(ATLANTA) — Maternal mortality rates in the U.S. rose during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial disparities that existed before the pandemic were perpetuated, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report looked at data from the CDC’s National Centers for Health Statistics and compared 2020 rates to rates in 2018 and 2019.
Maternal deaths were defined as women who died either while pregnant or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy.
In 2020, 861 women in the U.S. died of maternal causes — a rate of 23.8 per 100,000 live births, the report found.
This is an increase of 14% from the 754 deaths that occurred in 2019 and up 30% from the 658 deaths that occurred in 2018. In 2019, the rate was 20.1 deaths per 100,000 and even lower in 2018 at 17.4 per 100,000.
The reasons for the increase during the first year of the pandemic were not stated in the report, although the author said the virus likely played a role.
Racial disparities continue
There were large disparities when it came to race and ethnicity. The report found that Black women died of maternal causes at nearly three times the rate of white women, up from around 2.5 times higher than in 2019.
The rate for Black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2020 and the rate for white women was 19.1 deaths per 100,000. For black women, the rate increased nearly 26% from the year prior.
Black women also died at higher rates than Hispanic women, who had a rate of 18.2 deaths per 100,000 births in 2020 — a more than 40% increase from the previous year.
What’s more, increases from 2019 to 2020 among Black women and Hispanic women were statistically significant while the increase over the same time period for white women was not viewed as significant, the report said.
The report also looked at maternal mortality rates by age and found that the rates increased as women’s ages did.
The lowest rate was for women under age 25 at 13.8 deaths per 100,000 live births and the highest rate was for women aged 40 and over at 107.9 per 100,000 births, about 7.8 times higher. Older mothers also experienced an increase in mortality that was statistically significant, according to the CDC.
Several studies have found that women who become pregnant after age 35 are considered “high-risk” because they are at an increased risk for complications impacting either the baby or mom including premature birth, excessive bleeding during birth and eclampsia..
Dr. Donna Hoyert, a health scientist in the NCHS’s Division of Vital Statistics and author of the report, said this is likely one of the reasons for the higher mortality rates among older women.
“That and there are a smaller number of individuals who are at the end of reproductive ages, so the statistics become much more variable from year to year,” she told ABC News.
COVID-19 ‘likely’ contributed to rise
The report did not offer theories for why maternal mortality rates rose in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, previous studies have shown that pregnant women are at increased risk of severe complications and death from COVID compared to the general population.
It could also help explain the higher rates among Black women, with Black Americans more likely to suffer from severe effects of the virus than the white population.
“Yes, the pandemic likely contributed to the increase from 2019 to 2020 and beyond that,” Hoyert said. “As the pandemic plays out, we want to see how it affects overall mortality rates and our trend of comparable data over time.”
She continued, “There’s been other studies that have come out further documenting continuing morality from COVID-19 and excess mortality associated with that, so it will be something to look into.”
Thiago Prudencio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Drugmakers Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline announced Wednesday they are planning to ask regulators to authorize their new COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The companies said data shows the shot works either as a primary vaccine, with 100% effectiveness against severe disease and hospitalization, or as a booster shot to raise antibody levels.
Although they are submitting a request for authorization more than a year after Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson were approved in the U.S., Sanofi and GSK are hoping to differentiate their vaccine because it is based on a more conventional protein-based vaccine technology.
Known as a recombinant protein vaccine, it uses the spike protein — which COVID uses to enter and infect cells — to help the body recognize the virus so it can fight it off if a person becomes infected.
This is different from messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology, which is used by Pfizer and Moderna and teaches the body’s cells how to make proteins that trigger immune responses.
It’s also different from Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which is a viral vector vaccine and combines COVID genetic material with genes from the common cold-causing adenovirus to trigger an immune response.
“The evolving epidemiology of COVID-19 demonstrates the need for a variety of vaccines,” Roger Connor, president of GSK Vaccines, said in a statement. “Our … protein-based vaccine candidate uses a well-established approach that has been applied widely to prevent infection with other viruses including pandemic flu. We are confident that this vaccine can play an important role as we continue to address this pandemic and prepare for the post-pandemic period.”
The companies said their data from Phase 3 clinical trials showed two doses of their candidate, called VAT08, was 100% effective against severe disease and hospitalization from COVID-19, according to a company statement.
The vaccine was also 75% effective against moderate-to-severe disease and about 58% effective against symptomatic disease.
Early data also indicated the vaccine was 77% effective against symptoms linked to the delta variant.
When used as a booster shot for an already-approved vaccine, the Sanofi-GSK vaccine increased antibody levels 18- to 30-fold, according to the company.
Additionally, when trial participants were given two doses of the vaccine candidate and then a booster shot, antibody levels rose 84- to 153-fold.
“We’re very pleased with these data, which confirm our strong science and the benefits of our COVID-19 vaccine,” Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president of Sanofi Vaccines, said in a statement. “The Sanofi-GSK vaccine demonstrates a universal ability to boost all platforms and across all ages.”
The study also showed no severe reactions or safety concerns from the vaccine in any age group.
The drugmakers are currently in discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European regulators and plan to submit their data soon.2
It comes just one month after another pharmaceutical company, Novavax, asked the FDA to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which also uses protein-based technology.
