older. People at higher risk, and the whole community, can be safe only when we all protect each other.”

Some experts say that when COVID-19 ultimately does transition from pandemic to endemic, people will need to start treating it like other diseases.

“We should be having a conversation about when the right time is for masks to come off — and I think members of the immunocompromised community should have a voice in that conversation,” Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “But I think we should be considering what is an appropriate threshold, not keeping mask mandates in effect forever.”

Although masks are still mandated in certain spaces such as on public transportation, some health experts have also voiced their concern over the rapid removal of COVID-19 restrictions, stressing that Americans must remember to take into account the health and wellbeing of others around them, even if they are tired of mask use and social distancing.

“I absolutely understand the urge and people wanting to get back to that 2019 style of living, but one big concern that a lot of colleagues and I have talked about was that we did it too quickly,” Dr. Alok Patel, a physician at Stanford Children’s Health and ABC News contributor. “When we use the phrase the ‘new normal,’ we need to remind ourselves that that means something different for different people out there. So, we’re reopening without a clear plan in place for those who are still high risk, including those who are immunocompromised.”

Deadly realities

For some Americans, the consequences of these decisions surrounding policies hit very close to home.

Leslie Cummings of Naperville, Illinois, has been vocalizing concerns after the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules in Illinois, voted 9-0 to suspend the emergency mask rules in schools.

Her 8-year-old daughter, Claudette, who is immunocompromised, was looking forward to returning to school following her vaccination series, but following the onset of omicron and her district’s decision to end mask requirements, those plans have been put on hold.

Despite the decision from the bipartisan committee, at the time, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker continued to urge all schools and parents to keep wearing masks in an effort to “keep everyone in their schools and communities safe.”

“If she gets COVID-19… it could kill her,” Cummings told ABC News. “​​She is very susceptible to anything having to do with her heart, lungs or liver.”

Claudette has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, resulting in multiple open-heart surgeries and procedures and the prescription of numerous medications.

“Even though she’s vaccinated, at least 45% of the kids in our school district are not vaccinated. Unvaccinated kids are more likely to get COVID and more likely to spread it, and that’s another big concern,” Cummings explained. “If there were more vaccinated kids, more kids wearing masks, it would be different, but we’re just not there.”

Despite continuously speaking out about her concerns over the potential impact of the virus on her daughter’s health, Cummings has been struck by what she perceives as lack of caring from the public.

“I’ve had a real awakening about this country in the last two years, about how selfish some people are. It’s been very sad for me, and it also makes me very angry that people just don’t seem to care,” Cummings said. “They don’t care that you know, that there’s all these people out here that are their aunts, their brothers, their sisters, their cousins, their neighbors, their community members, the elderly, and they just don’t seem to care.”

1 in 4 American adults is living with disabilities

Earlier this year, an analysis from the Center for American Progress found that there were an estimated additional 1.2 million people living with disabilities (1 in 4 Americans total), many of whom face inadequate healthcare resources, as well as higher rates of unemployment, and over-representation in low-wage positions.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics currently defines a person with a disability as someone who has one of a list of disabilities, including blindness, deafness, or someone who has difficulty conducting daily tasks because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition.

One of the concerns was making sure that employers “accommodate newly disabled workers to comply with civil rights laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act.” In the first month, the definition of “at-risk” was expanded, allowing for greater accommodations for the vulnerable members of the population.

“The definition of who counts as high risk was extremely narrow, and that has big implications for disabled people,” Town explained. “If you are someone who is at high risk of getting COVID-19, but your disability is not named in the CDC is definition, and you’re requesting an accommodation to continue working from home, or to receive services via telehealth, your employer is likely to look at that definition and determine whether or not you’re eligible.”

To further mitigate the risk of COVID-19 infection among vulnerable populations, Cortland would like to see people wearing highly protective masks, such as KN-95s or N-95s, and for the country to invest in better ventilation and filtration systems for schools and workplaces, so that immunocompromised individuals will feel safer participating.

Advocates have also asked for greater guidance on when different members of the disabled and high-risk community should get vaccinated and boosted, as well as funding for at-home vaccination programs.

The CDC pointed ABC News to some of the recent “disability work” it has done, including funding to embed disability specialists in 28 state, territorial, and local health department across the U.S., a CDC COVID-19 Toolkit for People with Disabilities, which includes guidance and tools to help high-risk people make informed decisions about protecting their health, and an online central repository of COVID-19 resources for health departments and organizations.

“While progress has been made to protect people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, more work is needed,” a representative for the agency said.

The CDC said it is working to help reduce health disparities related to COVID-19 among people with disabilities, with initiatives including providing accessible materials and culturally relevant messages for people with disabilities, and addressing and expanding COVID-19 vaccine access and confidence among people with disabilities.

Even with some positive changes, advocates say there is still work to do. Moving forward, it will be critical to address the intersectional needs of all disabled, immunocompromised, chronically ill, and high-risk Americans to fairly and equitably enter into a new phase of the pandemic.

“I don’t have a choice but to keep fighting for these problems,” Cortland said. “Keeping some number of people alive who would otherwise die is better than not, but is it enough? Absolutely not.”

ABC News’ Nam Cho contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — By this fall, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its partner BioNTech could potentially have a COVID-19 booster that specifically addresses the omicron variant as well as its subvariants and other known strains of the virus, CEO Albert Bourla said during a panel Wednesday.

