Health

(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday released new data from Pfizer’s submitted application to approve booster doses of its Covid-19 vaccine. In it, Pfizer demonstrates what it sees as proof that third shot will be both safe and necessary for most Americans to take, arguing that immunity wanes over time — regardless of any new variant of concern.

It comes two days ahead of a critical juncture in the COVID-19 vaccine booster approval process: Friday, the Food and Drug Administration’s independent advisory committee (VRBPAC) is set to convene to review and discuss the latest data on potential booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The committee will be asked to vote on whether a booster dose is safe enough for widespread use — and whether it’s necessary and effective at improving protection levels.

In mid-August, the FDA authorized boosters of Moderna and Pfizer for the roughly 7 million immunocompromised Americans who didn’t get an optimal immune response to their initial vaccine doses.

Pfizer/BioNTech, which partnered to develop the nation’s first fully approved vaccine, has said it has early data suggesting a booster dose anywhere from six to 12 months after the second dose will help maintain a high level of protection; Pfizer asked the FDA to approve booster doses of its vaccine in late August by submitting an application and data. On Wednesday morning, the FDA made that data public.

While the independent members of the VRBPAC’s votes are not binding, the agency takes its recommendations under serious advisement in deciding whether to grant vaccines new authorization or approval. If and when a recommendation does come to green light booster shots, several additional steps must follow before it’s time for more Americans to role up their sleeves a third time.

First, the FDA would need to formally amend its current vaccine approval for Pfizer; then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee (ACIP) will weigh to whom, and when, expanded booster shots should begin. Then, the CDC director must formally sign off on whether to recommend the vaccine to the public, including who it will be recommended for and at what time period. It’s expected to be authorized for anyone eight months after their second dose. Authorization for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson may not be far behind.

The new data — and proximate committee vote — also come days before the Sept. 20 date set by the White House as the target to begin deploying booster shots for a wider pool of Americans.

The question of whether America’s immunity is waning has become an urgent question in recent months with the rise of the delta variant and large pockets of the country still unvaccinated.

FDA acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky — both White House appointees — endorsed President Joe Biden’s Sept. 20 plan.

However, it has been getting some pushback, with health experts criticizing the Sept. 20 boosters-for-all timeline as premature and prior to any ruling from their advisory groups.

Two top FDA officials who are leaving the agency later this year publicly waded into the booster debate on Monday, splitting from the agency and arguing in a scientific journal that it was too soon to give booster shots to the general public since the vaccines still offer strong protection against serious disease.

One of them is scheduled to attend Friday’s VRBPAC discussion.

“The message that boosting might soon be needed, if not justified by robust data and analysis, could adversely affect confidence in vaccines and undermine messaging about the value of primary vaccination,” the officials wrote, backed by other worldwide organizations.

For their part, the Biden administration has emphasized that science will lead and federal regulators will have the final say — and that their call to push out booster shots is motivated by wanting to “stay ahead” of the virus.

“You don’t want to find yourself behind playing catch up,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said when announcing the plan. “Better stay ahead of it than chasing after it.”

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(NEW YORK) — As companies continue to ramp up vaccine mandates to combat the contagious delta variant, some institutions are giving employees a chance to opt-out of getting the vaccine if they have a medical exemption.

However, medical experts who have been keeping track of COVID-19 vaccines and their effectiveness, say there are very few situations and conditions which would force a patient to put off getting vaccinated.

Dr. David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News that the large and growing data on the three coronavirus vaccines shows there are no immediate health issues or side effects for most people with pre-existing medical conditions.

“Other than age, there are no major exemptions that cover large groups of people,” he told ABC News.

The current guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the two-dose mRNA vaccines and the one dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine are safe for almost all patients.

The only major contraindication to the vaccines listed by the CDC is a severe allergic reaction to the first dose. In those cases, the person is advised to consult a physician and hold off on their second dose, according to Dowdy.

“We’re not talking about some people who had pain at the site of injection or a rash, we’re talking about anaphylactic shock,” he said.

Dowdy said the data so far shows this severe allergy is rare, and less than one in 1 million people experience it.

Dr. Jeff Linder, the chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told ABC News that research so far shows that those who have a severe allergic reaction are likely triggered by polyethylene glycol (PEG), a component in the vaccines.