ABC News’ Sony Salzman contributed to this report.
(FORT WORTH, Texas) — A woman who survived three heart attacks in three days at age 40 is now leading an effort to make Black women aware of the risks of heart disease.
Tara Robinson, of Fort Worth, Texas, is the founder of the Black Heart Association, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “significantly lower the number of Black deaths caused by heart disease and stroke each year.”
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for Black women in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Across all races, heart disease causes one in every five female deaths each year, while only about half of women know that heart disease is their No. 1 cause of death, according to the CDC.
Robinson, now 48, said she had no idea she was at risk for a heart attack, even though she later realized she had symptoms months before, including fatigue, numbness in her arm and pain in her neck.
“I had 99% blockage in my main artery, known as the ‘widow maker,'” Robinson told Good Morning America. “I was completely healthy as far as I knew. No high blood pressure, no cholesterol or diabetes, nothing, but I was highly stressed.”
Robinson said she was even told by doctors that she was too young to be having a heart attack. After she recovered, she said she made it her mission to educate other Black women on the health screenings to get and signs and symptoms to watch.
“The reason God saved me is because I have to do this work,” she said. “I’m the heart healer, mentally and physically.”
Robinson is the brains and heart behind her organization’s mobile heart center, a bus that provides free health screenings across the Fort Worth area.
“Our goal with the mobile bus is to make sure that we are wherever our people are — that’s at the car wash, the barber shop, the beauty shop, the church,” she said. “Wherever you are, that’s where the bus can pull up to.”
According to the CDC, women can reduce their risk of heart disease by getting routine screenings for everything from diabetes and blood pressure to cholesterol and triglycerides.
Black women in particular are more likely to have conditions that increase their risk of heart disease, including high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and pregnancy-related complications, according to Dr. Sandy Charles, a cardiologist and medical director of Novant Health Women’s Heart and Vascular Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“These things frequently cause no symptoms and we don’t know we have them unless we get screened,” Charles said of the risk factors, adding that women can also ask for specific tests like stress tests and CAT scans to check their heart health.
When it comes to blood pressure, a systolic blood pressure of less than 120, and a diastolic blood pressure of less than 80 is considered normal by the American Heart Association.
High cholesterol can contribute to plaque, which can lead to clogged arteries. A total cholesterol of less than 200 mg/dL is considered desirable, including less than 100 mg/dL of LDL and 60 mg/dL or more of HDL, according to the CDC. The recommendations for when to check cholesterol are once every five years after the age of 20, and more frequently if you have a medical condition such as high blood pressure, diabetes or obesity, according to the CDC.
Women can also reduce their risk of heart disease by making lifestyle changes including staying active and eating a clean diet free of foods high in sugar, fat and cholesterol, according to Charles.
When it comes to recognizing a heart attack, women may not experience any chest pains at all, according to Charles. She said symptoms to watch for include shortness of breath, fatigue, nausea and indigestion.
“It’s so important for women to know, and for everyone to know, that nobody knows your body better than you,” said Charles. “So if something doesn’t feel right, do not ignore the symptoms.”
(BURLINGTON, N.C.) — A North Carolina couple became first-time parents on “Twosday.”
Aberli and Hank Spear welcomed their first child — a girl they’ve named Judah Grace Spear — on Feb. 22, 2022, at 2:22 a.m. at Cone Health Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington, North Carolina.
“Everyone in the room, all the nurses were cheering and there’s excitement,” Aberli Spear told Good Morning America. “I was like, maybe it’s because she’s finally born. But then I looked at my husband and I asked him, ‘Wait, what time was she born?’ And he was like, ‘2:22.’ It was funny because we were in room two, and then find out her weight is 122 ounces. So we’re like, ‘OK!’”
Jessica Brown, a nursing director at the Women’s & Children’s Center at Alamance Regional, told GMA the numerology of Judah’s birth stood out to the hospital staff too. “We share in the excitement of every birth at the Women’s & Children’s Center at Alamance Regional, but when you come up with all two’s like this, it is very exciting.”
Aberli Spear said she had initially planned to be induced at the hospital on Feb. 20.
“We were asked to come in to be induced — her due date’s originally the 22nd — but just for blood pressure reasons, they wanted me to come in earlier,” she said. “And so they induced me but it took a while. We labored for 26 hours. She ended up coming on her due date, which is awesome.”
Baby Judah’s memorable arrival is especially sweet for Spear and her husband since at one point they were told they may never have children.
Aberli Spear, 27, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer, in 2014.
“My husband and I had been dating for three months before I was diagnosed … we were told if we got married, wanted to start a family or something, it’d be nearly impossible,” she said. “And so we went to the clinic to talk about freezing eggs and stuff, but it’s like, it’s really expensive and insurance doesn’t cover it so we didn’t do that either.”
Spear, who said she’d always wanted kids, decided to undergo chemotherapy and hope for the best. In 2020, six years after her initial diagnosis, she found out she had finally beat her cancer.
Her cancer journey helped inspire her daughter’s name as well.
“She got her name Judah because it means praise in Hebrew. So it’s kind of funny because I love numbers, love math and all that stuff so this is kind of icing on the cake for me,” Spear said.
