(ATLANTA) — Parents are being asked to look out for symptoms of hepatitis in their kids as an unexplained outbreak of cases in children continues across the United States.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a health alert Tuesday aimed at educating parents on symptoms.
“Hearing about severe liver disease in children can be concerning. If you have any questions about your child’s health, call your child’s healthcare provider,” the CDC wrote, adding that parents should be aware of the symptoms associated with liver inflammation, including fever, fatigue, nausea, and jaundice, which is yellowing of the skin.
Hepatitis means inflammation of the liver. It can be caused by heavy alcohol use, toxins, some medications and medical conditions and is often caused by a virus, according to the CDC.
Here are five things to know about the CDC’s alert on hepatitis and kids and the outbreak.
1. The latest hepatitis outbreak in kids is global.
In April, researchers in the United States and Europe announced they were investigating small clusters of the cases emerging across the globe.
As of this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) says more than 340 probable cases of hepatitis in children have been reported in 20 countries.
In the U.S., there are at least 109 confirmed cases with five deaths in over 25 states and Puerto Rico, according to the CDC.
2. The cause of the outbreak remains unknown.
The cause of the reported cases of hepatitis in children in the U.S. remains unknown, according to the CDC.
“We do not know and are investigating what role other factors play in this illness, such exposure to toxins or other infections that the children might have,” the agency wrote in its latest health alert, also adding it is “not unusual” for the cause of hepatitis cases in children to remain unknown.
Some of the children who have had hepatitis also had adenovirus type 41, a type of virus that can cause severe stomach illness in kids, according to the CDC.
Adenoviruses are different types of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute bronchitis, pneumonia, pink eye and acute gastroenteritis, or inflammation of the stomach, according to the CDC.
3. The hepatitis vaccine is not protectant against this latest outbreak.
Hepatitis viruses are the most common cause of hepatitis in the world, including hepatitis A, B, and C, but they’ve been ruled out in the latest outbreak.
The strain of hepatitis seen in this vaccine is not one covered by the hepatitis vaccine that kids receive, according to Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent.
“These cases of hepatitis are none of those [covered by the vaccine], so it’s really mystifying public health officials at this point,” Ashton said Wednesday on Good Morning America.
4. The hepatitis outbreak does not appear to be COVID-19-related.
Health officials do not believe the current outbreak in pediatric cases is linked to the novel coronavirus or the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Ashton.
“I just spoke to the CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, this morning,” Ashton said. “She wanted me to emphasize that the majority of these cases have been in children ages 2 to 5. These children, as we all know, are not eligible for the COVID vaccine, so this has nothing to do with the vaccine.”
5. Parents should call their pediatrician if symptoms appear.
The CDC has advised parents to be on the lookout for symptoms in their kids including fever and fatigue, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain, joint pain, jaundice — a yellowing of the white part of the eyes or the skin — or a change in the color of urine or stool.
If any of those symptoms are present, parents should call their child’s pediatrician as quickly as possible, according to the CDC.
The agency also urges parents to make sure their child is up to date on all vaccinations and follow safety protocols, like washing hands often, avoiding people who are sick, covering their coughs and sneezes and avoiding touching the eyes, nose or mouth.
(NEW YORK) — On wheels across the Mississippi Delta region, a group of three women is pulling up their sleeves and reaching underserved communities with free reproductive and sexual health care services.
Dr. Caroline Weinberg founded Plan A, a mobile health clinic, to offer free sexual and reproductive services, including mammograms, pap smears, contraception and STD testing, to patients regardless of insurance status, income or location. The first clinic opened in April 2021, providing health care services on wheels to the Mississippi Delta region.
“Something we have to accept [is] that we can’t solve every problem; like we can’t buy a mammogram machine, we can’t have a colonoscopy on-site, we can’t do surgery,” Weinberg said. “But we can add what we can, and if we’re able to get the resources to pull it off, then we just kind of expand whatever ways we can.”
The staff behind the clinic hopes to provide health care services to underserved communities across the area. By providing services around reproductive and sexual health care, Juliet Thomas, Plan A’s community health worker, hopes to destigmatize the conversation around those topics.
“It is [considered a taboo] when you talk about sex, birth control or anything like that’s really not talked about,” Thomas said.
Weinberg said she built the clinic on the belief that Roe v. Wade would one day be overturned. While the clinic does not offer abortions, Weinberg said they play a role by offering preventive measures to avoid pregnancies.
