(NEW YORK) — As colder weather arrives and people head indoors in Europe, a COVID-19 wave may be looming on the continent — and could signal what’s to come for the United States.
Data from the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows cases and hospitalizations are rising in several countries.
A WHO report released Wednesday showed weekly cases reached 1.5 million this week, an increase of 8% compared to the previous week.
In France, COVID-19 rates increased 31% overall, with a marked increase in those aged 80 and older, according to the country’s health agency Santé publique France.
The health agency said both new hospitalizations and new deaths have “continued to increase,” but did not offer specific numbers.
Meanwhile, in England, about one in 50 people — an estimated 1,105,400 — had COVID-19 the week ending Sept. 24, according to data released on Friday by the Office for National Statistics.
This is an increase from the one in 65, or about 857,400 individuals, who had the virus the week before.
What’s more, the current seven-day average of deaths in England sits at 65, according to government data, which is the highest figure recorded in more than one month.
Currently, in the U.S., COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are trending downward and deaths have plateaued, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, public health experts say the COVID situation in Europe is likely a foreshadowing of what’s to come in the U.S.
“We’ve seen this pattern,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News. “We’ve heard this song before, which is that winter comes and cases start rising in places that are cold and, this year, more restrictions have been dropped compared to previous years.”
“The pattern is Europe, New York, then West Coast,” he added.
In fact, there may be some warning signs this is already happening. According to the CDC’s wastewater dashboard, virus levels have risen in some regions of the country including the Northeast and Midwest.
Chin-Hong said while vaccines and boosters will help limit the number of severe COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S., there is likely a mix of vaccine fatigue and confusion over who can get the new booster.
“The Kaiser Family Foundation data was shocking to me,” Chin-Hong said. “Not even knowing is shocking, because it’s not even about not wanting to get it if you don’t even know about it.”
He continued, “So, I think that people are fatigued, they’re really tuned out of vaccine news, they tuned out of COVID news you just want to move on with life.”
However, Chin-Hong stressed that Americans should get the updated booster as soon as possible to protect themselves.
“You might want to get it sooner rather than later given what’s happening in Europe of if you’re traveling abroad,” he said. “I have an uncle who went to France and six hours before he boarded, he tested positive for COVID. So, I think there is a lot of stuff happening in Europe and it may affect your return back home.”
He also recommended the public get the flu shot to reduce their risk of getting infected with influenza and reduce the stress on the hospital system.
(NEW YORK) — About 2.55 million middle and high schoolers in the United States reported using e-cigarettes, an increase of 21.5% from those who reported using those products last year, a new federal study shows.
The study, published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asked adolescents if they had used e-cigarettes in the last 30 days.
In total, 9.4% of respondents said they were current users, including 14.1% of high school students and 3.3% of middle school students.
“Adolescent e-cigarette use in the United States remains at concerning levels and poses a serious public health risk to our nation’s youth,” said Dr. Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, in a statement.
Researchers analyzed data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey, a school-based web survey, administered between Jan. 18, 2022 and May 31, 2022.
The results showed that among students who reported use, 42.3% were frequent users, including 46% of high school students and 20.8% of middle school students.
Additionally, more than one in four of those who reported use — or 27.6% — reported daily use.
When it came to types of devices used, 55.3% said they used disposables followed by 25.2% who used pre-filled or refillable pods or cartridges and 6.7% who used tanks or mod systems.
The overwhelming majority of youth e-cigarette users, 84.9%, used flavored products, meaning other than tobacco.
The most commonly used flavor was fruit followed by candy, desserts, or other sweets; mint; and menthol.
Puff Bar was the most reported brand used by students the past 30 days. Rounding out the top five were Vuse, Juul, SMOK and NJOY.
According to the CDC, e-cigarettes have been the most commonly used tobacco product among American middle and high schoolers since 2014.
Nicotine exposure from e-cigarettes can hinder brain development in adolescents and young adults, which can continue into the mid-20s, the CDC says, and can also increase risk of addition to other drugs.
The CDC also says e-cigarettes can contain heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals that can damage the lungs.
Politicians and anti-tobacco advocates have accused e-cigarette companies of using flavors and sleek designs to market vaping to U.S. children and teenagers.
“This study shows that our nation’s youth continue to be enticed and hooked by an expanding variety of e-cigarette brands delivering flavored nicotine,” Dr. Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, said in a statement. “Our work is far from over. It’s critical that we work together to prevent youth from starting to use any tobacco product — including e-cigarettes — and help all youth who do use them, to quit.”
(NEW YORK) — For the past decade, Kaitlin Preble of Tucson, Arizona, said she has gone to her local pharmacy each month to pick up her daughter’s prescription for methotrexate, a drug that is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, among other things.