“It is a possibility that we have it by then; it’s not certainty,” Bourla said. “We are collecting data right now, and as far as I know, Moderna, as well as us, we are working on omicron or different enhanced vaccines,”

It would be simple to create a vaccine specifically targeting omicron, he explained, but it is scientifically and technically more difficult to create a vaccine that addresses all known variants.

“I hope clearly by autumn … that we could have a vaccine, if we have one that works,” Bourla said.

Once enough data is aggregated, Bourla said the company will submit data to the Food and Drug Administration.

Earlier this year, Dr. Anthony Fauci called Pfizer’s decision to start human trials on an omicron-targeted COVID-19 vaccine a “prudent move.”

“It makes sense to think in terms of at least having ready an omicron-specific boost,” Fauci told MSNBC in January.

Last month, Moderna also announced it had started phase 2 trials of its omicron-specific booster vaccine, which will ultimately include 375 adults in the U.S.

In February, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said he believes the combination approach – which they call a “bivalent” vaccine — could offer more durable protection while preserving activity against “ancestral” variants.

“We do believe, as we’ve said, that it is time to update the vaccine against the mutations that are currently circulating and to improve the durability against those new variants of concern,” Hoge said during an investors call in February.

The push to develop omicron specific boosters come as the omicron subvariant BA.2 sweeps the globe and as new subvariants continue to pop up.

BA.2 is now estimated to account for the vast majority — 85.9% — of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. as of April 9 and more than 90% of new cases across the Northeast.

On Wednesday, New York identified the emergence of two sublineages of BA.2, named BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1, that appear to have a 23% to 27% growth advantage over BA.2.

New York has had a recent surge of infections in the central part of the state, which officials said is likely fueled by these two new subvariants. Although they are thought to be highly contagious, so far, there is no evidence to suggest they cause more severe illness.

“We are alerting the public to two omicron subvariants, newly emerged and rapidly spreading in upstate New York, so New Yorkers can act swiftly,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said in a statement Wednesday. “While these subvariants are new, the tools to combat them are not. These tools will work if we each use them: get fully vaccinated and boosted, test following exposure, symptoms or travel, consider wearing a mask in public indoor spaces, and consult with your health care provider about treatment if you test positive.”

For the month of March, BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1 rose to collectively comprise more than 70% prevalence in central New York and more than 20% prevalence in the neighboring Finger Lakes region, state data shows, and data for April indicates that levels in central New York are now above 90%. The state reported that its findings are the first confirmed instances of significant community spread due to the new subvariants in the U.S.

Across the state of New York, reported infection and hospitalization rates have been steadily on the rise for weeks.

Reported infection rates have increased by 73% in the last week, and new hospital admissions have increased by nearly 25% in the last week.

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(KISSIMMEE, Fla.) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed into law a bill that bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks, the same gestational limit currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The new law, which passed the state Senate in March, will go into effect July 1.

Under the law, there are no exceptions for abortion in the case of rape or incest, but it does allow for exceptions if the fetus has a fatal abnormality or in cases when the mother is at risk of death or “substantial or irreversible physical impairment.”

Those exceptions would require written certification from two physicians.

Physicians who perform abortions must submit monthly reports to the state health department with details about each procedure, including the reasons for performing them and the number of infants born alive after attempted abortions.

“We’re here today to protect life. We’re here today to defend those who can’t defend themselves,” DeSantis said Thursday in Kissimmee before signing the bill.

Abortion rights advocates argue that banning abortion after 15 weeks will further harm patients who need care the most, including people of color, people of limited economic means and people who lack health insurance.

“Nobody should be forced to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles for essential health care — but in signing this bill, Gov. DeSantis will be forcing Floridians seeking abortion to do just that,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. “Floridians want to be able to make decisions about their health and their families, without interference from politicians. They want the protections guaranteed by their state’s constitution. This ban runs counter to all of these goals. Planned Parenthood pledges to stand with patients and fight this until people can get the care they deserve.”

Dr. Sujatha Prabhakaran, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, told ABC News in March that doctors like herself are “scared and sad” about the legislation’s potential impact.

“The biggest impact of the bill is going to be hurting our patients’ access to the care that they need,” said Prabhakaran, also a practicing OB-GYN in Sarasota, Florida. “We know that when there are these restrictions, it doesn’t mean that the need for the care goes away, it just means that it makes it even harder for patients to access the care.”

The new law in Florida comes at the same time that legislators in Oklahoma and Kentucky have also taken action to limit abortion access.

Under a bill signed into law Tuesday by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, any medical provider who performs an abortion will face a fine of $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. The only exceptions for performing an abortion would be if the mother’s life is in danger.

On Wednesday, the Kentucky state legislature overrode Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, along with several other abortion restrictions. Under the bill, any physician that performs an abortion after 15 weeks would lose their license for at least six months.

The state-level actions come as the Supreme Court is reviewing a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.

In the case, Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the state of Mississippi is arguing to uphold a law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, while Jackson Women’s Health, Mississippi’s lone abortion clinic, argues the Supreme Court’s protection of a woman’s right to choose the procedure is clear, well-established and should be respected.

Since the Roe v. Wade ruling and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling that affirmed the decision, the court has never allowed states to prohibit the termination of pregnancies prior to fetal viability outside the womb, roughly 24 weeks, according to medical experts.

If the Supreme Court rules in Mississippi’s favor and upholds the law — as is expected because of the court’s current conservative makeup — the focus will turn to states, more than half of which are prepared to ban abortion if Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.