“I built the organization on the assumption that [Roe v. Wade] was kind of destined to be overturned,” she said. “Roe v. Wade being overturned in really any capacity doesn’t directly impact our day today, but it has an incredible impact on the community that we serve.
“As we seek to empower women and give them the options to kind of move forward with their reproductive health in whatever direction it is, that’s more challenging because their options are limited within the state.”
To fit the needs of the community, Plan A has expanded its operations to add primary care services like blood pressure screenings as well as COVID-19 vaccines. A 60-minute drive from where the mobile clinic is parked, Plan A has a brick-and-mortar clinic in Louise, Mississippi, to offer additional services to a broader community.
Mississippi is one of 12 states to not expand Medicaid since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 — a critical source of revenue for hospitals and a safety net for poor Americans. The federal government covers 90% of the costs for Medicaid, leaving 10% to be covered by the state.
Although at least eight expansion bills were proposed in the 2022 legislative session, not one was debated.
For Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association, the issue with expanding Medicaid is around the arguments of federal involvement in state policy.
“The reason that they’ve given for their lack of participation in the costs that the federal government giveth and the federal government taketh away,” Slabach said. “At some point, if the federal government decided not to fund 90% of the cost of the expansion, then they would be stuck holding the bag in terms of the dollars it would cost to cover that expanded population.”
If expanded, the American Rescue Plan would provide an additional $600 million per year to the state and qualify more than 225,000 Mississippians.
The roadblocks, however, lie within its own government — with Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn being two of Medicaid’s fiercest critics.
“I just don’t think Medicaid expansion is realistic, personally, I’m not for it,” Reeves said during a January interview with WAPT. “I don’t see that as a way forward in Mississippi. We need to be looking at ways to get people off Medicaid, not put them on Medicaid.”
But their stand on the issue is not what the majority population thinks. According to a Millsaps College and Chism Strategies poll, some 60% of voters believe that Medicaid should be expanded.
Patients like Lisa McCarty, who was formerly uninsured, sought the services of Plan A to access contraceptives.
The care and staff made McCarty a loyal patient. Without Plan A, McCarty told ABC News, she would be struggling with paying the doctor’s bill — or even have another child.
“Everyone knows each other and we’re so small here that it’s uncomfortable because you feel like, ‘OK, well, hey, this person may know what’s going on with me and I’m, you know, I don’t feel comfortable,’” McCarty said.
Now with insurance, McCarty said she will continue visiting Plan A, in part because of the wide variety of services outside reproductive health that are offered by the clinic.
As the clinic continues to expand, Desiree Norwood, Plan A program coordinator, hopes to reach more underserved communities across the state.
“I’m very excited because I know that there’s so much more great work that Plan A is going to do for the area, and I feel hopeful. Often the Mississippi Delta is looked at as one of the unhealthiest places, but we’re determined to change the narrative “
(NEW YORK) — As the nation looks ahead to a possible post-Roe v. Wade world in which abortion is banned in multiple states, medical experts warn there could be wide-ranging health and financial complications for women.
As soon as next month, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority of justices is poised to overturn abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade, according to a draft opinion leaked to Politico.
If Roe is overturned, nearly half of the nation’s 50 states are prepared to ban or heavily restrict abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.
One of the most immediate impacts on women’s health would be maternal health, given that the United States already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, according to Dr. Ana Langer, director of the Women and Health Initiative and a professor of public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
According to Langer, for some women, “simply continuing a pregnancy is more risky than having a safe abortion.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 700 women die each year due to pregnancy or delivery complications within the first year after giving birth in the U.S., which continues to have the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations.
Black women in the U.S. die of maternal causes at nearly three times the rate of white women, according to the CDC.
The disproportionate rate at which women of color are impacted by pregnancy complications is one reason abortion rights advocates say abortion bans disproportionately impact that population, many of whom are already impacted more greatly by poverty, lack of health care access and racism in the health care system.
“The same folks that are impacted by inequities in maternal health outcomes — Black women, indigenous folks, LGBTQ communities, young people, those living on low incomes — are the same ones that are going to be deeply impacted and more brutally enacted by restricting access to abortion care,” said Dr. Jamila Perritt, a board-certified OBGYN in Washington, D.C., and president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “It’s a double hit.”
In 2018, the most recent data available, two people in the U.S. died due to abortion-related deaths, and both deaths were related to legal abortion, according to the CDC.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) calls abortion “an essential component of women’s health care.”