“An allergy to that is pretty rare,” he told ABC News. “It would have to be documented, as a moderate or severe allergy, before I would consider giving a medical exemption.”

Overall, the COVID-19 vaccines are safe for people with “moderate to severe immune compromise,” underlying conditions, pregnant women, women trying to get pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, according to the CDC.

Linder said these populations are most vulnerable to severe illness and death from the coronavirus and it is important that they get their shot.

“Anyone who says, ‘I have a medical condition,’ that is more of a reason to get vaccinated,” he said.

The CDC has some extra precautions in place for people with certain medical conditions. For example, people with a history of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), are advised to get an mRNA vaccine if they are within 90 days of illness, the CDC said. Women over 50 are also warned about a potential risk of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) if they chose the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, according to the CDC.

The agency currently advises holding off on immediately getting the vaccine under two circumstances.

If a person is currently diagnosed with COVID-19 or under quarantine for a suspected case, they are advised from getting their shots until the quarantine period is over, according to the agency’s guidelines. If a patient is receiving monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma for COVID-19 treatment, they are advised to hold off on their vaccine appointment for 90 days, the CDC said.

Dowdy said neither scenario should stop someone from getting any of the vaccines once they’re eligible.

“People ask, ‘If I’ve gotten COVID in the past can I get the vaccine?’ The answer is yes, getting the vaccine adds additional protection,” he said.

Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internal medicine physician, an instructor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and an ABC News contributor, added that special care should be taken for patients who are awaiting an organ transplant, recently received an organ transplant or are receiving metastatic cancer treatment. Those patients should talk with their physicians and set up a timetable for the earliest and safest time to get their shots.

“It’s less about not being vaccinated, it’s more about when they want to do it,” he said. “If they’re in the midst of treatment…you want to make sure they’re situated appropriately.”

Researchers say it’s highly unlikely that that list of medical exemptions will change in the near future. Over 178 million Americans over 12 have been fully vaccinated since December and there have been no reports so far of any adverse effects to patients who have medical conditions, according to Linder.

“The idea that we’re missing something that’s even rare or severe seems very unlikely to me,” he said.

Linder recommended that anyone who is still hesitant about getting the vaccine over a medical issue should consult their doctor and review the data that has overwhelmingly shown the vaccines are safe.

“The risk for COVID is still high,” he said. “At the end of the day, we know the COVID vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death.”

Anyone who needs help scheduling a free vaccine appointment can go to vaccines.gov.

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(NEW YORK) — Natalie Tapio has been living with a chronic seizure disorder, but with her service dog Dexter by her side, managing her condition has become a little easier.

He will alert her when she’s about to seize.

Tapio started experiencing catatonic seizures, a form of epilepsy, in 2014, which caused periods of semi-consciousness that rendered her unable to move. Eventually, she was suffering multiple, potentially debilitating seizures a day, that would happen at any time. Tapio’s doctors soon identified abnormal brainwaves after performing an EEG.

“The seizures were so unpredictable and silent, usually, and so there always has to be someone very attentive close by,” Tapio said. “[My] mom and I were basically inseparable. She would come into the bathroom with me when I needed to bathe or do anything. Really … wherever I went, she went.”

Her life changed three years ago after she learned about seizure alert dogs and eventually met Dexter.

“[Dexter] will alert me and then dial a dog phone, which has my parents’ phone numbers on it, and then [he] retrieves a pouch which will have any necessities for me, like medication, water [and] my cell phone,” she said.

Lisa Tapio, Natalie Tapio’s mother, found out about seizure alert dogs through a family member and began to research them, eventually coming across Little Angels. After Natalie Tapio submitted her medical information, she was accepted into the program.

Once Dexter was paired with Tapio, his first task was learning to paw her leg, alerting her when she was on the verge of a seizure. To do this, Lisa Tapio was asked to collect her daughter’s “seizure scent” by swabbing Natalie’s hands and the inside of her cheeks before, during and after a seizure. Dexter was trained with those scents and in 2018, he was ready to meet his new owner.

Dexter was raised by what some might consider an unlikely group of trainers: inmates at the California Correctional Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California. Some of the inmates there are volunteers with Pups Uplifting Prisoner’s Spirits, or PUPS. The prison program is run by the non-profit Little Angels Service Dogs, a nationwide team that trains service dogs to help people living with disabilities and disabling conditions.