Preble’s daughter, Emma Thompson, was diagnosed at age 3 with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, an autoimmune disease that can cause joint pain and inflammation in body parts including the hands, knees and ankles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now 14, Emma relies on methotrexate and a combination of other medications to be able to do basic functions like walking, brushing her hair and attending school in-person, according to Preble.
Preble told ABC News’ Good Morning America that in the 10 years Emma has been prescribed methotrexate, she had not encountered any difficulties accessing the drug — until last month.
In late September, just days after a near-total ban on abortion went into effect in Arizona, Preble said she was denied the medication by a pharmacist at her local Walgreens.
“I went into Walgreens because I’m like, this is my baby, I need to see why they’re not going to give it to her,” said Preble. “The pharmacist said, ‘I denied it because she’s 14 years old.'”
Methotrexate, while prescribed to treat conditions like Crohn’s disease, psoriasis and cancer, in addition to arthritis, can also be used at higher dosages to medically terminate pregnancies.
Preble said she believes Emma’s prescription for the medication was initially denied because of confusion under Arizona’s abortion restrictions that were put in place after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
On Sept. 24, a 15-week abortion ban that was signed into law in March 2022 by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey went into effect in the state.
Separately, on Sept. 23, a state judge granted Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s request to lift an injunction on a near-total ban on abortion, passed in 1901, only allowing exceptions to save the life of the mother.
Preble said the month prior, she had been questioned when picking up Emma’s prescription for methotrexate about how much she took and why she took it, but was given the medication.
She described being in tears upon learning that this time, the medication was denied, saying, “I was scared for my daughter. It’s the unknown.”
Preble said she interacted with a pharmacy tech at Walgreens, who conferred with the pharmacist on duty and ultimately gave her the medication.
“I did end up leaving with the medication that day, but I don’t know if it’s going to be filled next month,” she said. “I don’t know what the future holds right now, and not only for my daughter, but for every little girl that that needs this medication, whether it’s for arthritis, whether it’s for Crohn’s disease, and not just girls, women in general.”
A Walgreens spokesperson told GMA the company cannot comment on individual patients, but said it is working to help pharmacists “understand the latest requirements” in different states.
“Our focus is meeting the needs of our patients and making sure they have access to the medications they need, in compliance with applicable pharmacy laws and regulations,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “New laws in various states require additional steps for dispensing certain prescriptions and apply to all pharmacies, including Walgreens. In these states, our pharmacists work closely with prescribers as needed, to fill lawful, clinically appropriate prescriptions. We provide ongoing training and information to help our pharmacists understand the latest requirements in their area, and with these supports, the expectation is they are empowered to fill these prescriptions.”
Preble’s story went viral after Emma’s doctor, Deborah Jane Power, a Tucson-based pediatric rheumatologist, shared it on Twitter, writing, in part, “Welcome to AZ. Today a pharmacist denied the MTX refill for my adolescent patient. She’s on 5 mg/wk to prevent AHCA Ab production. MTX denied purely because she’s a female, barely a teenager. Livid!”
Power told GMA that Emma was her first adolescent patient to face a denial of a methotrexate prescription.
She said she shared it on Twitter as a wake-up call to people that non-abortion related health care was being impacted in a state like Arizona with abortion restrictions.
“I wanted folks to think about the ramifications beyond the obvious, banning abortion, how it affected women’s health in a broader aspect,” said Power. “This is health care for women, period. It’s not just reproductive health, but it’s their health in terms of rheumatologic problems and so many other conditions.”
Power said she contacted state and federal legislators and the state pharmacy board about the incident, and plans to keep speaking out.
“We are part of the noise of getting the word out and I think that’s how you start to affect change,” said Power. “None of my male patients have had methotrexate denied. There’s been no issue about getting their refills.”
This week, the Arizona Medical Association and a physician filed a lawsuit, asking a court to provide clarity amid what they say is “significant confusion” over the state’s abortion laws.
In July, the American College of Rheumatology issued a statement addressed to policymakers, calling on them to continue to make methotrexate “accessible.”
“Methotrexate remains the standard of care for a variety of autoimmune diseases. Therefore, methotrexate must remain accessible to people with rheumatic diseases, and legal safeguards must protect rheumatology professionals, pharmacists, and patients from potential legal penalties,” the college said.
Preble said she will continue to speak out and fight for Emma’s access to methotrexate because she has seen what a difference the medication has made in Emma’s life.
Since being diagnosed at age 3, Emma has faced countless hospitalizations and years of being barely able to leave the house due to pain, according to Preble.
This year, Emma’s freshman year of high school, is the first in many years that she’s been able to attend fully in person.
Both Preble and Power said it took several years to get the right dosage of methotrexate with other medications to allow Emma to live her life.
“She’s able to walk to her classes. She’s staying healthy and getting good grades. She’s able to shower on her own, able to stand up and go out to eat if she wants,” said Preble. “She’s feeling good enough to do those things, where before it was just, ‘I want to stay home. I don’t feel very good.'”