In instances of pregnancy complications like preeclampsia, placental abruption, placenta previa and cardiac conditions, abortion can often be the only measure to save the mother’s health, according to ACOG.
“There can be things that develop during a pregnancy that can be dangerous, and it can be dangerous for them to continue those pregnancies,” said Dr. Krishna Upadhya, vice president of quality care and health equity at Planned Parenthood. “Not having access to abortion means they will have to continue those pregnancies, no matter the consequences.”
Abortion is a common medical procedure that can be similar to the care a woman gets when she has had a miscarriage, according to Upadhya. She said limiting or banning access to abortion care could also complicate miscarriage care in legal and medical ways.
“When we ban abortion, that also means we prevent or we reduce the opportunities for doctors to know how to provide this care, and then that puts at risk people who need related care,” said Upadhya, adding, “I’m also concerned that people who experience a miscarriage or other pregnancy complication could be questioned about their pregnancy outcome with potential legal implications and that’s a whole other unnecessary problem that people could face as a result of overturning Roe.”
Medical experts including Upadhya and Langer say they also worry what the overturning of federal abortion rights by the Supreme Court could do for other aspects of women’s reproductive and overall health.
For many women, access to abortion care also means access to overall health care like well-woman exams, prenatal care, contraceptive care, treatment for sexually transmitted infections, HIV testing, Pap smears and screenings for breast and cervical cancers. At Planned Parenthood, for example, abortion care accounts for just 3% of the services they provide, according to the organization’s 2019 annual report.
“Planned Parenthood’s motto is care no matter what, so we provide a full range of sexual and reproductive health care,” said Upadhya. “We are doing everything we can to provide all of that care because we know people need that care.”
Another point of concern for women’s health advocates is what the fall of Roe v. Wade could mean for the future of birth control access.
Based on the leaked draft opinion, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, it’s not a far leap to imagine the Supreme Court taking on contraception, according to Kate Shaw, an ABC News contributor and constitutional law professor at Cardozo School of Law.
“A lot of the logic in this opinion suggests that other Supreme Court rulings are quite vulnerable to being revisited and possibly overturned by this Supreme Court that seems really emboldened to torch longstanding precedents because there are the votes to do it,” said Shaw, citing one of the cases as Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruling that invalidated a Connecticut law that made it illegal to use birth control devices or to advise about their use.
Experts say in addition to the immediate health complications for women, restricting access to abortion care has also been shown to have socioeconomic impacts on women, which can trickle down to, again, impact their health.
One frequently-cited study, The Turnaway Study, followed nearly 1,000 women who sought abortions in 21 states. The five-year study concluded that, “receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of women, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health and family outcomes.”
Specifically, the study — led by researchers at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), based at the University of California San Francisco — found that women who were denied abortions were at nearly four times greater odds of a household income below the federal poverty line; had three times greater odds of being unemployed; had an increased likelihood of not being able to cover basic necessities like food and housing; and were more likely to stay with violent partners, putting themselves and their children at risk, according to the study brief.
The study also found women who were denied abortions were more likely to face greater mental health struggles and were less likely to complete advanced degrees.
“When we put restrictive laws in place like this, that ignore a person as a whole and ignore all of the complex decisions that go into deciding to become pregnant and parent,” said Dr. Jennifer Conti, a California-based OBGYN and abortion care provider. “We create dangerous situations where they have to choose between continuing a pregnancy and sometimes worsening their own medical conditions or worsening their own financial, economic decisions.”
In remarks Wednesday at a U.S. Senate hearing, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen described how access to abortion can change the course of not only a woman’s life, but society’s circumstances, too.
“Roe v. Wade and access to reproductive health care, including abortion, helped lead to increased labor force participation,” she said. “It enabled many women to finish school. That increased their earning potential. It allowed women to plan and balance their families and careers, and research also shows that it had a favorable impact on the well being and earnings of children.”
If Roe v. Wade is overturned and, as a result, as many as two dozen states potentially ban or restrict abortion access, experts like Perritt, of Physicians for Reproductive Health, predict both the socioeconomic and health divides in this country will become even greater.
Already, in states like Texas, where abortion is heavily restricted, there are high rates of maternal and infant mortality and poverty, data shows.
And Texas’ ban on most abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, instituted last year, has not slowed the rate of abortions but rather has required people seeking abortion care to travel out of state, according to research from the University of Texas at Austin.