Prabhakaran said in March that she and other doctors in Florida were already seeing patients from states as far away as Texas, which last year enacted a law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

As of 2017, abortions in Florida represent just over 8% of all abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute.

According to Prabhakaran, a 15-week ban in Florida has the potential to force pregnant people to travel as far as North Carolina and Washington, D.C., for care.

“While abortion is very safe, the the higher the gestational age, the more risk there is potentially to patients who have a complication,” she said, adding that the lack of access also means some patients will continue with high-risk pregnancies while others will seek other care. “What I worry is going to start to happen again is that patients will be taking care from unqualified providers, and that that will put them at risk.”

ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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(FRANKFORT, Ky.) — The Kentucky state legislature has overridden Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks, along with several other abortion restrictions.

Under the bill, any physician that performs an abortion after 15 weeks would lose their license for at least six months.

The bill allows for exceptions if there is a medical emergency in which continuing the pregnancy would result in “serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” or “death of the pregnant woman.” There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Last week, Beshear, a Democrat, vetoed the Republican-backed measure after he raised concerns about whether the bill is constitutional and criticized the lack of exceptions for rape or incest.

But on Wednesday, the state House received well over the 51 votes needed to override the veto, and the state Senate far surpassed the 20 votes needed as well. It went into law immediately due to its emergency clause.

Also in the bill, which is known as HB3, is a restriction that drugs used for a medication abortion — a nonsurgical procedure typically used up to 10 weeks in pregnancy — must be provided by a physician who is licensed to practice medicine and in good standing with Kentucky.

The physician must also have hospital admitting privileges in “geographical proximity” to where the abortions are being performed.

An in-person examination needs to be had at least 24 hours prior to the medication abortion, during which women are informed about any risks. The drugs cannot be sent through the mail.

Abortion advocates say this will prevent many women, particularly those who are low-income, from accessing abortion if they must go to a clinic to receive it.

Additionally, minors who seek abortions will need the consent of a judge if the parents are not available, and any fetal remains will need to be buried or cremated by a licensed funeral provider.

Opponents argue the bill has so many restrictions that it makes it virtually impossible for any abortion clinic to comply and say its passage will mean Kentuckians effectively lose access to abortion care.

The bill also requires that the names of physicians who provide medication abortions be published and a state-run “complaint portal” to be set up so people can anonymously report abortion providers who are allegedly violating the program.

In a previous interview with ABC News, Meg Stern, director of the abortion support fund for Kentucky Health Justice Network, an advocacy group, said this could lead to complaints filed by people who have personal vendettas against abortion providers.

The ban is modeled after Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, which is being reviewed by the Supreme Court, with a decision expected in June on whether or not it is constitutional.

If the court determines the Mississippi bill is constitutional, this could mean Roe v. Wade is either overturned or fundamentally weakened.

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(NEW YORK) — When Wanda Irving looks into the eyes of her 5-year-old granddaughter, Soleil, she said she instantly sees her daughter, Shalon Irving, whose death shortly after giving birth to Soleil has since shaped the trajectory of their lives.

“She’s got her mom’s eyes and her mom’s smile and her mom’s fearlessness and her mom’s persistence,” Wanda Irving told Good Morning America of her granddaughter, whom the family calls Sunny, after her middle name, Sunshine. “She has her mom’s memory, because her mom wouldn’t forget anything.”

After Shalon’s death in January 2017, three weeks after giving birth, Irving uprooted her life to move to the Atlanta area, where Shalon worked as an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service.

Irving has cared for Soleil full-time ever since, working to make sure her granddaughter knows all she can about her mom, whose ultimate dream was motherhood.

“[Shalon’s] pictures stay up. Everything is around that her mom would have liked,” said Irving, who said Soleil loves to cook because she knows her mom did, too. “I try to tell her every single day what a great mom she had, and she can tell you stories about her mom because of what she’s heard. She asks me repeatedly to tell her mommy’s story again.”

In addition to keeping her daughter’s memory alive, Irving has devoted her life to ending the maternal mortality crisis among Black women in the United States so that other families don’t face grief like hers.

“I have to face my granddaughter every single day, and she’s still asking where’s her mother and why isn’t her mother here,” said Irving, the co-founder of a maternal mortality-focused nonprofit organization called Dr. Shalon’s Maternal Action Project.

“That doesn’t make sense to me, why she has to go through that kind of pain,” said Irving. “So we can’t let this continue to happen.”

According to the CDC, around 700 women die each year due to complications within the first year after giving birth in the U.S., which continues to have the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations.

As a Black woman, Shalon faced disproportionate odds when giving birth to her first child. Black women in the U.S. die of maternal causes at nearly three times the rate of white women, according to CDC data released in February.

A heartbreaking death and a newborn

As a doctor, Shalon was prepared for the birth of Soleil, according to her best friend, Bianca Pryor, who met Shalon in 2002 as a fellow graduate student at Purdue University and, by chance, became pregnant with her first child at the same time as Shalon.

“She knew her body in and out. She had a Ph.D., but one would have thought she had an M.D. She was brilliant,” Pryor said. “She had researched everything about pregnancy and delivery, and she was so prepared.”

Shalon gave birth successfully to Soleil via C-section on Jan. 3, 2017, with her mom by her side, and then was discharged from the hospital four days later after a routine stay, according to Irving.