“It fills me with so much happiness to see where she is right now, and I couldn’t imagine her not being able to continue where she wants to go in life,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — Since the early days of the monkeypox outbreak in the United States, Hispanic and Latino men may have been disproportionately affected.
While data from the CDC is limited and fewer than 50% of cases include information about race/ethnicity, it indicates that there may be disparities for Hispanic and Latino Americans affected by monkeypox.
Additionally, 47% of first doses of the JYNNEOS vaccine — a two-dose vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent smallpox and monkeypox — have been given to white Americans, despite accounting for less than 30% of weekly cases with reported demographics, according to the CDC. Meanwhile, Hispanic Americans have received just 20%.
Data on a city-level shows similar trends.
In New York City, Hispanic residents make up a plurality — 34% — of infections, as of Oct. 1, according to data from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In Los Angeles, Hispanic residents account for 45% of cases, as of Oct. 4, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Around 10% of race/ethnicity data was unknown for each city.
Public health experts told ABC News a lack of access to healthcare and insurance, language barriers and the stigma around the disease has led to such large disparities.
“I’ve lived through the HIV epidemic, I’ve lived through the COVID pandemic and now through monkeypox, and it is frightening to see the similarities in the sense that it’s always the same populations that really are at a disadvantage,” Dr. Judith Flores, executive board member of the National Hispanic Medical Association, told ABC News. “Don’t have the equity in access to care, equity in getting the care in the way they needed, and in the manner that’s most appropriate to them, culturally and linguistically. So, I’m not surprised that we’re seeing this.”
Lack of information
Public health experts told ABC News one reason Hispanic and Latino men may have been disproportionately affected by the outbreak is because getting information to the community about the disease was difficult.
David Cuevas, disease intervention specialist and supervisor at the Multnomah County Health Department in Portland, Oregon, told ABC News there was limited information being released by the CDC in Spanish.
“At the beginning, when there was an emerging communicable disease coming out, there was limited information in other languages,” he said. “At the beginning in our team, we were looking at information from other websites in the U.K. or in Europe that have translations in different languages.”
Dr. Sean Cahill, director of health policy research at the Fenway Institute, a healthcare organization that focuses on sexual and gender minorities, in Boston, also said there weren’t many televised briefings about monkeypox like there were with COVID-19, meaning most people received public health information via internet, as well as booking vaccine appointments.
According to a Pew Research Center poll, only 65% of Hispanic adults said they had a broadband connection at home, as of February 2021, compared to 80% of white adults.
“In the early weeks of the monkeypox outbreak, vaccine was made available in many locations in New York and Washington, D.C. and elsewhere online,” he told ABC News. “And you had to have a computer and an internet connection or data, or Wi-Fi access or a smartphone in order to be basically book an appointment to get a vaccine.”
He continued, “And there are racial/ethnic disparities that affect groups in terms of socioeconomic status and whether or not people have smartphones and computers and internet access. And so, I think that played a role.”
Cahill added getting access to the treatment TPOXX required doctors and patients to fill out a great deal of paperwork from the CDC, which was not available in Spanish until August.
Fear of stigma
Aside from lack of information, stigma associated with the disease may also be affecting vaccine distribution.
The outbreak has primarily been concentrated in men who have sex with men, a group that includes people who identify as gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary, although health officials have said anyone — regardless of sexual orientation — is at risk if they have direct contact with an infected patient.
“We started mass distribution, so you’re expecting people to go online to basically out themselves,” Flores said. “If you are especially from Hispanic communities and communities of color, it is not something perhaps you’re most comfortable doing and you don’t want to make it public.’
Cuevas, a gay Hispanic man himself, said because the disease was mischaracterized as a disease only affecting LGBTQ populations, Hispanic Americans may have been fearful of being outed.
“A lot of individuals in the Latinx community may not be feel comfortable with their sexuality, with their identity,” Cuevas said. “Myself included, when I went to get my vaccine, I’ve even thought about that. “I was like, ‘Wow, if I was me, like my younger years when I was more in the closet and wasn’t out with my sexuality, this will be very stressful.'”
Cuevas said when Multnomah County was scheduling vaccine appointments, one way of trying to remove the stigma was to try to make the process as anonymous as possible.
“We would give this list of the people that are eligible [and say], ‘You just have to say yes or no, you don’t have to specify which part of the eligibility you fall into,'” he said. “So, people don’t feel like they’ve been put on the spot.”
How to reduce racial/ethnic disparities
Public health experts say to prevent to reduce the racial/ethnic gap, public health leaders and community leaders need to knock down barriers that prevent access to care among minority populations.
“That means going to where they are, having vaccine clinics at flexible times, on the weekends and late at night, and going to the places where, like those individuals, maybe hanging out,” Cuevas said.