“We know what happens when you eliminate access to abortion at the state level. It means that people who have resources, people who have the ability, will travel to get care if they can, but most people cannot and will not,” said Perritt. “What we’ll be faced with is folks that are seeking care outside the formal medical system, and also folks who will be forced to carry pregnancies to term that they cannot and do not want to carry.”
(NEW YORK) — Comedian Amy Schumer revealed Monday that she is taking the COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid as part of her overall care package as she recovers from the infection.
Paxlovid is a Food and Drug Administration-authorized treatment given as a series of pills over five days that can dramatically reduce the risk of severe illness. The U.S. government has purchased millions of doses in an effort to expand access to the drug for everyday Americans.
But in a series of social media posts, Schumer rhetorically asked if she is eligible for Paxlovid considering she is also taking the antidepressant, Lexapro. Although experts say it’s safe to take Lexapro and Paxlovid at the same time, they say Schumer’s posts raise awareness of an important issue: Paxlovid works, but it should be used with caution.
“Paxlovid is very important and has really been a game-changer as it’s the first oral antiviral that’s been authorized by our FDA and recommended by the CDC for high-risk patients with COVID 19 symptomatic infection…and has been shown to decrease hospitalization and death by close to 90%,” said Dr. Todd Ellerin, director of Infectious Disease and Chief of Medicine at South Shore Health.
But the drug shouldn’t be used at the same time as many common prescription drugs, including some medications to treat mood disorders, heart conditions, high cholesterol, hypertension, migraines and many others. A full list of drugs that can react with Paxlovid can be found on the FDA Fact Sheet.
According to Ellerin, anyone taking a prescription medication should speak to their pharmacist or doctor before taking Paxlovid.
In some circumstances, people can stop taking their existing medication for five days while they take Paxlovid. In other cases, a doctor might be able to adjust drug doses, or recommend an alternative to Paxlovid, such as Remdesivir or a monoclonal antibody to help reduce the risk of severe COVD-19.
Paxlovid contains two drugs, Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir and experts warn that Ritonavir in particular can cause unsafe reactions with a long list of medications. Paxlovid can inhibit the ability to break down other medicines within the body, leading to an unsafe buildup of those medicines when recently taken.
Ellerin says people shouldn’t feel discouraged from seeking Paxlovid to ease COVID-19 symptoms, but anyone with questions should speak to a healthcare provider first.
“Your pharmacist can be really helpful,” said Ellerin. “If they say you have to be careful with these meds, then you want to speak to your provider.”
(NEW YORK) — A growing proportion of COVID-19 deaths are occurring among the vaccinated, a new ABC News analysis of federal data shows.
In August of 2021, about 18.9% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among the vaccinated. Six months later, in February 2022, that proportional percent of deaths had increased to more than 40%.
Comparatively, in September 2021, just 1.1% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among Americans who had been fully vaccinated and boosted with their first dose. By February 2022, that percentage had increased to about 25%.
Experts said the increase in breakthrough deaths is expected with more Americans reaching full vaccination status.
“These data should not be interpreted as vaccines not working. In fact, these real-world analyses continue to reaffirm the incredible protection these vaccines afford especially when up to date with boosters,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
In addition, many vulnerable Americans are more than one year out from their primary vaccinations and have yet to receive booster doses.
To date, more than 220 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, 100 million of whom have received their first COVID-19 booster. However, about 91.5 million eligible Americans — about half of those currently eligible — have yet to receive their first booster shot.
The increase in breakthrough deaths comes as a growing proportion of older Americans enter the hospital for COVID-19 related care.
Last summer, after more vulnerable, older populations had been vaccinated, the share of Americans ages 65 years and older in the hospital had dipped to a pandemic low — with younger populations representing the largest age groups of people in need of care. However, throughout the omicron surge, the average age of those in the hospital with COVID-19 has steadily gotten older again.
More than 90% of seniors have been fully vaccinated, but a third of them have yet to receive their first booster shot. Even with overall high vaccination rates in older populations, in recent months, during the omicron surge, 73% of deaths have been among those 65 and older.
Health experts said vaccines and boosters continue to provide significant protection against severe disease. However, waning immunity re-emphasizes the urgency of boosting older Americans and high-risk Americans with additional doses.
“This trend in increased risk among the elderly further supports the need for community wide immunization. Older populations, especially those with underlying conditions, continue to be at great risk of severe complications, especially as immunity wanes. The best way to protect them is to make sure everyone around them is fully immunized,” Brownstein said.