Spear’s mom, Kristi Engelbrecht, also told GMA that despite all the “pain and suffering” that Aberli and Hank have endured, she’s excited to see what’s in store for their growing family.
The Spears are over the moon about their little one. “This is something that we didn’t think that we could achieve,” Aberli Spear said.
“She’s definitely a miracle baby,” she added.
As for Judah, Aberli Spear said she had a message for her baby girl: “I want her to know that there’s always light at the end of the tunnel, there’s always hope. God is always restoring, repairing and fulfilling your heart’s deepest desires, no matter what they are. He also has a sense of humor clearly. But it’s just, don’t give up hope.”
(NEW YORK) — A New Mexico infant is happy, healthy and thriving after beating the odds.
Jari Lopez was just 9 inches and weighed only 11.5 ounces, lighter than an average loaf of bread, when he was born at 24 weeks on Feb. 22, 2021.
The micro preemie now has the honor of being the smallest neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) survivor from Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque.
“Really small for his gestational age”
Amber Higgins, Jari’s mother, told ABC News’ Good Morning America that she started seeing a specialist during her pregnancy after her 20-week ultrasound showed that Jari was smaller than normal.
“I saw the specialist and they said that he was still measuring really, really small for his gestational age, so they went ahead and admitted me to the hospital at 23 weeks and I think like, four or five days, just to monitor him daily and do an ultrasound every single day,” she recalled.
It was around this time that doctors told Higgins and her husband Julian Lopez that their baby had a 30% chance of surviving.
“I was pretty scared … I don’t think I realized how serious it was until then,” Higgins said.
A couple days later, Higgins was told it was time to deliver her baby.
“He was still really small, then he started to have some reverse blood flow and his heart rate was dropping here and there. And then I started to have high blood pressure, which they took as a sign of preeclampsia. So they just said that it was best to go ahead and do an emergency C-section at 24 weeks,” Higgins said.
Dr. Jennifer Anderson, a medical director at Pediatrix Neonatology of New Mexico and a neonatologist, was the doctor on call at Presbyterian that day.
“Most babies born or almost all babies born at 24 weeks will need to be put on a breathing machine, will need to [be] intubated or have a deep breathing tube placed and put on a machine to help them breathe,” Anderson told GMA. “And our concern for Jari was, because he was so, so small – he was measuring less than the third percentile, 325 grams, 11 and a half ounces is really, really tiny – I think it’s almost impossible to imagine how small that is. But the equipment only comes so small and so having a breathing tube that was going to be small enough to be able to pass into Jari’s breathing tube, we were just really worried that we weren’t going to have one small enough to fit.”
Fortunately, a nurse practitioner was able to get Jari intubated without a hitch.
“One of our excellent nurse practitioners was able to pass a breathing tube in and put Jari on the breathing machine really quickly after he was born,” Anderson said. “I think we all did a big sigh of relief that the breathing tube fit because we knew that that was going to be his first challenge. And then when we got him kind of stabilized, that’s when I went over to Amber to talk to her and her husband to let them know … that this was going to be a long road for Jari.”
A remarkable beginning
Jari stayed on the breathing machine for about a month-and-a-half and had to remain in the NICU for 127 days, where a team of doctors, nurses and various therapists cared for him and monitored his growth and development. While in the NICU, he had to get multiple transfusions and surgery to repair inguinal hernias but didn’t have any major problems like bleeding into the brain or heart conditions and didn’t need other surgeries like eye surgery, which can be common for babies born so young.
Higgins said she was focused on Jari during much of the time he was in the NICU.
“I was just trying to get through it and trying to help him any way that I could, just being there every day. I don’t think I really thought about how small he actually was until like, now. I look back and I’m like, wow, he was like, really, really small,” she said.
After four months, Jari was cleared for discharge in June.
“He ended up going home on just a little bit of oxygen which is very, very common because we live at about a mile high,” Anderson said of the elevation in New Mexico’s largest city. “So at our altitude, a lot of our premature babies go on oxygen, and he went home on a multivitamin and that was it.”
She added, “His course was remarkably smooth for a baby born this little and this early.”
Jari today
A year later, Jari is now 2 feet tall and about 16 pounds.
Higgins said her firstborn is “real feisty.”
“He gets really excited about some stuff. And then he’s really active too. He moves around quite a bit,” she said, adding, “We’re just still working on catching him up developmentally because he’s more around how old he was supposed to be. But other than that, is perfectly fine.”
Anderson said Jari’s journey has been amazing to witness.
“We see a lot of small babies but he was tiny. And all of us around his bedside was like wow, you know, he’s really little and to see him now, for our whole team, it’s the best feeling in the world to see him now with his chubby cheeks, turning 1, and knowing how far he came,” she said.
Higgins said Jari will get three birthday celebrations to mark his very special first birthday.
She added that she and her husband felt it was important to share Jari’s story with the world.
“We wanted to get his story out there because he was so small. We spent a long time in the NICU and it was lonely,” she said. “The odds weren’t really in his favor so it’s nice to put his story out there and give people hope, who are also having a hard time in the NICU. Maybe their baby’s condition is different, but it gives them hope because he was so small, and he made it.”