It was at the prison that ABC News met the group of women, all convicted felons, who’ve been training the dogs that might one day save people’s lives. Many of the women said the program has presented them with an opportunity for personal redemption.

“This isn’t just about training a dog,” said Amy Davis, an inmate at the prison. “[We] are training service dogs that save lives, and it’s about what the service dogs do to us to help us grow and continue to grow, and to heal our own wounds. You can’t be in this program and not grow. It doesn’t work [like that].”

Through the PUPS program, inmates have helped train dogs that have assisted medical technicians, people with autism, people with psychiatric conditions and those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Dana Froomin, the prison program manager for Little Angels Service Dogs, admitted that she was initially concerned for the dogs safety when she was tasked with starting the PUPS program in 2017. Her concerns waned, she said, when she met the inmates, and has found the work to be rewarding.

The dogs graduate from their training after 12 to 18 months and then are sent to one of two Little Angels ranches in San Diego, California, or New Hampshire. Once they arrive, they go through advanced training to perfect their skills before they are eventually paired with a recipient or released from the program.

Any inmate can apply to participate in the program, says Froomin. Once they submit an application, they are selected based on three main criteria: physical and mental health, commitment level and their interests. Once selected, inmates sign on for a two-year commitment where they care for and train a dog.

“When I got here, I realized that these are women with stories, and they’re heart-wrenching stories, and they were so open and honest,” said Froomin. “It changed me because I realized that the dogs weren’t just changing the recipients’ lives, they were changing [the inmates’] lives, and then they changed mine.”

Inmate Amber Ingram, the lead trainer in the program, believes that PUPS helps her to deal with the guilt and shame she feels after she was convicted for the second-degree murder of her 5-year-old son, Braeden. Ingram said she her son was killed by an abusive boyfriend.

Ingram said that she protects the dogs no matter what and it is her way of not only remembering her son but honoring him, too.

“I can’t allow anything bad to happen to this dog,” she said. “If someone were to want to kick my dog, I’m jumping in front of it.”

To Natalie Tapio, Little Angels and the women at the PUPS program are saving lives, she said.

“People with epilepsy often have this constant kind of cloud over their head or worry in the back of their mind of, ‘When will the next seizure happen? Where will I be? What will I be doing,’” she said. “I don’t need to have that anymore, and so that’s very freeing.”

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(NEW YORK) — Children and young people around the world are experiencing increasing anxiety over the fate of the planet — specifically climate change and how lawmakers are handling the looming crisis, according to new research.

Scientists who surveyed 10,000 young people, ages 16 to 25, across 10 countries, found “widespread psychological distress” among them, and, for the first time, discovered that the anxiety was significantly related to perceived government inaction, according to a study published Tuesday in Lancet Planetary Health.

Nearly half of all young people surveyed, more than 45%, said their feelings about climate change negatively affect their daily life and functioning, according to the study.

Another 75% of those surveyed said they feel the future is frightening, while 64% said governments are not doing enough to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Of the young people surveyed, 58% said governments are betraying hem, while 61% said governments are not protecting them, the planet or future generations.

The study is the largest to ever research climate anxiety among children and young people and is the first to investigate how government action on climate change is related to widespread psychological distress among the youngest members of society, according to the authors.

“Climate change has significant implications for the health and futures of children and young people, yet they have little power to limit its harm, making them vulnerable to increased climate anxiety,” according to the researchers.

The results of the study were not surprising and indicate a lack of trust toward the government as well as the perception of institutional betrayal, Lisa Van Susteren, a general and forensic psychiatrist and co-author of the study, told ABC News. The findings are also “as much a measure” of climate denial among adults as they are a measure of kids’ anxiety, Van Susteren said.

“Kids are very media savvy. They’re not living in a cave,” Van Susteren said. “They have heard about what the future looks like. They’ve heard the warnings.”

Scientists warned of the dire situation the planet faces in the annual Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last month.

“This report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid and intensifying, unprecedented in thousands of years,” said IPCC Vice Chair Ko Barrett, senior climate adviser for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Young people have been at the forefront of the climate fight for some years — with 18-year-old activist Greta Thunberg becoming a household name in 2018, and hundreds of thousands of young people around the world taking part in an organized global climate strike in 2019.