After a few days at home, Irving said, Shalon began experiencing complications including a hematoma, blood that collects and pools under the skin, as well as rising blood pressure, swollen limbs and a C-section wound that was not healing well.

“I think she probably went to the doctor at least nine or 10 times in those two weeks,” Irving said. “I know that last week she went almost every single day, and every time she was sent back home.”

Pryor, who lives in New York and had just given birth to her own son in an emergency C-section at 23 weeks, said she remembers getting updates from Shalon about her complications.

“She pushed back on the medical care teams,” Pryor said. “She kept saying that something wasn’t right.”

And then on Jan. 24, Pryor said a missed phone call led to a text from Irving with the message, “B., Shalon stopped breathing.”

At home in Atlanta, Shalon, then 36, had suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed. She was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where she was put in the intensive care unit, according to Irving.

For several days, her family and friends stood vigil by her bedside, according to Pryor, who flew in from New York.

“We stood by her side. We prayed,” Pryor said. “The hardest was when we decided that we would bring Soleil in so that Shalon could hold her one last time. I’ll never get that image out of my head.”

“I remember when we put Soleil on top of her, one tear ran out of Shalon’s eye, and we just held space. We stayed in that moment,” she said.

On Jan. 28, two days after learning Shalon was brain dead, Irving said she had to make the decision to remove the respiratory machine that had been keeping her daughter alive.

“We took a look at her medical directive and one of the things that we saw was that in the directive, she had handwritten, ‘Mommy, I will try hard if anything happens, but if there’s no hope, let me go. Just let me go,'” Irving said. “I didn’t want to let go, but I wanted to honor her request.”

Picking up the pieces to create change

Immediately after Shalon’s death, Pryor said she spoke to Irving about the dreams she and her best friend had shared for their children, like how they wanted to raise their kids and the people they hoped they would become.

As the months and years went on, Pryor and Irving also spoke about the dreams Shalon had for her career and the legacy she would want to leave behind.

“We started dreaming together, Wanda and I, picking up where Shalon and I left off, and putting our pain into purpose,” Pryor said.

Together, in late 2019, Irving and Pryor founded Dr. Shalon’s Maternal Action Project to make giving birth in the U.S. an equitable right for all.

“Shalon was such a fierce equity warrior,” Irving said. “She had her motto, ‘I see an equity wherever it exists. I’m not afraid to call it by name, and I fight hard to eliminate it. I vow to create a better Earth,’ and that was Shalon in a nutshell.”

After Shalon’s death, Irving learned that her daughter’s cardiac arrest had been caused by complications from hypertension, or high blood pressure, a condition that, according to the CDC, contributes to a “significantly higher proportion of pregnancy-related deaths” among Black women than among white women.

Both Irving and Pryor said they felt that after Shalon gave birth, her health complications were not taken seriously enough by her medical team.

As a result, they created Believe Her, an app that provides maternal health resources for Black women and gives them a space to share their experiences.

“Our mission is to create that collective line of defense, so for all the Black mothers and birthing people out there to learn, what is the language, how do you push back when someone says, ‘Oh no, you’re fine,'” Pryor said. “We wanted to create this really uncut, raw conversation so birthing people can push back.”

Pryor continued, “That is our response back, believe her.”

Empowering Black women against institutional odds

Believe Her is one of several apps on the market now created by Black women for birthing Black women to help beat the odds that are stacked against them just because of their race.

Why exactly Black women die at a higher rate than any other race during childbirth is the result of a web of factors, experts say.

Pregnancy-related deaths are defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy or within a year of the end of pregnancy from pregnancy complications, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiological effects of pregnancy, according to the CDC.

One reason for the disparity is that more Black women of childbearing age have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which increases the risk of pregnancy-related complications like preeclampsia and possibly the need for emergency C-sections, according to the CDC.

But there are socioeconomic circumstances and structural inequities that put Black women at greater risk for those chronic conditions, data shows. And Black women often have inadequate access to care throughout pregnancy which can further complicate their conditions, according to a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

On Wednesday, during Black Maternal Health Week, the Biden administration announced an additional $16 million in funding for programs to strengthen programs that aim to address disparities in maternal and child health, including a state-level program to “deliver high-quality maternity care services, provide training for maternal care clinicians, and enhance the quality of state-level maternal health data.”

Anecdotal reports show that the concerns of Black women experiencing negative symptoms during pregnancy and postpartum are specifically ignored by some physicians until the woman’s conditions significantly worsen, at which point it may be too late to prevent a deadlier outcome.

Maya Hardigan, a mom of three in New York, said she created the Meet Mae app for Black women in part because of her own experience giving birth to her first child via C-section.

“I did everything I knew to plan,” Hardigan said of her first pregnancy. “I took a birth education class with my husband. I had a birth plan. I rotated through all the doctors in our OB practice to make sure I knew everyone and I talked to each of them about the birth experience I was seeking.”

Hardigan said she ended up giving birth in an emergency C-section that, though it ended successfully for both her and her daughter, was a scary experience.

“I felt that I just didn’t have a choice, number one,” Hardigan said. “And number two, I felt very confused, because it is such a vulnerable moment.”

The Meet Mae app connects Black women with local support networks and with doulas, who can be a birthing mother’s advocate in the delivery room and provide pre- and post-natal care. It also allows women to create their own birth plans and to track and monitor their conditions during and after pregnancy, according to Hardigan, who left a 20-year career in the health care industry to launch Meet Mae.