(NEW YORK) — When the recent COVID-19 wave fueled by the omicron variant hit the U.S., no one expected it would lead to the number of deaths it did.
As of Wednesday, the nation is reporting 2,200 new COVID daily deaths on average. While this is lower than the 3,400-peak seen last winter, it’s still three times higher than the number of average fatalities recorded two months ago.
Additionally, last winter, vaccines had only just started to roll out, children were not yet eligible and the conversation surrounding boosters was far off.
With around 60% of Americans fully vaccinated during the most recent wave, daily deaths from omicron are still relatively high, which begs the question: Who is dying of COVID-19 when there is such strong vaccination coverage?
Infectious disease doctors say it is still mainly unvaccinated people, most of whom are in their 30s and 40s with no underlying health issues, who are dying.
“The vast majority of patients — anywhere from 75% and greater — we’re seeing is primarily unvaccinated individuals who are getting COVID and wind up in the hospital severely ill and are currently dying,” Dr. Mahdee Sobhanie, an assistant professor of internal medicine and an infectious diseases physician at The Ohio State University, told ABC News.
A small percentage of deaths are among fully vaccinated (and boosted) people who are either older or have preexisting conditions that increase their risk of dying.
Unvaccinated still make up majority of deaths
Nearly two years into the pandemic, unvaccinated Americans are still making up the majority of COVID deaths.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that during the first week of December — when the omicron variant began taking hold — unvaccinated people were dying at a rate of 9 per 100,000.
By comparison, fully vaccinated people were dying at a rate of 0.4 per 100,000, meaning unvaccinated people were 20 times more likely to die of the virus, according to an ABC News analysis. State-level data, from California to Mississippi, shows similar results.
“We started [in 2020] with the most vulnerable deaths among the elderly,” Dr. David Zonies, associate chief medical officer for critical care services at Oregon Health & Science University, told ABC News. “As we transitioned into different variants, the age demographic shifted. Now we see very young people dying. It’s around 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds.”
Deaths by COVID-19 vaccination status in California
One of those people was father-of-two Christian Cabrera, a 40-year-old comedian from Los Angeles with no underlying conditions.
“He’s always brought joy and laughter to everybody,” his brother, Jino Cabrera Carnwath, told ABC News. “He would be the type of person that would bust out into song in a quiet elevator.”
However, he was unvaccinated. Christian feared potential side effects and, because he didn’t get sick often, he didn’t think he needed the vaccine, his brother said.
But, right after the Christmas holidays, he started to develop symptoms. After attempting to treat himself at home, his oxygen levels began dropping dangerously low.
Christian was taken to Sherman Oaks Hospital, where he was admitted to the ICU and where he remained until he passed away on Jan. 21.
Jino, who has set up a GoFundMe for Christian’s 3-year-old son Noel, said two days before his brother died, he received a text message from Christian in his hospital bed saying he regretted not getting vaccinated.
“He sent me a text saying, ‘I can’t breathe. I wish I had gotten vaccinated. I really regret it. If I could do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat to save my life,'” Jino said. “I think that was his message too to everybody: if you’re on the fence, please get all the protection you can, get your vaccine, get your booster.”
Dr. Taison Bell, a critical care and infectious disease physician at the University of Virginia, told ABC News many of his unvaccinated patients had similar feelings and regretted their decisions.
When he asked why they weren’t vaccinated, they would mostly answer, “I just thought I didn’t need to get vaccinated.”
“And there are sighs of regret in how they say it,” Bell said. “These are preventable deaths now, by and large. The people that we have in the ICU could have avoided hospitals altogether if they were vaccinated.”
Fully vaccinated people with preexisting conditions also dying
While most U.S. COVID deaths are made up of unvaccinated people, there is a small percentage of fully vaccinated Americans who are getting breakthrough infections and dying.
Doctors say the overwhelming majority of these cases are among people with underlying conditions, many of whom are on immunosuppressive medications.
“Also, patients who have other medical conditions: obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, HIV,” Sohbanie said. “So, if you have other medical conditions that can also put you at high risk, those are the [fully vaccinated] patients that can wind up getting hospitalized and dying of COVID.”
Jeff Sales, a 47-year-old Army veteran and nurse, from Sarasota, Florida, was one of those patients.
He enlisted in the Army at age 18 with the goal of being a medic and served two tours in South Korea, according to his son, Brayden Sales, 22.
During one of those tours, Jeff came down with rheumatic fever, which went untreated for several weeks. This led to a hole in his heart and, at age 22, he had a metal heart valve installed.
After being medically discharged from the Army, he got his nursing degree and was a nurse for more than 15 years, mostly in Utah before the family moved to Florida in August 2020.
“Everything in his life was about helping people and making special connections and doing everything he could for everybody and anybody,” Brayden told ABC News.
Although Jeff worked as an orthopedic nurse, his unit had been converted into a COVID unit to deal with the influx of patients. He took several precautions including always wearing a mask and getting fully vaccinated and boosted.
However, on the night of Jan. 20, another nurse told him he was looking pale. Then, he developed chills. He was admitted into the ER and at 6:00 a.m. the next day, his COVID test results came back positive.