As an expert witness, Van Susteren performed psychological evaluations on the young people who were plaintiffs in Juliana V. United States, the 2015 federal lawsuit brought about by 21 youths who accused the government of failing to adequately combat climate change. She described it as “one of the most difficult experiences” in her career.

“You can clearly see that theirs depths of despair just are off the charts and are in part attributed to the sense that the future holds little promise,” Van Susteren said.

The case was dismissed in January 2020, but lawyers representing the plaintiffs intend to appeal the dismissal, they announced in February.

The researchers concluded that climate change and inadequate governmental response are associated with climate anxiety and distress in children and young people globally. Continued government inaction on climate change could lead to a public health crisis among the youth, the researchers warned.

Van Susteren described a “healing effect” that could take place if lawmakers and industry professionals were to do “the right thing” to significantly curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“They’re not going to heal with words alone,” she said. “They’re going to heal because of actions that are taken.”

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(NEW YORK) — When Lt. Nathan Brashear saw the call for National Guard service members to help as hospitals were reaching a crisis point during Kentucky’s delta surge, he didn’t hesitate to volunteer.

For about two weeks, Brashear, a member of the Kentucky Army National Guard, has been leading a team of 30 National Guard members at The Medical Center at Bowling Green, doing “everything little thing” they can to help give the hospital staff a much-needed break.

“That’s one thing that makes this mission so important to us as soldiers,” Brashear, who was a deputy jailor before he went on active-duty orders, told ABC News. “We live and work in these communities. So for us to be able to support the communities is something that really impacts us.”

In recent weeks, several states have deployed hundreds of National Guard service members to help overwhelmed and understaffed hospitals, as COVID-19 hospitalization rates have reached points not seen during the pandemic.

The service members are not doing clinical work, but instead offering administrative and logistical support so hospital staff can focus on patient care. That could be anything from taking patients to appointments to cleaning beds to serving and clearing food.

“This is really the latest in demonstrated need that we’re seeing, obviously across the state and nation, that a lot of these hospitals are feeling the strain — both increased patients and a decrease in the available personnel to really help take care of everybody,” Lt. Col. Stephen Martin, director of public affairs for the Kentucky National Guard, told ABC News. “Our main mission there is really just to offload the logistical and administrative support that those hospitals have so that the full-timers there can better care for the needs of the patients that are coming in.”

The Kentucky National Guard was winding down its pandemic response, which has included helping set up drive-through COVID-19 testing sites and assisting food banks, when, about three weeks ago, it was called for the first time during the pandemic to assist hospitals overburdened by COVID-19 patients — most of them unvaccinated.

The size of National Guard teams and length of their deployment varies by hospital size and demand, and will stay as long as they can in whatever capacity is needed, Martin said.

“We as Guardsmen fancy ourselves as Swiss Army knives. We’ve got multiple skillsets, not only in what we’re trained on but being able to accomplish the mission before us,” he said. “We can send a small team into the hospital and say, ‘Here’s your left and right limits, these are the things that we want you to focus on and provide support to, and more than anything, just help these folks out.'”

“They’re in a bad way and we’re really just helping to alleviate that workload for a little it, let them catch their breath and catch up and really focus on the needs of the patients in the hospital,” he added.

Over two-thirds of Kentucky hospitals have critical staffing shortages as they’re overrun with COVID-19 patients, and doctors are “quickly approaching” the point where they would need to ration care, Gov. Andy Beshear told CNN on Wednesday.

More than 100 soldiers and airmen had already been deployed to four hospitals, including The Medical Center at Bowling Green, when Beshear announced Friday that over 300 more will be sent to 21 additional hospitals in the state’s largest-ever National Guard deployment for a health crisis.

“Our hospitals are at a breaking point,” Beshear said during a COVID-19 briefing Friday. “We have 93 total ICU beds left statewide. That is one of the lowest numbers, I think they would tell you, in our lifetime.”

The announcement came a day after Kentucky set new records for its statewide COVID-19 testing positivity rate, reaching 14%, and the number of patients on ventilators, the governor said.

Kentucky is not the only state to turn to the National Guard for COVID-19-related hospital support in recent weeks.

Late last month, Idaho Gov. Brad Little announced the state was deploying up to 150 Guardsmen, among other personnel, to help overwhelmed hospitals.