Another app on the market, IRTH, provides a platform for Black women to share reviews of care providers. The app’s founder, Kimberly Seals Allers, said she was inspired to create a tool for other Black women after feeling her “wishes were ignored” when she gave birth in a New York hospital.

According to Pryor, the different apps are all working toward the same goal of empowering Black women with the tools and support they need to successfully give birth.

“I really do believe we’re pioneering the way … to solve for this,” Pryor said of the Black birthing crisis.

For Irving, she said she dreams that when her granddaughter grows up, she will not only not see an end to the crisis, but know that her mom played a critical role.

“I hope that [Soleil] will understand and appreciate as she grows up that [her] mom was an important person in this fight, and because of her and her life and what she did, things have changed,” said Irving. “That’s what I want her to be able to say.”

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(NEW YORK) — A college athlete who took time away from her sport to focus on her mental health is speaking out to urge coaches, schools, parents and fellow players to pay attention to the mental health of student-athletes.

“One of my favorite things to tell myself, if I’m not succeeding in the way I want to, I’ll put my hands on my heart now to say, ‘I love you and I’m listening,'” Cailin Bracken, a sophomore lacrosse player at Vanderbilt University, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “And I want people to experience that from their coaches and administrators. I want there to be grace on all ends.”

Bracken said of the relationship between parents and kids, “I want for student-athletes and for parents to have an open communication.”

Bracken said that as a freshman at Vanderbilt, she struggled with depression after a mid-season concussion, which led her to stepping away from playing on the school’s lacrosse team.

“[If] I had a good day of practice, I was happy, and if I had a bad day of practice, I didn’t want to talk to anyone,” Bracken said. “I was investing so much of my worth in lacrosse.”

After taking time off from competing, Bracken reentered the sport and now is sharing her story to help others.

Earlier this month, Bracken opened up about her experience in an essay titled, “Dear College Sports,” for The Mental Matchup. In it, she describes how college sports can take a toll on student athletes, and how they are met with many expectations from coaches and administrators.

“Playing a sport in college, honestly, feels like playing fruit ninja with a butter knife,” Bracken wrote. “There are watermelons and cantaloupes being flung at you from all different directions, while you’re trying to defend yourself using one of those flimsy cafeteria knives that can’t even seem to spread room-temperature butter.”

“And beyond the chaos and overwhelm of it all, you’ve got coaches and parents and trainers and professors who expect you to come away from the experience unscathed, fruit salad in hand,” she added.

In her letter, Bracken mentions college athletes like Stanford University soccer star Katie Meyer and Duke University lacrosse player Morgan Rodgers, both of whom died by suicide at the age of 22.

Bracken wrote that when she hears stories like theirs, she feels fear, adding, “It scares me so much to wonder if it could’ve been my team; if it could’ve been me.”

On college campuses in the United States, around 30% of women and 25% of men who are student-athletes report having anxiety, according to data shared by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

Among athletes with known mental health conditions, only 10% seek care from a mental health professional, according to the ACSM.

The NCAA found that during the coronavirus pandemic, student-athletes’ mental health was even negatively affected, with students reporting stress due to academic concerns, lack of access to their sport, financial worries and COVID-19 health concerns.

Professional athletes like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka have been public in recent years about the pressure, stress and burnout they’ve faced at the top of their sports, and those are struggles college athletes may feel too.

According to the ACSM, student-athletes face pressures from academics and competing, as well as other stressors like being away home home, traveling for games, feeling isolated from campus and other students due to their focus on sport and adapting to being in the public spotlight.

Bracken said that it is because of the support of her team and coaches that she was able to return to the field, writing, “I was able to navigate my way out of the darkness instead of letting it consume me.”

“I want other coaches to just say, ‘Hey, how can I be here for you?,’ because I never ever want a coach or a parent or teammate to see a situation like Katie Meyer [or] Morgan Rogers and say, ‘I wish I had done more,” she told GMA.

She added that she has been heartened by the response she’s received to opening up about her own mental health battle, saying, “I’m so grateful people are listening.”

“I had a father reach out to me and telling me that after reading the essay, he drove two-and-a-half hours to his daughter’s lacrosse practice and waited outside to give her a hug,” said Bracken. “And it was the most beautiful thing, because it’s exactly why I wrote it.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.

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(NEW YORK) — Amid a growing shortage of baby formula across the country, major retailers have begun limiting the amount of formula customers can buy.

As of April, 31% of popular formula brands may be sold out at stores nationwide, according to Datasembly, a tracking firm that tracks products stocked on store shelves.

In response, CVS and Walgreens are among the retailers now restricting purchases of formula products.

“Following supplier challenges and increased customer demand, we’ve added a limit of three baby formula products per purchase in our stores and online. We’re continuing to work with our baby formula vendors to address this issue and we regret any inconvenience this causes our customers,” Matt Blanchette, a senior manager of retail communications at CVS Pharmacy told GMA via email.

A Walgreens spokesperson also told GMA in a statement: “Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, infant and toddler formulas are seeing constraint across the country. Similar to other retailers, we put into effect purchase limits of three per transaction on all infant and toddler formula to help improve inventory. We continue to work diligently with our supplier partners to best meet customer demands.”

The shortage is due to several factors, experts say, including supply chain issues, rising inflation and previous recalls of baby formula products.

Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers not to use certain Alimentum, EleCare, or Similac powdered infant formulas that were recalled due to possible bacterial contamination.