All Americans over the age of 50, immunocompromised people over the age of 12, and people who received two doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, are currently eligible for a second booster.
Approximately 10.5 million people in the U.S. have received their second booster dose.
“Given the fact that immunity is waning, we’ve got to get people boosted,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told GBH News’s Boston Public Radio on Monday.
In February, unvaccinated adults were 10 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals and five times more likely to require hospitalization, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Compared to fully vaccinated and boosted adults, unvaccinated people were about 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 and seven times more likely to require hospitalization.
(NEW YORK) — ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt were covering the Iraq War in 2006 and embedded with U.S. and Iraqi forces when an explosion nearly killed them.
Woodruff and Vogt were severely injured and rushed to the hospital in Baghdad, the place where Woodruff met the medic who he says helped save their lives, Sgt. Dave Williamson, including by giving them pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl to manage their pain.
Once in the trauma bay, Williamson and his surgical team were able to treat Vogt and Woodruff.
“We knew that [Woodruff and Vogt] were in, in serious, serious, serious dire straits … we just needed to get a tube in your throat and have you breathing off machines,” Williamson said.
Due to the severity of Woodruff’s injuries, Williamson injected him with multiple drugs, including fentanyl. Williamson said he had complete control over the drug, and he knew that it was the kind of opioid that would manage Woodruff’s pain.
“Our go-to drug was fentanyl. So at the time the fentanyl that we had was given in micrograms and it was glass vials,” Williamson said. “We had a very solid understanding of what it is, what it’s capable of doing and also how dangerous it was.”
Fentanyl was developed in 1959 to be used for chronic pain, anesthesia as well as sedation, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The drug, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.
Although fentanyl and other opioids are intended for patients suffering from extreme pain, they are also powerfully addictive and carry strong warnings about the potential for harm.
Today, medical experts say illicit versions of the drug are driving the opioid crisis and contributing to one of the leading causes of drug overdoses in America.
Originally made for sedation during surgery, fentanyl rapidly began infiltrating the illicit drug market. Considered to be one of the most powerful opioids ever created — Mexican cartels are pouring tons of fentanyl over the U.S. border every year, according to the DEA.
Woodruff and Vogt safely returned to the U.S. and, as the war began to wind down, Williamson left the military. The effects of the war, however, stayed with him for years after his return and he was soon diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“You’re looking for anything to numb the pain. Even though it may not be physical pain, it’s something that just doesn’t go away,” Williamson said. “It just stays with you and it just gnaws and you’re trying to emotionally cope with everything that happened over the course of 18 months for 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and you don’t have time to deal with it then, and now you’re home or you’re out of the Army and now you’ve got time to process it.”
Now at home and away from the conflict, the medic who administered opioids to numb his patients’ pain, developed an addiction to them.
“They prescribed me Percocet,” Williamson said about a surgery he had shortly after returning home. “And I rifled through those Percocet like it was nobody’s business and then I just wanted to do it more and more and more and more and more,” he said.
Williamson was then introduced to OxyContin by a close friend, making his addiction even worse. He would often buy the drug on the street and, before realizing it, the spiral descended from painkillers to meth and even heroin.
“So it’s just this sense of loneliness, of solitude and, before you know it, it’s spiraling out of control,” Williamson said.
His wife, Jessica Williamson, also suffered from opioid addiction. Jessica said she had her first contact with the drug after a car wreck when she was 17. She was prescribed painkillers to help her recovery.
“OxyContin came around and that was a huge problem for me, that was really when things got pretty bad for me,” Jessica said.
The couple began struggling to access OxyContin due to its high price, so they found themselves turning to the streets and using cheaper drugs, such as heroin.
One night, the couple says they believe the pills they got from a dealer were laced with fentanyl — the same extremely powerful opioid Williamson had used to treat Woodruff’s nearly fatal injury.
“We’re sitting in this parking lot and David did his and immediately was, you know, nodding out and was in and out. And I thought, ‘Wow, he did too much.’ Then I started throwing up, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I did too much.’ But I knew that I hadn’t done more than what I normally do. And I was sick. I mean, it was scary. It was very scary,” Jessica said.
The couple said they would not knowingly take fentanyl. They both believe that without their years of building a tolerance to opioids, those pills would have easily killed them.
The couple’s turning point, however, was when their 3-year-old son witnessed what they had been hiding for years.