More than 600 patients are hospitalized with COVID-19 in Idaho, the highest on record for the state, as the number of intensive care unit beds dwindles and hospital staff are stretched thin. On Tuesday, Idaho public health leaders announced they had activated “crisis standards of care” for the state’s northern hospitals, enabling them to ration care.

In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown announced last month she was deploying up to 1,500 National Guard members to hospitals around the state to provide support.

The service members have been met by applause by grateful health care workers as they’ve arrived at their hospitals.

Over the past few weeks, they’ve helped with nonclinical tasks, including screening visitors at hospital entrances, manning COVID-19 hotlines and changing patients’ bedding in the ICU.

Some have even used their talents to boost morale. Senior Airman Skadi Freyr of the Oregon National Guard has been playing piano during her lunch break while working at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.

“A beautiful moment of someone in uniform who was blessing us on her break with some beautiful music, which really was grounding for me, to remind me of the beauty and the good in the midst of this really hard time,” OHSU oncology social worker Jen Smith told the Oregon National Guard last week.

Freyr said she doesn’t have any plans to stop playing after seeing the impact on staff.

“Now that I’ve seen that it has such a good sort of healing effect on people, it makes me more driven to do it, because I know that it’s really gonna just help them,” she said. “And I really like to be of service.”

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(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy defended President Joe Biden’s new actions to combat COVID-19, calling it an “ambitious” and “thoughtful” plan to increase vaccinations as the country has faced more than 100,000 cases a day for the past four weeks and roughly a quarter million new cases being reported among children.

“The requirements that he announced are not sweeping requirements for the entire nation,” Murthy told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “These are focused on areas where the federal government has legal authority to act.”

Reaching a milestone this week, 75% of American adults have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but Murthy warned that the delta variant is a “tough foe” that has “thrown curve balls” at any progress made and said Biden’s actions “have to be taken” to help get through the pandemic.

Biden on Thursday announced his furthest measures yet to combat the delta variant — unveiling a six-part strategy that includes a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule for private businesses with over 100 employees to either require workers to be fully vaccinated or face weekly testing, covering roughly 80 million workers.

“We know that these kinds of requirements actually work to improve our vaccination rates,” Murthy said. “Tyson Foods, for example, which put in a vaccine requirement recently saw that its vaccination rate went from 45% to more than 70% in a very short period of time and they’re not even at their deadline yet.”

The president’s mandate on private businesses received swift criticism and legal threats from Republican governors, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who called it “fundamentally wrong” for someone to lose their job for not being vaccinated.

Murthy pushed back against opposition, saying Sunday that “there are requirements that we put in workplaces and schools every day to make sure that workplaces and schools are safe,” such as mandatory vaccines for children to attend school.

“This is not an unusual phenomenon. What it is, is I think an appropriate response for us to recognize that if we want our economy to be back, if we want our schools to stay in session, we’ve got to take steps to make sure workplaces and learning environments are safe and these requirements will help do that,” he continued.

The surgeon general also defended the administration’s actions against legal challenges, saying it “wouldn’t have been put forward if the president’s administration didn’t believe that it was an appropriate, legal measure to take.”

“The COVID virus is a dangerous virus,” he continued. “It makes our workplaces and our schools, far less safe than they should be. So this is an appropriate action, we believe, and it’s certainly from a public health perspective — most importantly — will help keep workers safe.”

This is the first time OSHA will create a rule requiring vaccinations and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that they are hoping the rule making proceeds “as quickly as possible.”

The vaccine mandate is now also required for 17 million health care workers and 4 million federal government employees and contractors, but they won’t have the option to undergo weekly tests.

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(NEW YORK) — The Biden administration in recent weeks has announced a series of mandates that require long-term care facilities to fully vaccinate staff against COVID-19, drawing mixed responses from providers, industry leaders and advocates, including those who said the federal policies will put extra strain on an industry already suffering a workforce shortage.

But some nursing homes said they’ve already successfully implemented their own mandates without a significant impact on their workforces, which officials say showcases how the new federal rules can be carried out to protect vulnerable elderly residents amid yet another coronavirus surge.

President Joe Biden’s mandate, announced last month, directly targets nursing homes — employees in long-term care settings must be vaccinated for those facilities to continue receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funding. Additional White House announcements made this week could also indirectly affect nursing homes, including an upcoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that would mandate private businesses with at least 100 employees require employees to either be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. Businesses that don’t comply with the agency’s rule could face fees of up to $14,000.