The World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend breastfeeding infants as breast milk contains the optimal nutrients and health protection for babies. However, breastfeeding may not always be possible for a host of reasons and may need to be supplemented with formula.

Nearly 70% of babies in the U.S., or nearly 3 million babies, are fed infant formula and get some or all of their nutritional needs from it, according to a 2016 review based on FDA data.

As the baby formula shortage continues, experts say parents and caregivers should reach out to pediatricians and seek help from resources like the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program. If a child needs specialized formula, like a hydrolyzed formula for a baby with allergies, they should talk to their child’s pediatrician or care team, like a pediatric dietitian, gastroenterolgist, or nephrologist.

Here are five more tips for parents, according to Dr. Steven Abrams, a professor of pediatrics at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.

Be flexible with formula brands

Experts like Abrams say for most families, if one formula isn’t available, look for generic or alternative formulas.

“If you use the one brand name, identify the comparable version that might be the other competing brand names or the generic versions,” Abrams told GMA. “They’re virtually identical. There’s no reason that the overwhelming majority of parents can’t use almost any of the routine formulas they see out there that are comparable to what they’re used to.”

Check for formula in different stores

Abrams suggests looking in multiple stores for formula, including groceries and supermarkets, big box stores, convenience stores, and warehouse stores. Another option is to search online from reputable stores or to order from manufacturers directly.

“It’s harder for people who are more isolated from cities or more rural, and that’s where they can look online. If it’s one of those super-specialized formulas like Elecare, sometimes the pediatrician will be able to connect them with a formula representative that can help them. Sometimes the hospital may have a small supply they can use,” Abrams said.

Don’t hoard baby formula

Abrams also added that there is no reason to panic buy baby formula.

“I know it’s tempting to stock up four months’ supply because you’re worried about it, but obviously, it’s like everyone going to the gas station at the same time. If everybody buys formula at the same time, then there isn’t for other people,” he said.

Never dilute formula

Diluting infant formula can be dangerous and even life-threatening for babies, leading to a serious nutritional deficit and health issues, such as brain damage and seizures.

Follow basic hygiene standards, like washing hands before preparation, and follow instructions on the formula packaging. If preparing powdered formula, the FDA recommends using clean, potable water to mix. Some liquid formula also requires water to be mixed in.

Don’t try to DIY formula

Commercially available baby formula is heavily regulated by the federal Food and Drug Administration to be a safe breast milk alternative/supplement to provide babies the nutrition they need. The FDA does not recommend parents make or feed a child formula that hasn’t been evaluated as the formula may not have the correct amount or type of nutrients that a baby would need and could be adulterated.

“Only buy proper formulas that are sold legally in the United States via stores or online as legitimate formulas. There have been a couple of cases of babies actually getting homemade formulas and dying from them or being critically injured by them,” Abrams said.

The FDA has noted these past incidents, saying on its website, “The agency has received reports of hospitalized babies who had been fed homemade infant formula and then suffered from hypocalcemia (low calcium). Other potential problems with homemade formulas include contamination and absence of, or inadequate amounts of, critical nutrients.”

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(AUSTIN, Texas) — A middle school teacher in Texas is making sure no student has to miss class time due to or feels ashamed of their menstrual cycle.

Kylie DeFrance, an English as an additional language (EAL) teacher at a charter school in Austin, keeps “pad bags” filled with feminine hygiene products at her desk in her classroom so that any student can take them at any time.

It’s a practice she said she began in her first year of teaching eight years ago when she saw female students, or, as she calls them, scholars, missing instruction time due to their periods.

“I’ve had scholars that were missing school constantly or were disappearing in the bathroom for 30-plus minutes,” DeFrance told Good Morning America. “Or I’ve had scholars that say, ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ or ‘to the office,’ and they’re gone for half the day.”

When DeFrance started providing free pads and tampons and heating pads to her students, she said she saw they were able to stay in class and focus on learning.

“It is such a huge difference to see how much instructional time that they are not missing that they were before,” she said. “I had one scholar who would literally disappear into the bathroom for 30 minutes, five days a week, once a month, who is now not disappearing in the bathroom at all, and her grade went from a ‘D’ to an ‘A.’ She’s an excellent scholar.”

DeFrance continued, “That just goes to show that having your period should not conflict or cause a difficulty with your learning if you’re provided with the things that you need to be provided with.”

When DeFrance started a new teaching job last August at Austin Achieve, a public charter school, she said she purchased feminine hygiene products at her own expense to store in her classroom.

As word spread at the school that DeFrance had easy-to-access period supplies in her classroom, she said the demand grew and she was soon spending over $100 per month on her own on supplies.

DeFrance said she quickly realized that for many of her students, her classroom was their only access point for supplies. Over 90% of students at Austin Achieve, a year-round school, qualify for free or reduced lunch, according to the school’s website.

“A lot of the scholars go home and they’re the parents for their siblings because their parents are at work,” said DeFrance. “Or maybe their parents can’t take them to the store because they’re having to choose between food and this.”

“I’m not ever going to say no and turn a scholar away,” she said. “So I started keeping multiple pad bags and started asking scholars, ‘Do you need to take this home?’”

Period poverty, when people cannot afford even the most basic of period supplies like pads and tampons, is an issue that affects women around the world, including the United States. A lack of access to menstrual products and education affects 1 in 10 college students in the U.S., according to a study released last year.