“One of the things that was a turning point was when my 3-year-old walked into my room when I was shooting up and I screamed at him to shut the door,” Dave Williamson said.
“And I mean… “Is this what I’m going to do when he’s 30?”
Williamson then decided to join a program to seek treatment for his opioid dependency.
With the help of therapy and support groups, the Williamsons said they have stopped using opioids, and their hope is to keep drugs out of their lives forever.
“Once you’re an addict, you’re always an addict. It’s just that we don’t have the want or the need or the desire to chase it anymore,” Williamson said.
“We both see how our lives were then and we see where our lives are now and we like where we’re at now and we know how slippery of a slope it is.”
In elementary school, his father would offer swigs of Budweiser in the car during their daily pilgrimage from Pomona to Hollywood, California to pick up his mother from cosmetology class, he told ABC News.
Decades later, after churning through dozens of jobs, Martin — who spoke under the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy — found himself in the pandemic’s crosshairs.
Seven days into a gig as a short-order chef, in March 2020, his restaurant shut down and the 44-year old began quarantining with his family. Martin said he tried desperately to abstain from drinking — he adored helping his arthritic mother with chores around the house — but the pandemic only deepened his underlying alcoholism.
“All I ever knew about how to spend my time was to get drunk,” Martin told ABC News, “and I had more of my time than ever before.”
In September, his family kicked him out. Two months later, he was passing out cold on the street, he recalled.
Americans had been drinking more for years ahead of the pandemic. But as COVID forced people to lock down, these patterns only intensified.
New research shows that deaths caused by alcohol shot up, too. And younger Americans — people in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s — were the hardest hit.
Struggling to cope with pandemic stressors
That extra glass of merlot was driven in part by people’s attempts to cope with unprecedented circumstances, Anusha Chandrakanthan, a psychiatrist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, told ABC News.
“Social isolation, along with fear of the unknown, have always been major triggers for our patients,” Chandrakanthan added.
At the same time, alcohol became easier to get than ever, said Sara Polley, who directs youth continuum services for Hazelden Betty Ford, a national addiction treatment organization that also runs residential centers.
Relaxed alcohol-delivery laws meant people could order merlots, stouts or vodka to their homes across the country. There, they could pour uninhibited by open tabs or last calls, Polley added.
Heightened stressors, plus ease of access, led to Americans purchasing alcohol at the greatest rate in decades, according to IWSR, an alcohol research organization.
By winter 2021, hospitals around the country reported that alcohol-related admissions increased up to 50% compared to prior years. Hospitalizations leapt higher still during intermittent stay-at-home orders.
Increases in deaths particularly high in young adults
New data now shows that alcohol deaths, which are defined as those where alcohol use disorder is a cause of death on death certificates, have skyrocketed as well.
A study published this week found that deaths rates surged by 25% in 2020. They stayed high in 2021 — 21% above the pre-pandemic baseline — a figure equating to tens of thousands of deaths.
The research builds on data from March that likewise showed increases in alcohol-related deaths. It also reinforced another finding: young adults were hit the hardest.
The observation may reflect a sea change in how younger Americans view alcohol, Aaron White, chief of epidemiology and biometry at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told ABC News.
“Our kids are, on average, drinking less,” he told ABC News, “but they’re drinking alone more when they do — and they’re drinking in combination with drugs.”
Drinking alongside drugs can be particularly deadly. Historically, one out of every seven opioid deaths also involve alcohol. As opioids overwhelm the country, deaths involving both are only accelerating.
The toll may be higher than we know
And bad as the alcohol death data look, they may actually underestimate the toll, White told ABC News.
Since death certificates rely on examiners’ judgment, not all may screen for alcohol or attribute the death to alcohol if it’s detected.
White points to gaps between death certificates and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data as evidence: about 10,000 deaths due to drinking and driving captured by NHTSA — fully 90% — were not reflected on death certificates in 2020.
“We know for certain that deaths due to alcohol are undercounted,” White told ABC News, “so, the question is, what’s the true number? And really, we have no idea.”
Will the trend continue?
Whether the mortality spikes are a blip or a trend remains up for debate.
Some experts, like Polley, are hopeful they’ll resolve “as peoples’ lives get slowly but surely back to normal,” she told ABC News.
Others are more concerned.
“All the data says to me that we’re fraying at the edges,” White told ABC News.
At Hazelden Betty Ford, admissions to its residential programs — including its center for young adults — have reached record highs in 2022.