The proposed rules would also require health care facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement to have a vaccine mandate.

Genesis HealthCare, one of the largest nursing home providers in the country, said almost 100% of its staff was vaccinated by Aug. 23, except for a “small number of individuals who received medical or religious exemptions,” spokesperson Lori Meyer told ABC News.

“Thoughtful and supportive dialogue, clinician-led family and peer discussions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and the looming federal mandate all played important roles in seeing the vast majority of our unvaccinated employees choose to become vaccinated,” said Meyer, adding that two weeks after Genesis finished vaccinating its staff, COVID cases among residents declined by nearly 50%.

When the nationwide push to vaccinate the most vulnerable population began in December, nursing homes were at the front of the long-term care industry’s battle against the pandemic, with facilities across the country reporting more than 33,000 cases and 6,000 deaths a week.

Within six months into the effort, cases and deaths among residents at long-term care facilities had dropped by nearly 99%, with the vast majority of residents at long-term care facilities fully vaccinated, according to data published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services.

As of Aug. 29, the latest weekly data available, nursing homes reported an average of 84% of residents per facility vaccinated and roughly 63% of staff vaccinated, federal data shows.

In recent weeks however, COVID cases and deaths have been on the rise again in long-term care facilities as the delta variant rips through the country.

A recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines among nursing home residents has declined significantly over the past few months with the advent of the delta variant, from 74.7% in March through May to 53.1% in June and July.

Experts have cited this data to advocate for multi-pronged and layered prevention strategies for nursing homes, including vaccinations of staff members, residents and visitors, contractors, as well as appropriate testing and possible booster shots.

While the overall staff vaccination rate hasn’t gone up by much since Biden’s announcement of the nursing home mandate, more facilities are reporting a higher staff vaccination rate, CMS data shows.

As of Aug. 29, nearly 3,800 facilities out of more than 15,200 that report to the CMS have fully vaccinated less than 50% of their staff, down from roughly 4,000 facilities the prior week, federal data shows. And the number of facilities that reported vaccinating less than 30% of their staff also decreased over the week, from more than 900 in the week Biden announced the mandate to 800 the following week.

Most of the facilities with the lowest vaccination rates are in Florida, Texas, Missouri and Ohio, where vaccine hesitancy rates tend to be higher.

But more than 3,000 other facilities reported fully vaccinating more than 80% of their staff, a rate almost on par with the national vaccination rate of nursing home residents, the data shows. Among those, 122 reported vaccinating 100% of their staff.

The Jewish Home Family, a New Jersey-based senior care facility in a part of the state ravaged by the pandemic, is one of the nursing homes that’s finished vaccinating all employees. During that process, the facility ended up letting go five of 350 employees, CEO and President Carol Silver-Elliott said during a press conference last week.

“We felt it was a small price to pay to keep our elders safe, and it is something we feel very very strongly about,” Silver-Elliott said. “It doesn’t take much to invoke those images of what horrible experiences we all went through, and to all of them suffered losses of friends and colleagues and family members and elders, so I think that made a difference too.”

Dayspring Senior Living in northern Florida, near the Georgia state line, has had a vaccine mandate in place for all employees since January, achieving 99% compliance, Executive Director Doug Adkins told ABC News.

He said one employee sought medical accommodation, and another who resigned rather than get a vaccine ended up getting vaccinated and returning to work. Late last week, Dayspring Senior Living rolled out booster shots for staff and residents approaching the eight-month mark since getting vaccinated, Adkins said.

“No one likes to be told what to do — this is no different,” Adkins said, but “once the employee is vaccinated, then I believe they appreciate the fact that the majority of the workforce is vaccinated and the environment is safe.”

So far, Dayspring hasn’t seen many breakthrough cases with symptoms, Adkins added.

Despite his facility’s successful staff vaccination effort, Adkins said rather than create a mandate tied to federal funding, a better approach would have been to offer tax incentives to companies that decided on their own to implement a vaccination mandate to help them compete and develop a workforce that helps keep residents safe amid ongoing staffing shortages.