Hoping to be able to provide more supplies to more students at her middle school, DeFrance added feminine hygiene products to her Amazon wish list, which she said typically consists of books she needs for her classrooms.

In addition to sharing the link on her Instagram page, DeFrance also posted her wish list on Nextdoor, a social networking service for neighborhoods.

Within hours, according to DeFrance, Amazon boxes filled with period supplies began showing up at her doorstep, all donated by strangers through her wish list.

“It blew my mind,” she said of the response to her post. “I had never met any of these people. I don’t know any of these people, but I had hundreds of boxes at my door.”

The boxes have continued to pour in, according to DeFrance. She said that since February, people have donated over 6,000 pads and 3,000 tampons, in addition to other supplies, like disposable heating pads.

DeFrance has also been able to upgrade her “pad bags” from plastic sandwich bags to reusable, zipper bags thanks to strangers’ donations. This week, she also received donations of two portable carts that she said she plans to turn into “menstruation stations” in her classroom.

She said she organizes the “pad bags” based on students’ preferences, adding that students will often return the bags with notes on what types of supplies they need.

DeFrance said that because her school has students in fifth through eighth grades, she is often meeting students as they are starting their menstrual cycles. She focuses on keeping supplies in her classroom and easily accessible in hopes of “normalizing” the conversation around periods.

“If a scholar can say, ‘I need a pencil,’ and I can give them a pencil and it’s not a problem, why can’t it be, ‘I need a pad.’ Why is that any different?” DeFrance said. “I would not send a scholar to an office for a pencil, so why do I need to send a scholar to the office for a pad.”

Advocates for menstrual equity say the taboo around menstruation and the lack of access to menstrual products hurts women economically because it costs them money for products and may keep them from jobs and school. Poor menstrual hygiene poses health risks for women, including reproductive issues and urinary tract infections.

On average, a woman will spend around seven years in their lifetime on their period, according to UNICEF.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law requiring that public schools and colleges provide free menstrual products in classrooms.

DeFrance said that in her case, due to the surplus of donations, she has plans to put free period supplies in her school’s bathrooms and has already provided period products to teachers at nearby schools to distribute for free. She said she is also meeting this week with the leaders of Austin Achieve’s high school to discuss making supplies more accessible to students there.

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(NEW YORK) — Although officials have been warning for weeks of an impending coronavirus resurgence across the country, health experts say it is impossible to know exactly how widespread the nation’s latest resurgence may actually be, given the declining availability of COVID-19 data.

“An effective public health response depends on high quality, real time data,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “Underreporting, driven by changes in testing behavior, lack of public interest and severely underfunded local public health departments, create a perfect storm of misleading case counts and hospitalizations.”

Since last summer, dozens of states, along with federal agencies, have opted to scale back on regular COVID-19 data reporting. A dwindling number of states still offer daily COVID-19 data reports, with most now moving to an alternate-day schedule or even to a weekly schedule.

“With changing case definitions for hospitalizations, decreased testing, and increased use of at-home rapid tests, data on COVID-19 in the U.S. has become increasingly hard to interpret,” Sam Scarpino, the vice president of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, told ABC News.

The significant decrease in data reporting and the nationwide decline in public testing have left health experts concerned that officials could be missing viral surges and in the dark about true positivity rates in the country, given the lack of information.

“I think that we’re dramatically undercounting cases. We’re probably only picking up one in seven or one in eight infections. So when we say there’s 30,000 infections a day, it’s probably closer to a quarter of a million infections a day,” Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said during an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday. “They’re concentrated in the Northeast right now. And that’s because a lot of people are testing at home, they’re not presenting for definitive PCR tests, so they’re not getting counted.”

Health experts say official counts, which show small upticks, may actually be significantly higher than counted, as millions of Americans, who are taking at-home tests, rarely report their results to local health agencies

In consequence, testing levels are now at their lowest point since June 2020, with official test numbers dropping by more than 80% since the beginning of the year, with just half a million tests reported daily, compared to 2.5 million tests reported at the nation’s viral peak in January.

Dozens of states have also moved to shutter public testing sites, as at-home COVID-19 tests have become more accessible.

“These are uncharted waters for us with this virus,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Bloomberg in an interview last week, reiterating that it is impossible to predict how COVID-19 will play out in the months to come.

“We are probably underestimating the number of infections that we’re having right now, because many of the infections are either without symptoms or minimally symptomatic, and you’ll miss that if people do it at home and it’s not reported to a central bank,” Fauci said.

In an effort to monitor the state of the current resurgence, scientists have been closely monitoring other metrics, including wastewater.

In the last 15 days, nearly 60% of wastewater sites monitored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported an increase in the presence of COVID-19 in their samples.

Hospitalization data, once the gold standard, now becoming less straightforward

For many officials, monitoring virus-related COVID-19 hospitalizations has been key to assessing the state of the pandemic. However, in recent months, hospitalization data, too, has become less accessible.

Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services ended the requirement for hospitals to report several key COVID-19 metrics, including a daily total of the number of COVID-19 deaths, the number of emergency department overflow and ventilated patients, and information on critical staffing shortages.

“Hospitalization data is now considered a key defining metric for pandemic severity by CDC. At the same time, with massive gaps in data from hospitals and states, it’s hard to peg these data as a gold standard by which policy decisions can be made,” Brownstein explained.

Further, certain states, such as Arizona, have stopped outright reporting of statistics including hospital bed usage and availability, COVID-19 specific hospital metrics and ventilator use.