He added, “Specific to our county, we were working hard and putting information on social media, on dating apps, information that somebody that speaks Spanish can actually read and make sense of. You want to have individuals talking to you in your own language, when you call and make the appointment for your vaccine.”
The effort appears to be working. In the latest CDC report, as of Sept. 18, Hispanics made up 19% of weekly monkeypox cases nationally with reported race/ethnicity data. which is down from 31% a month prior.
Cahill added that the bigger systemic issue that will help is expanding Medicaid eligibility.
“In order to qualify for Medicaid, you have to be categorically eligible. You either have to be disabled, or be a parent with dependent children, and you also have to be really, really poor,” he said. “That’s another big systemic reason why we see these ethnic disparities in HIV, in COVID, and now in monkeypox affecting Hispanic and Latino populations, because people don’t have health insurance and they’re not in routine care.”
“So, when a new threat emerges, they don’t have someone they can just call and talk to about it or get an appointment, or you know they’re not familiar with a medical office where they have gone on a regular basis and, therefore, they’re losing out on information,” Cahill continued.
(NEW YORK) — More than eight in 10 kids under the age of 17 have antibodies from a past COVID-19 infection, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The analysis shows that as of August, 86% of children between 6 months and 17-years-old have had at least one COVID infection since the pandemic began.
That number is an increase from data in April, when the public health agency found 75% of people under the age of 17 had been infected with the virus.
“What we have to recognize is this is more of an indication that there’s been broad spread of this virus in the pediatric community,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. “And that, you know, the kids are not sheltered from this virus. And we know that in a small number of cases, there’s severe impacts.”
What the findings don’t mean is that 86% of children and adolescents are now protected against COVID reinfection because they’ve had COVID before. Experts have noted that they don’t know exactly how long protection from infection lasts after contracting the virus.
“What we should not take away from this data is that that the kids are now immune from infection, so we can’t make the leap that continual investment in vaccines and protections of our kids is not important,” Brownstein said. “As we know, immunity wanes, variants evolved to evade prior immunity and so, you know, this is more a reflection of how amazingly widespread this virus is but it’s not a reflection of future risk.”
One ABC News analysis of state data found that, as of June, there’d been more than 1.6 million reinfections across 24 states, but experts said the number was likely much higher.
The CDC recommends everyone, regardless of prior infections, stay up to date on vaccinations — including the newest booster shot, which targets the currently circulating BA.4 and 5 variant.
The agency recommends people ages 12 and older to receive one updated booster at least two months after their last vaccine dose. Boosters are also available for kids ages 5 through 11, but only if they received the Pfizer-BioNTech primary vaccine series.
The booster for that age group targets the original virus strain, not variants, but the CDC has said it expects vaccine boosters designed to target variants like omicron to be available for children aged 5-11 years by mid-October.
The CDC previously said it expects vaccine boosters designed to target variants like omicron to be available for children aged 5-11 years by mid-October.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have submitted requests to the Food and Drug Administration to authorize their updated boosters for adolescents for emergency use.
Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s vaccine chief, said in late September he was “confident that we’re only a matter of weeks away” from authorizing new boosters for the 5-11 age range. For kids under 5, Marks said there were still “a few months away” from authorization.
In the meantime, Marks encouraged parents to make sure their children get the primary vaccine series.
“There are a lot of kids ages 5 to 11 out there who haven’t had their primary series, so you can’t get the updated booster until you’ve had the primary series. So it’s a good idea to think about getting your child vaccinated against COVID-19,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — As Hurricane Ian pounded the West Coast of Florida, Tiffani Henning watched the Category 4 storm from the third floor of Golisano Children’s Hospital in Fort Myers.
Henning huddled with about two dozen other moms last week as they watched their cars float away from the hospital’s parking garage, boats float down what were once roads in front of the hospital and trees sway sideways and completely uproot from the ground.
Behind them through it all laid their newborn children, some of them critically ill, in the hospital’s neo-natal intensive care unit, or NICU.
“We were right in the eye, right in the path of destruction,” Henning told ABC News of the hospital, which is located less than nine miles from Sanibel Island, which suffered much of the storm’s most devastating damage. “You’re already in a situation of being a NICU mom and now you’re in the position of being a NICU mom in the middle of a hurricane.”
Less than 48 hours before, Henning said she barely made it to the hospital to be able to ride out the storm with her twin sons, Paxton and Kamden, who were born in August, around three months premature.
Henning was preparing her Bonita Springs home for the hurricane on Monday, when she made a last-minute decision to drive the 35 minutes back to Golisano Children’s Hospital that same day. She made it just in time before a state of emergency was declared in Lee County and the hospital was locked down to visitors.
During the storm, Henning said she and fellow moms of NICU patients became worried as the hospital’s first floor took on water and a call came over the loudspeaker for people on that floor to find higher ground.