David Totaro, chief government affairs officer at BAYADA Home Health Care, a multinational long-term care provider headquartered in New Jersey, said during a press conference last week that mandating staff vaccinations could “significantly hurt” nursing homes’ ability to react to current workforce shortages as some nursing homes raise wages to retain employees.

The American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, which represents more than 14,000 nursing homes, as well as other local nursing home advocates, are urging the Biden administration to expand the vaccine requirement to all health care settings, not just nursing homes.

“If other local health care providers and private industries are not implementing vaccine mandates, nursing homes are rightfully concerned that unvaccinated employees may leave to work elsewhere,” said AHCA spokesperson Beth Martino. “Otherwise, the administration will exacerbate an already dire workforce crisis in long-term care.”

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(NASHVILLE, Tenn.) — When Cathey Stoner gave birth to a baby boy last month, it was a miracle years in the making.

Stoner delivered the child after serving as a surrogate for her twin sister, Sarah Sharp, who could not carry a pregnancy after being diagnosed with choriocarcinoma, a rare and fast-growing cancer that occurs in a woman’s uterus.

The newborn baby, named John Ryder Sharp and born on Aug. 18, is the biological child of Sharp and her husband, Richard.

“Her offering that to me was the biggest act of love that anyone’s ever extended to me or my family,” Sharp, 33, said of her sister carrying her child. “Surrogacy is a beautiful gift that you can give somebody and I will forever be grateful.”

Sharp, who, like her sister, lives in the Nashville area, was diagnosed with choriocarcinoma in 2018, about one year after she gave birth to her now 4-year-old daughter Charlotte.

She underwent seven rounds of chemotherapy in an attempt to beat the cancer while also saving her uterus. She was declared cancer free in December 2018, but by her first checkup, in January, the cancer had returned.

She began a new course of chemotherapy and also underwent a hysterectomy, which successfully removed the cancer but left her without the hope of giving birth to another child.

Just before Sharp underwent the hysterectomy, Stoner told her sister for the second time in her cancer battle that she would carry any future children for her.

“We kind of laughed a little bit again but for me, in the back of my mind, it was something to hold onto,” Sharp told “Good Morning America” in June. “It was something to help me move myself forward mentally. It was hope and grace and the future all in one.”

Once Sharp finished her cancer treatments, she prepared to become a mom again, and turned to her sister for help.

Stoner, mom to a 4-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter, said she had no hesitation about helping her sister expand her family in any way she could.

“We decided to knock on the doors and see if they opened,” Stoner told “GMA” in June. “There was a lot of waiting, but it went really smooth.”

By the end of 2020, the two sisters, whose story is featured in the new issue of People magazine, were celebrating the news that Stoner was pregnant.

 

 

 

 

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“From the beginning I’ve felt differently in this pregnancy because I know it’s my nephew and not my son, and I have loved every step of the way,” said Stoner, who was the baby’s gestational carrier. “I tell people, ‘I’m just carrying my nephew.'”

“To be able to go to the doctor for such a happy reason is really healing for all of us,” she added, noting that her sister was with her at every doctor’s appointment during the pregnancy.

 

 

 

 

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When Stoner gave birth to her nephew, John Ryder, on Aug. 18, she was supported in the delivery room by Sharp and their two husbands.

“We feel so unbelievably honored to be his parents and raise him,” said Sharp. “A lot of love brought him here.”

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(JACKSON, Miss.) — Mississippi health officials are urging expectant mothers to get vaccinated after a “significant” number of COVID-19 fatalities in pregnant women during the state’s delta surge.

The state health department is investigating eight reports of pregnant women who died from COVID-19 in the past four weeks, all of whom were unvaccinated, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said at the top of a COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.

“We do know that COVID is especially problematic and dangerous for pregnant women,” Dobbs said. “We also know it can be deadly for the baby in the womb.”

Compared to the rate pre-pandemic, the health department has seen a “doubling of the rate of fetal demise, or the death of the baby in the womb after 20 weeks,” Dobbs said. “It’s been a real tragedy.”

The warning comes as a majority of pregnant women nationwide have yet to be vaccinated. About three out of four pregnant women in the U.S. have not yet received a COVID-91 vaccine, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pregnant women are at higher risk for severe illness if they contract COVID-19, including “intensive care unit admission, invasive ventilation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and death,” compared to nonpregnant women, according to the CDC.