And last week, one state — New Hampshire — quietly shifted the way it counts COVID-19 related hospitalizations to only include certain severely ill patients in its tally.

Despite an uptick in COVID-19 infections across the Northeast, officials from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services are now counting COVID-19 hospitalizations by the number of individuals who are currently receiving treatment for the virus with remdesivir, dexamethasone or both therapies — a move that has left some health experts puzzled, as they say the shift may conceal the real impact of COVID-19 on the health system.

According to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, the new metric is modeled on National Institutes of Health treatment guidelines and “provides a more accurate view of the how many people are hospitalized because of severe COVID-19 illness, as opposed to patients admitted for other health care needs who may incidentally have COVID-19.”

According to the current count, there are 10 patients receiving treatment for COVID-19 in New Hampshire. Comparatively, according to the New Hampshire Hospital Association, there are 83 COVID-19 positive patients receiving care across the state.

“One of the most important metrics has been the total number of people hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19, used by state leadership, hospitals and public health to monitor severity of illness and the prevalence of COVID-19 in New Hampshire,” Steve Ahnen, the president of the New Hampshire Hospital Association, told ABC News.

At this time, nationally, there is still no clear number of how many patients are admitted to the hospital for COVID-19 and how many people have coincidentally tested positive for the virus after they were admitted for other reasons.

Experts say these totals likely vary widely, community by community, and a COVID-19 diagnosis, regardless of the reason behind initial admission, can cause additional strain on a health system.

“Unfortunately, the pandemic has continually exposed the fragile infrastructure of which these data are collected. And now at this late stage in the pandemic, data collecting efforts are starting to fracture even further,” Brownstein added.

‘The pandemic phase of COVID-19 is not yet over’

In the wake of the Gridiron dinner in Washington, D.C., where more than 80 top officials, politicians and journalists — all fully vaccinated — tested positive, health officials from the White House began to shift their messaging surrounding risk levels.

“What’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take,” Fauci said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.

Such messaging has raised questions from some health experts who suggest that the U.S. may be leaving some vulnerable Americans behind.

“We’re at a time when U.S. public health authorities are basically declaring ‘People, you’re on your own’ when it comes to determining how to co-exist with COVID-19. Sadly, the tools we’ve relied on to determine risk levels are being discounted at best and discontinued at worst,” Dr. Maureen Miller, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told ABC News. “It seems we’re trying to have it both ways: People are responsible for their own decisions about risk taking as the pandemic continues but are denied the tools to make informed decisions.”

Early, proactive measures to slow transmission, such as indoor masking, will prevent more extreme measures later, Scarpino said, adding, “Saving lives and livelihoods is what good public health is all about.”

Even if this current surge, due to the omicron subvariant BA.2, is not as explosive as the previous strains, it will still likely take hold in vulnerable parts of the country, Miller said.

“COVID-19 has thrown so many curve balls. It has also provided so many predictable events. Every surge in Europe has preceded a surge in the U.S. Why should this time be different?” Miller explained. “The pandemic phase of COVID-19 is not yet over. We should treat it with the respect that it deserves.”

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(NEW YORK) — Children as young as 8 years old should be screened for anxiety, the country’s leading panel of experts on health prevention recommended Tuesday for the first time.

The new draft guidance comes amid rising rates of anxiety and depression among kids and teens in the U.S., particularly during the pandemic.

Written by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the guidance suggests children and adolescents between ages 8 and 18 be screened for anxiety. It also doubles down on a prior recommendation to screen for major depressive disorder and suicide among children ages 12 to 18.

The USPSTF also said there are now high enough rates of anxiety and plenty of screening tools and treatments to recommend regular screening of anxiety among 12- to 18-year-olds.

Before COVID-19, the most recent comprehensive national survey found that 8% of children had a current anxiety disorder.

The burden of mental illness has only intensified during the pandemic. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this month found 37% of youth have experienced poor mental health since March 2020.

This fall, a coalition of child health providers declared that the country was facing a “National Emergency in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.”

The task force noted that untreated anxiety can be debilitating. In the short-term, it can cause physical symptoms, such as unremitting headaches or stomachaches.

Anxiety can also wreak havoc on daily life by leading kids to avoid school, interpersonal activities, or certain other situations.

In the longer term, those disruptions can lead to poor performance and developmental delays.

Additionally, anxiety can increase the risk of poor coping mechanisms such as substance use or development of other forms of mental illness commonly associated with anxiety such as panic attacks or depression.

“To address the critical need for supporting the mental health of children and adolescents in primary care, the Task Force looked at the evidence on screening for anxiety, depression, and suicide risk,” task force member Dr. Martha Kubik said in a statement. “Fortunately, we found that screening older children for anxiety and depression is effective in identifying these conditions so children and teens can be connected to the support they need.”

The agency noted that children with certain adverse childhood experiences, such as trauma, abuse and inter-parental conflict may face particularly high risks, as well as children experiencing poverty, or those from communities of color who may be subject to “historic trauma, structural racism, and biopsychological vulnerability.”

The task force did not offer recommendations on how frequently children should be screened but suggested it may be beneficial for some at-risk children to have repeated screenings over time.

“This worsening crisis in child and adolescent mental health is inextricably tied to the stress brought on by COVID-19,” the authors of the national emergency declaration wrote. “We must identify strategies to meet these challenges … [and] improve the access to and quality of care across the continuum of mental health promotion, prevention, and treatment.”

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