“I’m like, if this water keeps rising, how are we getting the babies, because there were so many babies that were in the NICU,” recalled Henning. “If the water keeps going up, there’s only so many floors we can go up to before there are no more floors.”
Inside the same NICU, Jennifer Morales Uparela spent much of the hurricane in a chair next to the isolette where her 1-month-old daughter, Allison, slept.
Morales Uparela said she tried to sleep too in order to help pass the time quickly. A native of Colombia, she was experiencing her first hurricane and doing so alone in a foreign country.
“I’ve never experienced something like this, and this is my first baby,” Morales Uparela told ABC News through a translator. “What kept me going is I know that my baby needs me.”
Morales Uparela, who had a high-risk pregnancy, was staying with family members in Cape Coral, Florida, when she was induced at 37 weeks on Sept. 4. Allison weighed 3 pounds, 13 ounces, at birth and was taken immediately to the NICU, where doctors have monitored her ever since.
On Sept. 28, the day of the hurricane, Morales Uparela said she went downstairs to get something to eat, and saw the flooding on the hospital’s first floor.
“People did a good job of staying calm and the staff did a great job of keeping everyone under control,” she said. “But I went back to the unit, and that’s when everything started going downhill.”
A ‘Herculean effort’ to evacuate dozens of babies
Hurricane Ian, which devastated parts of Fort Myers and the surrounding area, killing over 100 people, caused Golisano Children’s Hospital to lose both power and water.
The hospital had a generator that kicked in at the time of the power outage, but lacking water, it began the process of evacuating its NICU patients.
Directly across the state, in the cities of Miami and Hollywood, two children’s hospitals went into overdrive, activating their plans to begin treating the evacuated babies.
The hospitals — Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood — had been planning for the past week as Ian’s path was formed, working with hospital leaders across the state to figure out who could accept patients.
“We started to hear that they were going to evacuate due to infrastructure issues and that is the point where we started thinking, okay, this is real. They’re really going to need those patients out,” said Caitlin Beck Stella, CEO of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. “As soon as the hospital said, ‘It’s time to evacuate. It’s unsafe,’ everyone just jumped into motion.”
In addition to figuring out where the babies would go, hospital officials had to figure out how the babies would get there.
One obstacle was that some roads and helicopter landing areas were unusable due to the storm. A second obstacle was that patients as small and critical as NICU babies are considered “complex transports,” explained Dr. Marcos Mestre, vice president and chief medical officer of Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.
“They are essentially mini-ICUs that travel with the patients,” Mestre said of the hospital’s two helicopters and six ambulances that were used to transfer NICU babies.
In addition to the medical equipment, each patient travels with a transport team that consists of nursing staff and a medical coordinator.
“Every single case is unique,” said Beck Stella. “Some of them are singletons. Some of them are multiples, so you have to think of how do you keep families together. You can’t send one twin to Tampa and one twin to Joe DiMaggio.”
Early Thursday, hospital officials said they got the green light that the roads and helicopter landing pads were safe.
That began a 48-hour effort of helicopters and ambulances flying and driving back and forth across the state of Florida to transport patients, according to Mestre and Beck Stella.
While the roads were safe, the ambulances were often dodging debris on the ground from the storm, both officials said.
“I think our ambulance drove back and forth across the state 10 times, just back and forth,” said Beck Stella, whose hospital is located about 150 miles away from Golisano Children’s Hospital. “We even had people from other parts of the state and from outside the state that started jumping in and being able to transport these babies safely.”
She continued, “It was a Herculean effort.”
In total, 61 NICU patients were transferred from Golisano Children’s Hospital to hospitals in other parts of the state, a hospital spokesperson told ABC News.
Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami admitted six of the hospital’s NICU patients, and participated in five transfers to other hospitals, according Mestre.
Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital took in nearly two dozen NICU patients from Golisano Children’s Hospital, according to Beck Stella.
‘It could have been so much worse’
The evacuations to different hospitals meant more stress for parents like Morales Uparela, who had just survived her first hurricane as a first-time mom.
Morales Uparela learned on Thursday that her daughter would be evacuated to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, but had no way to get there herself as she was told the ambulance would not have space.
It was only when the ambulance arrived at midnight to transport Allison, that the transport team told her to jump in, saying they would make room, according to Morales Uparela.
With Morales Uparela sitting in the front and nurses taking care of Allison in the back of the ambulance, the team made the drive to Miami, which Morales Uparela described as treacherous.
“There was a lot of debris in the highway,” she said. “They had to go carefully with lots of debris and trees down.”
Henning, the mom of twins, navigated the drive across Florida herself on Friday, after her sons were airlifted to Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital earlier that morning.
Facing a city-wide curfew, Henning said she had gone home from Golisano Children’s Hospital Thursday afternoon.
She said she was woken up by a phone call early Friday morning from the hospital, letting her know the twins would be evacuated but they weren’t yet sure to where or whether they would stay together.