Brayden said a few hours later, his father was struggling to breathe, and his condition rapidly declined.
Individuals with heart valves have an increased risk of blood clotting compared to the general population, and one of the side effects of COVID is an additional increased clotting risk. “When his blood thickened up, it caused his heart valve to fail and, when his heart valve failed, he went into complete organ failure,” Brayden said. “If it wasn’t for his heart valve, it wouldn’t have hit him as hard, and he probably would still be here.”
On Jan. 21, just 12 hours after testing positive, Jeff died.
Dr. Scott Curry, an assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Medical University of South Carolina, called the deaths of fully vaccinated people the “most heartbreaking” to him.
He said, in Charleston, as of Feb. 10, COVID-19 deaths have comprised about 50% severely immunosuppressed, vaccinated patients and 50% unvaccinated patients of all ages.
“When you’re a healthy adult who chose not to get vaccinated, you rolled the dice and took your chance,” Curry told ABC News. “But when you’re immunocompromised, and you live with someone who won’t get vaccinated or you’re exposed to someone, those are the ones who will die when they get COVID. They are the ones at the greatest risk.”
Brayden said he hopes his dad’s death encourages others to do what they can to limit the effects of COVID.
“He always was an advocate of doing something to prevent the spread,” Brayden said. “If he could get one person to just think about what they’re doing and change something to make it so this virus doesn’t spread as much, he would be happy.”
ABC News’ Mark Nichols contributed to this report.
Alysha Tagert, a Washington, D.C. based mental health therapist, shares a photo of a coping tool box for kids. – Courtesy Alysha Tagert
(WASHINGTON) — As the United States enters a third year of the coronavirus pandemic, kids’ mental health continues to be a growing issue.
Kids’ health, school and after-school activities continue to be disrupted by the pandemic, while over 200,000 children under 18 in the U.S. have lost a parent or adult caregiver to COVID-19.
A report released late last year from the U.S. surgeon general warned of a growing mental health crisis among young people amid the coronavirus pandemic, while the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Children’s Hospital Association — which collectively represent over 77,000 physicians and over 200 children’s hospitals — declared children’s mental health challenges a “national emergency.”
With those statistics in mind, and as a mom of four herself, Alysha Tagert, a licensed clinical social worker in Washington, D.C., is sharing with parents a tangible way to help their kids.
Tagert, whose kids range in age from 3 to 8, said she noticed anxiety popping up among not only families she works with, but also in her own kids, particularly her 8-year-old son, as they navigated returning to in-person activities.
“There was so much transition,” Tagert said, describing the struggle with being away from friends and then back in school and having to follow different mask requirements in different places. “He just kept saying, ‘My stomach really hurts,’ over and over again.”
Recognizing her son’s physical symptom as a sign of anxiety, Tagert said she worked with him to create a coping tool box he could take with him to places such as school and baseball practice.
“It’s a tangible thing that you can hold on to that has simple, everyday stuff that helps engage all five of your senses for the purposes of calming down and being present for the moment,” Tagert said of the coping tool box. “My son’s was an old tin lunch box that has a dinosaur on the front of it.”
Tagert’s son put items like headphones, a joke book, a family photo, chewing gum and a fidget spinner in his tool box.
“I asked him, ‘What are the things that really help you feel like you can calm down?'” Tagert said. “And those are his go-to ones.”
Tips to create a coping tool box with kids
Tagert said it’s critical to include your child in the making of the tool box and to do so at a time when they are removed from an anxiety-provoking situation.
“It’s the same thing as if you were going to engage in a conversation with someone, you don’t want to do it when they’re really, really activated,” Tagert said. “So do it in a moment when they’re not feeling highly anxious.”
Tagert recommends using this as a teaching moment to explain to kids that not all anxiety is bad — that it can even be helpful in emergency situations — but it’s important they know how to identify and manage their emotions.
“It’s important for kids to understand, ‘I’m starting to feel this is what anxiety feels like, or this is what worry is, I’m going to name this, and now I have tools to address that,'” Tagert said, citing symptoms that can include sweating, increased heart rate and stomach pains.
Parents, she said, can start a conversation by naming and normalizing what their kids are feeling and figuring out ways they can help themselves.
When her son showed signs of anxiety, Tagert said she asked him what his stomachaches felt like and then gave examples from her own life.
“Normalize that and say, ‘You know what, here are some things that I’ve done before that helped me when I get that same pit in my stomach, or make me feel worried. Do you have any ideas of what helps you when you get worried about some things,'” she said. “And then just start engaging.”
According to Tagert, the second most important thing for making a child’s coping tool box is to include items that touch all five senses — touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste.
In her son’s case, he told Tagert that one thing that made him excited about baseball was being able to chew gum, so that went in the tool box. They also listen to his favorite songs on the drive to baseball practice.