“I don’t see anything to say we’re moving in a better direction,” White told ABC News, “at least, not yet.”
Martin, for his part, is hopeful the pandemic can mean a new beginning.
“That popping sound of that first beer, it used to literally be music to my ears — but not anymore,” he told ABC News.
He found a rare room at a rehab in Long Beach, and he said he’s been faithfully attending AA meetings.
“Now, I just want to see a new me,” he told ABC News, “a me that’s old, sober, and can be there for my mom.”
(LIBERTY, Mo.) — At one Missouri hospital, it’s going to be quite a baby bonanza soon.
Ten nurses and one doctor at Liberty Hospital in Liberty, Missouri, are pregnant at the same time. And, in case you were wondering, none of it was planned and nothing’s in the water.
“There’s a lot of nurses saying they won’t drink the water,” Hannah Miller, 29, told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “One of the nurses actually brought her own water bottle the other night and I was joking with her. I was like, ‘Oh, you’re really not drinking the water,'” the postpartum nurse, who’s expecting her first child, added.
Dr. Anna Gorman of Northland Obstetrics and Gynecology is expecting her second child and said it wasn’t likely that all 11 of them would be pregnant together.
“I think it’s really unique because it’s all in the same unit … and especially like our population ratio, I think is quite high. So sure it happens, but it’s pretty exciting when it’s this big,” the OB-GYN said.
Most of the pregnant staff are nurses with Liberty Hospital’s Birthing Center and said they hope to deliver there when the time comes. They’ve also bonded over their shared experience so far.
“This is definitely a great experience and it’s something that I feel like we’ll probably bond over for a lifetime, having the babies due around the same time,” Alex Atcheson, a labor and delivery nurse, told GMA. “It’s been great to have each other for support and go through pregnancy together.”
The 29-year-old is expecting her third child, along with her colleague, labor and delivery nurse Alison Harrell.
“Alex and I figured out pretty early that we were due the same day,” the 30-year-old said. “And then we started making a list of everyone and people just kept adding to the list as time went on.”
Atcheson and Harrell are 37 weeks along and will welcome their little ones in the next two weeks, with both sharing the same due date of May 27. Their labor and delivery co-worker Katie Bestgen is due in a little over two months, on July 20.
Meanwhile, Christen Burns, 26, joined the club more recently.
“I was one of the last ones to tell everybody that I was pregnant,” she said.
The labor and delivery nurse is expecting her first child and said, “I think it was just more exciting to add to the group and have everybody right there with me.”
In addition to delighting in each other’s happy news, the nurses and co-workers have been sharing their own experiences as well.
“It’s been really helpful. Just like getting advice and tips from my coworkers and especially the ones that have had babies before and just relating and like, ‘Oh, do you have problems with your hips too, or different pains or that kind of thing?'” Cheyenne Beaty said.
For the 26-year-old labor and delivery nurse expecting her first child, she’s appreciated having a built-in support group at work.
“It’s just nice that there’s people around me going through the same thing for sure,” she said.
Therese Byrum, 27, said lately, there have been at least two pregnant staffers working together during a shift and they’ve also had instances where everyone was pregnant during a shift. The obstetric float nurse who rotates between labor and delivery, the NICU, and in postpartum, will be one of the last staffers to give birth. The mom of three is expecting her fourth child on Thanksgiving Day.
(NEW YORK) — Following weeks of increasing infection rates, a growing number of Americans are heading into the hospital in need of care.
On average, nearly 2,400 virus-positive Americans are being admitted to the hospital each day, up by 17% in the last week, according to federal data. Forty-one states and territories have reported increases of 10% or more in their daily number of COVID-19-related hospital admissions.
In the U.S., there continues to be an uptick in the overall number of patients requiring care for COVID-19, with now about 19,100 patients hospitalized across the country. Overall, the total remains significantly lower than every other COVID-19 surge. In January, there were 160,000 patients hospitalized with the virus.
The U.S. is reporting more than 68,000 new cases every day, up by 20% in the last week, and 52% in the last two weeks. The nation’s daily case average has more than doubled in the last month.
Over the last week, nearly every state in the county — 45 states and territories — have seen increases of 10% or more in their daily COVID-19 infection rates.
Last week, counties across the Northeast moved into the “high” risk category for COVID-19 risk, after weeks of increasing cases and hospitalizations.