Kamden was eventually evacuated first, followed by Paxton, on separate helicopters.
Henning said she and her husband made the nearly two-hour drive to Hollywood on Friday, and were able to reunite with their sons.
“There were lots of tears,” she said. “I got to hold both of them and cuddle them and knowing that they were at another place and safe was just the best peace of mind.”
Henning’s sons continue to be treated at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, but she said she is hopeful they can soon return to Golisano Children’s Hospital, which has since reopened.
The family lost a car in the storm and lost power and water at their home, but feel thankful to be alive and together.
“It could have been so much worse,” said Henning, who said she is most grateful for the medical staff that cared for her sons while their own homes and families were affected by the hurricane.
(NEW YORK) — Sexual violence survivors may often face overwhelming medical bills when seeking emergency care, a factor that could discourage many people from seeking treatment, experts say.
Survivors of sexual violence are charged nearly $4,000 in medical bills, on average, after seeking emergency care following an assault, according to a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Only one in five victims of sexual violence seek medical care in the United States. The study’s authors conclude that medical bills may deter victims from seeking treatment.
People without health insurance pay an average of $3,673 out of pocket while those with insurance still pay around 14% of total costs billed, an average of $497.
Pregnant women that experience sexual assault and seek emergency medical care experience the highest charges at $4,553 on average, for their visit.
These bills may particularly burden low-income women and girls, disproportionately victims of sexual assault.
“We’re discouraging people from seeking medical care when we charge them a huge amount of money for that care,” study author Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, MD, a distinguished professor of public health at CUNY’s Hunter College, and a lecturer of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News.
“I saw a rape victim who told me that she hadn’t gone to the emergency room because she knew she wouldn’t be able to afford it,” said study author Dr. Samuel Dickman, healthcare policy researcher and primary care physician at Planned Parenthood of Montana.
Dickman tells ABC News, “the patients I’ve seen and who’ve described to me the feeling that they are completely unsupported by the healthcare system. They know they can’t access affordable care after being assaulted. For many survivors, that feels like adding an additional layer of trauma.”
Woolhandler says that people should ask for financial assistance when seeking treatment in the emergency department.
“Depending on your income, you may be eligible for financial assistance, and you often have to ask for it,” she said. Another tip from Woolhandler is “for people who are veterans to check and see if they’re eligible for care at the Veterans Administration hospitals because that care comes with very minimal copayments and deductibles.”
In this post-Roe era, women are even less protected by the healthcare system when they experience sexual assault. As of September 2022, 11 states have banned abortions, including abortions of pregnancies that resulted from rape.
“Under laws that say that rape survivors need to prove that they got medical care to qualify for an exemption to get an abortion. That means you’re asking the survivors to go to the emergency room, potentially incurring thousands of medical debt to access abortion. It’s totally inhumane,” said Dickman.
“We need to reform the Violence Against Women Act to cover medical care, comprehensively, not just for the forensic exam,” Dickman said.
The Violence Against Women Act is a federal law that pays for evidence gathering but leaves people responsible for additional bills associated with emergency care following an assault. Broadening provisions of the Violence Against Women Act to include payment for other services, not just evidence collection, could help survivors avoid financial hardship and further trauma.
“Tragically, our political system continues to fail survivors of rape and sexual assault,” said Dickman.
(NEW YORK) — Most people suffering from long COVID are experiencing some trouble performing day-to-day activities, new federal data shows.
As of Sept. 26, 81% of adults with ongoing symptoms of COVID lasting three months or longer — or four out of five adults — are experiencing limitations in their daily activities compared to before they had the virus.
Additionally, 25% said they were experiencing significant limitations.
The data was published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The NCHS has been issuing the experimental Household Pulse Survey to ask about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic since April 2020 but included a question last month, in the survey sent to more than 50,000 people, on how long COVID has reduced people’s ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
Young adults between ages 18 and 29 had the highest share of people currently with long COVID who have trouble performing daily tasks, at 86.3%. Meanwhile, those between ages 40 and 49 had the lowest share, at 76.1%.
When current long COVID patients were broken down by race/ethnicity, Black Americans were the most likely to report problems performing day-to-day activities, at 84.1%. This was also the racial group most likely to report significant limitations, along with white Americans.
The data showed that Asian Americans have the smallest share of long COVID patients with trouble performing daily tasks, at 76.7%.
The survey did not report data for most states. However, of the 14 states with data, Texas had the highest percentage of long COVID patients with activity limitations at 87.6% and Kentucky had the lowest percentage at 69%.
Long COVID occurs when patients who have cleared the infection still have symptoms lasting more than four weeks after recovering. In some cases, these symptoms can persist for months or even years.
Patients can experience a variety of lingering symptoms including fatigue, difficulty breathing, headaches, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, and continued loss of taste and smell, according to the CDC.