As of Monday, at least 147 pregnant women had died from COVID-19 nationwide during the pandemic, according to CDC data.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the professional association for OB-GYNs, recommends that all eligible people, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Last month, the CDC also strengthened its recommendation for vaccination in pregnant women, with Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky saying, “it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible Delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people.”

After reporting four COVID-19 fatalities in pregnant women earlier in the pandemic, Mississippi did not have any others again for almost a year, until this past July, state data shows.

“Delta is different, and delta is deadly, and we need to do everything we can to prevent transmission,” Dobbs said.

The health department was still gathering details on the most recent maternal fatalities and the status of the infants, with more information to come next week. It was confirmed that several of the infants were born prematurely, “but are alive,” Dobbs said Wednesday. The health department reported a pediatric death due to COVID-19 on Wednesday, but that was not related to any of the maternal deaths, he said.

Health officials pleaded with pregnant women who had not yet been vaccinated to get the shot, along with the general public. Only 47.6% of Mississippi residents ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, fourth-lowest in the U.S., compared to 62.5% nationwide, according to CDC data.

“It’s getting easier and easier to find Mississippians that have a story about the tragedy from the delta variant,” Jim Craig, senior deputy and director of health protection for the Mississippi’s health department, said during the briefing. “Don’t let that be a pregnant mom and expectant family.”

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(NEW YORK) — Henry Ray Fischbach, a jazz singer from New York City, was playing a show at a neighborhood restaurant in July when he collapsed mid-performance.

“I was feeling fine until that last number and as I was performing that song, I started to feel very light-headed and weak,” Fischbach, who goes by the stage name Henry Ray, told Good Morning America. “I thought I was just very dehydrated.”

Fischbach, 66, had actually gone into cardiac arrest and his heart stopped beating.

As his wife and fellow concertgoers screamed for help, three doctors who happened to stop by the restaurant for an after-work drink rushed the stage to help.

“We could see he was on the floor and on his side,” said Dr. Matthew Simhon, an orthopedic surgery resident at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “His skin was very blue. We didn’t feel any pulse. He wasn’t breathing whatsoever.”

Simhon and his colleagues, Dr. Andrew Luzzi, also an orthopedic surgery resident at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and Dr. Marc Dyrszka, a spine surgeon affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Och Spine, immediately began doing chest compressions on Fischbach to bring him back to life.

The trio of doctors worked on him for more than 10 minutes, until paramedics arrived with a more advanced defibrillator that successfully got Fischbach’s heart beating again.

Once he was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, Fischbach was alert and able to realize how severe his condition had been.

“One of the EMTs in the ambulance told me, ‘You just died twice,'” recalled Fischbach. “He told me that there were doctors in the audience, but I had been unaware during the show that I was standing a few feet away from guys who would change my life, who would save my life.”

Fischbach was rushed to NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where he had a stent put in his left coronary artery to relieve the blockage.

During his time in the hospital and after being discharged home, Fischbach never knew the names of the three doctors who had saved his life and never got to thank them.

That changed on Aug. 27, when, just one month after suffering cardiac arrest, Fischbach returned to the stage at the same restaurant where he collapsed.

The three doctors were in the audience that night, thanks to the restaurant owner who invited them to come back to meet Fischbach.

“I got the chance to express the inexpressible, the gratitude for saving my life,” said Fischbach. “I dedicated that evening to the three of them and the gift of life and the gift of being able to celebrate music that evening.”

“They are the nicest, most humble doctors,” he added. “It’s amazing and they’re just like, ‘This is what we do.'”

Simhon and Luzzi said they were just grateful to be in the “right place at the right time.”

“Out of hospital cardiac arrest survival rate is very low, so it felt really good that we were able to contribute to his good outcome,” said Simhon. “It was really amazing that we were able to return him back to his life.”

Luzzi described seeing Fischbach back on stage after saving his life as a “mix of emotions.”

“Relief is one, gratitude is another for being in the right place at the right time and surprise is another one,” he said. “He was back in relatively short order up and dancing and singing again, which is pretty unusual.”

Both doctors also stressed the importance of people learning CPR and chest compressions so they too can step in and help in an emergency.

“To be able to do CPR, it really is the difference between life and death,” said Luzzi. “Unless someone else there also knew CPR and did what we did, [Fischbach] very likely would not have survived.”

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