The “high” community-level transmission suggests there is a “high potential for health care system strain” and a “high level of severe disease.” Thus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people wear a mask in public indoor settings, including schools.
As infection rates continue to increase across the country, some health experts are questioning how much higher totals are than initially reported.
“We’re probably missing a lot,” David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News last week. “I would not be surprised to find out that our confirmed case count is under-counting the total number of cases by a factor of two or three. I think it’s quite possible that we’re having right now, as many cases as we were during the, you know, the delta wave of August or September, certainly not what we had this past winter, but we probably are having a lot more cases than what’s currently being reported.”
While some epidemiologists suggest that hospitalization data has become less reliable, as states stop reporting key metrics, health experts said they are more reliable than case numbers.
“We see that the number of hospitalizations being reported has again increased by about 20 to 30% from the low back in April. So while we may not have a perfect read on those numbers, they are more reliable than the case counts,” Dowdy said.
Despite increases in other metrics, the average of daily COVID-19-related deaths remains at a persistent plateau. The average currently stands at 340 fatalities a day. That is still much lower than during the omicron peak in early February, when the U.S. was reporting more than 2,600 deaths every day.
The U.S. is also now less than 2,500 deaths away from hitting 1 million COVID-19 related deaths, putting the nation on track to reach the milestone in the next week.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration’s stark warning last week that as many as 100 million Americans could be infected during a COVID-19 wave in the fall and winter came as a shock to many in the country.
After all, 70.5% of the eligible U.S. population aged 5 and older are fully vaccinated and 47.8% of those aged 12 and older are boosted, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What’s more, a recent CDC analysis estimated at least three out of every five Americans have antibodies that indicate being previously infected with COVID-19, meaning most people in the U.S. have natural immunity.
So with such high levels of protection, why would up to 30% of the population be infected during a potential new wave?
Scientists and public health experts said the 100 million estimate — based on mathematical models — does not surprise them and that as immunity wanes and people move indoors due to cold weather, cases will inevitably rise.
“Certainly we’re capable of sustaining 100 million infections this winter,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News. “The model doesn’t mean that there will be 100 million cases, but there is the potential for a lot of infections. It doesn’t mean everyone should panic.”
Doron explained that even with the high rates of vaccination in the U.S., immunity diminishes over time and COVID-19’s ability to mutate has helped it evade — at least partially — the protection offered by vaccines.
“Being vaccinated does protect you from serious illness, but it does not [fully] protect you from infection,” she said.
She said when the vaccines first rolled out in the winter of 2020-21, they were based on the original strain of the virus. Because of this, they were protective against infection, severe disease and death.
However, as the virus mutated, those vaccines became less effective at preventing infection while still being highly effective at protecting against the most serious effects of the disease.
“These vaccines are great, but they’re not perfect,” Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told ABC News. “They can’t prevent widespread, mild infections. We haven’t got a vaccine that could turn off COVID like a light switch.”
This means it’s possible for Americans who are fully vaccinated and boosted to test positive for COVID-19, but it’s unlikely this group will get severely ill or die.
Another reason the U.S. could see such a high number of infections is because as temperatures drop, people will move indoors, which increases the risk of transmission.
“The weather will get colder, and we’ll start to go indoors again, and we had increased transmission during the last winter season and we may have increases again on the basis of seasonality,” Schaffner said.
The prediction comes as the Biden administration asks Congress for $22.5 billion in funding for testing, vaccines and treatments.
If the funding is secured, a senior administration official told reporters Friday that the country will be better prepared to blunt the effects of the surge and keep hospitalization and death rates low.
If Congress rejects the funding, “the consequences of those 100 million being infected will be higher,” Doron said.
Cuts to funding will decrease testing, leading to COVID-19 infections being spread undetected, and fewer treatments for those at high risk of severe disease, which could lead to hospitalization, she said.
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, added this will also limit the number of people who access vaccines, treatments or tests.
“Some vulnerable folks who probably need additional doses will not get it if they have to pay out of pocket for a vaccine or not have it covered,” he told ABC News. “When people are not sure if they will be saddled with a bill, they’ll stay away from accessing care.”
The experts said the best way people can protect themselves ahead of a surge is to make sure they are up to date on their booster shots, whether they are eligible for one or two doses and to follow the advice of public health experts.
“There may be a call to get another dose of vaccine or in specific locations, people may have to wear masks again,” Schaffner said. “Please be open to this. … Be prepared, keep listening and reading updates on the virus in your area.”