It’s unclear what causes people to develop long COVID but research is ongoing.
The data showed that 14.2% of survey participants said they had experienced long COVID at some point during the pandemic.
Adults under age 60 were more likely to say they had the condition than older adults, and females were more likely to report long COVID than males.
A review from Johnson & Johnson’s Office of the Chief Medical Officer for Women’s Health published in June 2022 analyzed data from studies involving 1.3 million patients and found women are 22% more likely to develop long COVID than men.
(NEW YORK) — Women are more likely to spend double the amount of time than men caregiving, tackling chores and doing housework — all tasks that can lead to a greater impact on mental health and even burnout, according to a new study in the medical journal The Lancet Public Health.
Researchers analyzed data from 19 studies which included data from over 70,000 individuals around the world for study. They found women in the U.S. spend about four-and-a-half hours per day caring for their families and homes while men spend about 2.8 hours a day on the same or similar tasks.
All the household work and caregiving — typically unpaid and “invisible” labor — can in turn take a major toll on women’s mental health.
For Tessa Kerley, a mom of two, the caregiving and housework work begins first thing in the mornings, before she leaves home for work as a full-time teacher.
“My husband has already left for work, so it is me getting two kids out the door,” Kerley told “Good Morning America” in a video message.
“I’m leaving my house a mess. But it’s one of those things that it will just stay that way until I get home,” she said.
Katie Clark, also a mom to two kids, says getting her family out the door in the mornings can be a challenge.
“Me and my husband have a really good routine down. We both wake up with the kids,” Clark told “GMA.” “Today, I’m going to be dropping the boys off at school because my husband has to go into the office, so I’ll drop them off at day care and then I have to get on my way and get to work.”
Jennifer Esguerra is also a working mom and has three children. Sometimes, Esguerra has to travel for work and she told “GMA” juggling it all can be stressful.
“I was up at 4 a.m. yesterday morning to be on a 5:55 a.m. flight and now I’m back at the airport trying to get home to my 6-month-old, 3-year-old and 5-year-old, and my flight was canceled,” Esguerra explained in a recent video message. “Being a working mom isn’t easy.”
Eve Rodsky, the bestselling author of “Fair Play” and a mom herself, says the type of unpaid labor women take on can be a factor in women’s mental health as much as the amount of time is spent doing it.
“Men hold cards that they can do at their own timetable, like mowing the lawn, whereas women are the ones still, to this day, responsible for tasks like meal planning, responsible for grocery shopping and responsible for things like going to get their children when they’re sick, if a school calls,” Rodsky said.
After speaking with moms during the pandemic, Rodsky came up with a list of the top chores she said negatively affect mothers’ mental health the most.
Author Eve Rodsky identified twelve chores that working mothers told her they do often and which she says can negatively impact mothers’ mental health.
The Dirty Dozen Tasks Affecting Moms’ Mental Health
Laundry
Groceries
Meals
Home Supplies
Tidying Up
Cleaning Dishes
Garbage
Discipline
Screen Time
Homework
Watching the Kids
Managing Social Interactions
There are many reasons why women may tend to assume more responsibilities at home or when it comes to raising children. Many say the patterns often start before kids are born, with fathers given less or no paid paternity leave. The shift in household chores then don’t likely change after mothers return to work.
In her 2019 book, Rodsky provided tips for working parents to improve their household and time management situations. Among her tips are four key rules that parents can consider when dividing chores and determining who does what type of work:
All time is created equal.
Reclaim your right to be interesting.
Start where you are now.
Establish your values and standards.
Parents can list out all chores and split them into four categories, as Rodsky recommends in her book and in the book’s accompanying card game, which is available as a free download after a book purchase — Home (handling dishes, groceries), Out (transporting kids), Caregiving (medical, dental appointments) and Magic (because it takes time to play Santa or the Tooth Fairy).
The Lancet Public Health study is the latest report illustrating the broad gap and labor divide between women and men. A 2021 analysis from the Center for Global Development also found that women on average provide three times more child care during the pandemic than men. Another 2021 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that women were likely to experience more stress from the pandemic’s impact than men.
(NEW YORK) — Just weeks before Halloween, law enforcement officials are warning about a deadly drug packaged in pills that “look like candy.”
So-called rainbow fentanyl began showing up on the streets on the West Coast in February and has gradually made its way across the country.
This week, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and law enforcement partners announced the first significant seizure of rainbow fentanyl. It happened on Sept. 28 when agents and officers stopped a vehicle on the Manhattan side of the Lincoln Tunnel that contained 15,000 multicolored pill with an estimated street value of $300,000.
The multicolored pills are similar in look to party drugs and meant to be more appealing to young people, according to the DEA’s Frank Tarrentino, who called it “newly packaged poison.”
“Fentanyl is everywhere and it is on everything,” Tarrentino said, noting some of the pills seized in the car were discovered in a yellow Lego box.