Here are more examples from Tagert of items to include in a coping tool box:
Something that provides the body’s awareness of itself and its limbs, such as a weighted cushion, vest or stuffed animal;
An item to squeeze and keep their hands occupied such as a stress ball or fidget spinner;
Items to support breathing and relaxation such as a bottle of bubbles or a pinwheel;
Olfactory sensory support, aka something that smells good, such as a calming essential oil spray;
Something that requires movement such as a book of yoga poses or a jump rope;
A favorite playlist of music and noise-canceling headphones;
An item for oral motor sensory support such as sugar-free chewing gum;
Something that requires thought or concentration such as a puzzle or reading book;
And something visually soothing such as an hourglass or even an eye mask to block everything out so they can concentrate on their calming efforts.
Tagert added that it’s also important for parents to recognize that they, too, are going through a difficult and exhausting time through the pandemic, and to look out for themselves.
“The thing that is really important about us as parents is that we need to be doing these things, too, to help us in our moments of anxiety,” she said. “As a parent, you are the most influential person in your child’s life, hands down, and our job as parents is to teach our children how to live in this world. That doesn’t mean that we do it perfectly. They watch us work through things. They’ve watched us work through the pandemic, too.”
If you are in crisis or know someone 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.
(NEW YORK) — When the recent COVID-19 wave fueled by the omicron variant hit the U.S., no one expected it would lead to the number of deaths it did.
As of Wednesday, the nation is reporting 2,200 new COVID daily deaths on average. While this is lower than the 3,400-peak seen last winter, it’s still three times higher than the number of average fatalities recorded two months ago.
Additionally, last winter, vaccines had only just started to roll out, children were not yet eligible and the conversation surrounding boosters was far off.
With around 60% of Americans fully vaccinated during the most recent wave, daily deaths from omicron are still relatively high, which begs the question: Who is dying of COVID-19 when there is such strong vaccination coverage?
Infectious disease doctors say it is still mainly unvaccinated people, most of whom are in their 30s and 40s with no underlying health issues, who are dying.
“The vast majority of patients — anywhere from 75% and greater — we’re seeing is primarily unvaccinated individuals who are getting COVID and wind up in the hospital severely ill and are currently dying,” Dr. Mahdee Sobhanie, an assistant professor of internal medicine and an infectious diseases physician at The Ohio State University, told ABC News.
A small percentage of deaths are among fully vaccinated (and boosted) people who are either older or have preexisting conditions that increase their risk of dying.
Unvaccinated still make up majority of deaths
Nearly two years into the pandemic, unvaccinated Americans are still making up the majority of COVID deaths.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that during the first week of December — when the omicron variant began taking hold — unvaccinated people were dying at a rate of 9 per 100,000.
By comparison, fully vaccinated people were dying at a rate of 0.4 per 100,000, meaning unvaccinated people were 20 times more likely to die of the virus, according to an ABC News analysis. State-level data, from California to Mississippi, shows similar results.
“We started [in 2020] with the most vulnerable deaths among the elderly,” Dr. David Zonies, associate chief medical officer for critical care services at Oregon Health & Science University, told ABC News. “As we transitioned into different variants, the age demographic shifted. Now we see very young people dying. It’s around 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds.”
Deaths by COVID-19 vaccination status in California
One of those people was father-of-two Christian Cabrera, a 40-year-old comedian from Los Angeles with no underlying conditions.
“He’s always brought joy and laughter to everybody,” his brother, Jino Cabrera Carnwath, told ABC News. “He would be the type of person that would bust out into song in a quiet elevator.”
However, he was unvaccinated. Christian feared potential side effects and, because he didn’t get sick often, he didn’t think he needed the vaccine, his brother said.
But, right after the Christmas holidays, he started to develop symptoms. After attempting to treat himself at home, his oxygen levels began dropping dangerously low.
Christian was taken to Sherman Oaks Hospital, where he was admitted to the ICU and where he remained until he passed away on Jan. 21.
Jino, who has set up a GoFundMe for Christian’s 3-year-old son Noel, said two days before his brother died, he received a text message from Christian in his hospital bed saying he regretted not getting vaccinated.
“He sent me a text saying, ‘I can’t breathe. I wish I had gotten vaccinated. I really regret it. If I could do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat to save my life,'” Jino said. “I think that was his message too to everybody: if you’re on the fence, please get all the protection you can, get your vaccine, get your booster.”
Dr. Taison Bell, a critical care and infectious disease physician at the University of Virginia, told ABC News many of his unvaccinated patients had similar feelings and regretted their decisions.
When he asked why they weren’t vaccinated, they would mostly answer, “I just thought I didn’t need to get vaccinated.”
“And there are sighs of regret in how they say it,” Bell said. “These are preventable deaths now, by and large. The people that we have in the ICU could have avoided hospitals altogether if they were vaccinated.”
Fully vaccinated people with preexisting conditions also dying
While most U.S. COVID deaths are made up of unvaccinated people, there is a small percentage of fully vaccinated Americans who are getting breakthrough infections and dying.
Doctors say the overwhelming majority of these cases are among people with underlying conditions, many of whom are on immunosuppressive medications.
“Also, patients who have other medical conditions: obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, HIV,” Sohbanie said. “So, if you have other medical conditions that can also put you at high risk, those are the [fully vaccinated] patients that can wind up getting hospitalized and dying of COVID.”
Jeff Sales, a 47-year-old Army veteran and nurse, from Sarasota, Florida, was one of those patients.