“The pills look like candy,” said New York City’s special narcotics prosecutor Bridgette Brennan. “We believe it is critically important to educate the public about this new form fentanyl is taking.”
Illicitly manufactured fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, is one of the primary drivers of the significant increases in drug overdose deaths in recent years. More than 56,000 people died of from overdoses involving synthetic opioids in 2020, an increase of 56% from the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The pills are often made to resemble real prescription opioid medication like Oxycontin, Vicodin and Xanax, or stimulants like Adderall, according to the DEA. Most are made in Mexico, with China supplying the chemicals.
In a warning issued in August, the DEA said that brightly colored fentanyl is being distributed not just in pill form but also “powder, and blocks that resembles sidewalk chalk.”
According to the agency, 2 milligrams of fentanyl, the equivalent of 10 to 15 grains of table salt, is “considered a lethal dose.”
“Without laboratory testing, there is no way to know how much fentanyl is concentrated in a pill or powder,” the DEA said. “Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing this country.”
Amid all the recent warnings, statistics about rates of overdoses by so-called rainbow fentanyl are not available yet.
In response to the growing threat and the recent rise in deaths due to fentanyl, school districts in Florida, Texas and California have announced new plans to fight the crisis.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district, announced last month that naloxone, a medicine used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose, would be available at all K-12 schools in the district in the coming weeks, provided for free by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
The announcement comes after several suspected overdoses in the last month, with one juvenile dying at Bernstein High School in Hollywood, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Here are questions about fentanyl and the growing crisis, answered:
Why does fentanyl exist?
Pharmaceutical fentanyl is used frequently in medical settings. Developed for the pain management treatment of cancer patients, it is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the DEA.
“It is a very good and effective medicine at relieving pain in appropriate quantities managed by anesthesia,” Dr. Kimberly Sue, medical director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition and an addiction specialist at Yale University, told ABC News last year. “What we’re seeing in the opioid overdose deaths in this country is related to fentanyl that is obtained outside of the context of medical prescriptions, usually on the street.”
Why is fentanyl so deadly?
Fentanyl is dangerous because it “depresses” a person’s respiratory function and central nervous system, and can cause a person to stop breathing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
If fentanyl is inhaled, consumed or injected it can be deadly, but a person cannot overdose by touching it.
How does a person know if they’ve taken fentanyl?
There is no way to know whether a pill or powder contains fentanyl by simply looking at it, and fentanyl has no distinctive taste or smell.
“In the case of a pill that you buy off the street, people should assume there is fentanyl present even if it is labeled as some other medication,” said Sue. “I’ve taken care of many patients who think they’re buying oxycodone or heroin and there’s nothing in it. It’s just fentanyl.”
Fentanyl test strips are one tool people can use to test for the drug before consuming something that could be laced with fentanyl, like a pill, powder, nasal sprays or eye drops.
To use the strips, a person dissolves a small amount of the substance in water, and then dips the test strip into the water. The strips can give results in as little as five minutes, according to the CDC.
Is there a way to reverse a fentanyl overdose?
Naloxone, the medication being made available at all Los Angeles public schools, is the main tool used to reverse an overdose.
The medication, also known under the brand name Narcan, can restore normal breathing within two to three minutes in someone who has overdosed, according to the CDC.
Naloxone is available in all 50 states, can be used without medical training and can be delivered by either nasal spray or injection.
In most states, naloxone can be purchased from a pharmacy without a prescription, according to the CDC.
Where does illicitly manufactured fentanyl come from?
Police and other experts say fentanyl and fentanyl-laced pills have been illegally imported from as far out as China and even smuggled through the U.S.-Mexico border.
Of the more than 11,000 pounds of fentanyl that made its way into the U.S. last year, more than half of it came through the border between Mexico and San Diego, according to investigators.
In some instances, Chinese drug suppliers send the ingredients to make fentanyl to cartels in Mexico. After creating the fentanyl, either in raw powder or pill form, the cartels would ship them across the border in trucks, according to investigators.
Border patrol agents have stepped up their searches for the pills and other related fentanyl contraband, officials told ABC News in May.
What do I do to help a person who is overdosing?
If you think a person is overdosing but are not sure, the CDC says to treat it like an overdose.
Signs that a person is overdosing may include small and constricted pupils, slow and shallow breathing, choking sounds, falling asleep or losing consciousness and pale, blue or cold skin, according to the CDC.
The first thing to do is call 911 immediately.
Next, the CDC says to administer naloxone to the person if it is available.
While administering help, try to keep the person awake and breathing and lay them on their side to help prevent choking.
If you or someone you love is in need of help, call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit http://www.samhsa.gov/find-help to reach SAMHSA’s 24-hour helpline that offers free, confidential treatment referral and information about mental and/or substance use disorders, prevention and recovery.