He enlisted in the Army at age 18 with the goal of being a medic and served two tours in South Korea, according to his son, Brayden Sales, 22.
During one of those tours, Jeff came down with rheumatic fever, which went untreated for several weeks. This led to a hole in his heart and, at age 22, he had a metal heart valve installed.
After being medically discharged from the Army, he got his nursing degree and was a nurse for more than 15 years, mostly in Utah before the family moved to Florida in August 2020.
“Everything in his life was about helping people and making special connections and doing everything he could for everybody and anybody,” Brayden told ABC News.
Although Jeff worked as an orthopedic nurse, his unit had been converted into a COVID unit to deal with the influx of patients. He took several precautions including always wearing a mask and getting fully vaccinated and boosted.
However, on the night of Jan. 20, another nurse told him he was looking pale. Then, he developed chills. He was admitted into the ER and at 6:00 a.m. the next day, his COVID test results came back positive.
Brayden said a few hours later, his father was struggling to breathe, and his condition rapidly declined.
Individuals with heart valves have an increased risk of blood clotting compared to the general population, and one of the side effects of COVID is an additional increased clotting risk. “When his blood thickened up, it caused his heart valve to fail and, when his heart valve failed, he went into complete organ failure,” Brayden said. “If it wasn’t for his heart valve, it wouldn’t have hit him as hard, and he probably would still be here.”
On Jan. 21, just 12 hours after testing positive, Jeff died.
Dr. Scott Curry, an assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Medical University of South Carolina, called the deaths of fully vaccinated people the “most heartbreaking” to him.
He said, in Charleston, as of Feb. 10, COVID-19 deaths have comprised about 50% severely immunosuppressed, vaccinated patients and 50% unvaccinated patients of all ages.
“When you’re a healthy adult who chose not to get vaccinated, you rolled the dice and took your chance,” Curry told ABC News. “But when you’re immunocompromised, and you live with someone who won’t get vaccinated or you’re exposed to someone, those are the ones who will die when they get COVID. They are the ones at the greatest risk.”
Brayden said he hopes his dad’s death encourages others to do what they can to limit the effects of COVID.
“He always was an advocate of doing something to prevent the spread,” Brayden said. “If he could get one person to just think about what they’re doing and change something to make it so this virus doesn’t spread as much, he would be happy.”
ABC News’ Mark Nichols contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — It’s been two months since New York City opened the first-ever overdose prevention center (OPC) in the United States, and public health experts said the clinic is already saving lives.
OPCs are a form of harm reduction, which is a set of strategies to minimize the negative effects and consequences linked to drug use, and “keeping people who use drugs alive and as healthy as possible,” according to the U.S. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
In this case, OPCs are place where people can use drugs in a setting with nurses or other clinical staff members present and who can help avert fatal overdoses.
As of Feb. 8, the center has served nearly 700 New Yorkers and intervened in 134 overdoses, according to OnPoint NYC, which staffs the site.
Critics said OPCs are places that allow people to use drugs without attempting to help them get clean and that state and local governments are forced to pay for materials including crack pipes and meth pipes to feed people’s addictions.
But anti-drug war advocates and other experts said these centers are vital in reducing opioid deaths, destigmatizing drug misuse and connecting people to resources for their substance abuse — all in a safe environment.
“We are now creating safe spaces for people to use that are not — they’re no longer feeling criminalized,” Emily Kaltenbach, the senior director of criminal legal & policing reform at the Drug Policy Alliance, a non-profit seeking to reduce the harms of drug use, told ABC News. “People can come and feel safe to use. They’re no longer using in alleys or by themselves.”
She said OPCs prevent drug users from other harmful behaviors that could increase their risk of death, such as taking contaminated drugs or injecting with dirty or shared syringes. Staff can also administer naloxone, a medication to reverse overdoses.
“In these centers, there’s immediate access to life-saving, overdose prevention interventions there,” Kaltenbach said. “People are not sharing syringes, for example. So, the prevention of the spread of diseases by reducing HIV and hepatitis C is huge.”
OPCs also traditionally have connections to services such as mental health therapy, drug treatment programs and housing.
“This is a step forward in making, in really treating drug use as a health issue and not as a criminal issue,” Kaltenbach added.
It comes as the nation hit its most sobering milestone in the ongoing opioid epidemic.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses between May 2020 and April 2021.
This means roughly 1,923 people died of drug overdoses every week.
Of the total deaths, about 75,000 were due to opioids, including oxycodone and hydrocodone, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl — most of which is trafficked into the U.S. through China — according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The problem is widespread across the United States, including in New York City, according to Dr. Dave Chokshi, commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene:
“In the year 2020, over 2,000 New Yorkers died of an overdose,” he told ABC News. “That means every four hours, a New Yorker died of an overdose and the total number is more than deaths due to homicides, suicides and motor vehicle crashes combined. So this is a five-alarm fire in public health.”
There are currently two sites in the city, one each in the Manhattan neighborhoods of East Harlem and Washington Heights, and are staffed by OnPoint NYC, which merged from non-profits New York Harm Reduction Educators and Washington Heights Corner Project.
“We are humanizing and giving hope to people that far too often society sees as disposable and defines them by their mistakes,” Sam Rivers, Executive Director of OnPoint NYC, told ABC News in a statement.
OPCs are not without their critics, which argue the centers enable drug users, who will just die of overdoses in other settings.
Dr. David Murray, co-director for the Center for Substance Abuse Policy Research at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., said illicit drug users will take drugs “beyond the facility borders.”
“Not uncommonly, drug users inject multiple times a day, and … the consumption site simply becomes one more place in which to consume drugs, providing for only a fraction of an addict’s aggregate exposure,” he wrote in a column for the Hudson Institute in August 2020.
But Kaltenbach and others say OPCs reduce the amount and frequency that people use drugs and reduce public disorder and public injection while increasing public safety.
At Insite Supervised Injection Site, the first overdose prevention facility in North America, which began operating in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 2003, one study found that the fatal overdose rate in the area around the site fell by 35% after it opened.
Additionally, the programs help increase entry into substance use disorder treatment programs, according to Kallenach. Another study found that more than half of users at Insite entered addiction treatment within two years.
There are currently 120 OPCs operating in ten countries around the world, and the Drug Policy Alliance says there has not been a single overdose fatality at any OPC.
“No one is claiming that they are a silver bullet for all of what we’re seeing with respect to the overdose crisis or the broader set of issues surrounding drug use,” Chokshi said. “For that, it involves investments like the ones that we have made in New York City around lowering barriers to accessing treatment … investing in syringe service programs so that people have access, not just to safe and clean supplies, but also all of the wraparound services, whether it’s housing or job placement, or food and medical care, basic human needs, that are provided in those programs.”
(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are warning of a rise in eating and tic disorders among teenage girls during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Echoing prior research, the proportion of emergency department visits with eating disorders doubled among adolescent girls; those for tic disorders approximately tripled during the pandemic. Tic disorders are characterized by repeated twitches, movements or sounds that people do involuntarily.
“The results of the report are unsurprising,” said Dr. Neha Chaudhary, child psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School and chief medical officer at BeMe Health. “This is quite in line with what I’m seeing in my clinical practice and what I’m hearing from teens directly. Many teens with preexisting conditions like depression or anxiety noted worsening of their symptoms since the pandemic, while others without previously diagnosed conditions noted having symptoms for the first time.”
In their report, the CDC researchers said eating disorders can be triggered by pandemic-related stress, such as lack of structure and daily routine. But they said the increased visits for tic disorders was “atypical” because tic disorders usually start earlier in childhood, and more typically among males.
Researchers have suggested that exposure to severe tics on social media might be associated with the increased tic disorder visits among teenage girls, calling them “TikTok Tics.” These types of tic disorders have distinct features from Tourette syndrome, which is a tic disorder often diagnosed in younger children. In addition, tic disorders can be triggered by stress.
In 2021, several major pediatric health organizations announced a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. In the past 10 years, there has been a rise in child and adolescent mental health issues, and by 2018, suicide was the second-leading cause of death for youth ages 10 to 24. These issues have worsened in the context of pandemic-related stressors, which have disrupted safety and stability of families and daily living structure.
LGBTQ children are even more at-risk of suicide, according to Elizabeth Thompson, CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association.
“The sky rocketing increase in numbers (50 and 70% over previous time periods) reported by the CDC relative to children’s visits to the emergency room during COVID for self harm or suicidality due to increasing mental health issues, including eating disorders, mirrors what we have seen as we analyzed our Helpline data,” Thompson said in a statement.
“Teens everywhere have been hit harder than most groups by the stress of the pandemic,” said Chaudhary. “It’s no wonder that their mental health has been declining when their usual supports — like structure, routine and peer connections — have been ripped out from under them for the past two years.”
In a second report released Friday, the CDC found a drop in overall emergency department visits for any reason in the past two years. Experts caution the lower rate of emergency department visits could be because people were afraid to visit medical centers during the pandemic.
But despite the overall drop, there was a rise in emergency department visits for specific reasons, such as self-harm, firearm injuries, drug poisonings and mental health conditions such as eating disorders, particularly in teenage girls.
“Some teens have shared that during times of great uncertainty, they find themselves changing their eating patterns as an unsuccessful attempt to regain a sense of control,” said Chaudhary. “They often realize that it’s happening, but find it difficult to stop without additional support.”
Eating disorders affect 9% of the U.S. population, and will affect close to 30 million Americans in their lifetime, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.
Parents, siblings and friends should be aware of signs of eating disorders, which can include restricting food intake as well as routinely binge-eating and/or purging.
“I commend the teens who are reaching out to professionals for help, even via ED visits,” said Chaudhary. “I hope to see more proactive supports in places for teens so that they can get help with their mental health conditions before it becomes an emergency.”
If you think you or someone you know has an eating disorder, call ANAD’s helpline at 1 (888)-375-7767, for free emotional support and referrals for resources. If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] — for free confidential emotional support 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Even if it feels like it — you are not alone.
ABC News’ Cristina Corujo contributed to this report.
Aiya Aboubakr is an internal medicine resident at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center, and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit. Sony Salzman is the coordinating producer of the Medical Unit.
