Health

(NEW YORK) — When plus-sized supermodel Tess Holliday opened up this spring about her struggle with anorexia, she also spoke about the backlash she received, saying, “I understand that people look at me and I don’t fit what we have seen presented as the diagnosis for anorexia.”

“I’ve had a lot of messages from folks that are anorexic that are livid and angry because they feel like I’m lying,” Holliday also said.

The negative comments slung Holliday’s way hit close to home for Susie Sebastian, 30, who says she too does not fit the typical stereotype of anorexia.

“The reactions kind of proved my biggest fear in advocating for myself and for the eating disorder community,” Sebastian, of Parkville, Maryland, told Good Morning America. “A big fear I have is that if I speak out about [my eating disorder], people will think this is not real.”

Sebastian’s reaction was also one that rang true for Aja Pryor, 29, of Florence, New Jersey.

“I’ve had the same experience every single time where I was just kind of looked at like there’s really nothing wrong with you because you don’t fit the type for having an eating disorder,” said Pryor. “Because I’m not skinny I’m deemed as atypical, and that’s actually made it harder to recover.”

“It’s made it actually extremely hard to recover, and my story is not uncommon,” she said.

Nearly 30 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (NADA).

Many of them are medically overweight, or fat as society would call them, yet their weight loss is encouraged, even as it’s caused by the eating disorder.

While less than 6% of people with eating disorders are medically diagnosed as “underweight,” those people are twice as likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder than people in larger bodies, according to NADA.

Pryor said she started showing signs of an eating disorder at age 12, but did not receive treatment for it for years because of her size.

When she did finally enter an inpatient treatment center, after losing weight and suffering medically because of it, Pryor said she was congratulated on her weight loss.

“Before you go into residential treatment, you have to get medical work done, and the doctor that I saw congratulated me on my weight loss,” she said, adding that at other points in her life when she also lost weight and suffered symptoms like hair loss and low blood pressure, people, including doctors, would tell her, “You’ve lost so much weight. I’m so proud of you.”

Pryor said the cultural stereotypes around eating disorders have even affected the way she thought about herself and her own recovery.

Describing her reaction when she was told she would need residential treatment, Pryor said, “I was shocked because in my mind, I was still over a certain number of pounds. I thought I’m still in a larger body, I’m not skinny by any means, so it just was weird to me.”

Pryor and Sebastian both said they are speaking out now at a time when they know many more people are struggling with eating disorders, the most common of which are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder.

The coronavirus pandemic has brought on a mental health crisis in the U.S., of which eating disorders are a major part.

Throughout the pandemic, the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) has seen a spike of more than 70% in the number of calls and online chat inquiries to its hotline compared to the same time period last year.

The Emily Program, a national network of eating disorder treatment centers, has seen inquiries both online and by phone “fly off the charts” during the pandemic, Jillian Lampert, Ph.D., Emily Program’s chief strategy officer, told GMA earlier this year.

Throughout the pandemic, eating disorders have remained second only to opioid overdose as the deadliest mental illness, with eating disorders responsible for one death every 52 minutes in the U.S., according to data shared by the NADA.

Sebastian said she has had to work hard to overcome the stigma of being overweight and not being able to focus on losing weight because she has an eating disorder.

“Still to this day, I have to remind myself, ‘You were diagnosed with an eating disorder,'” she said. “I know for me mentally that intentional weight loss is not a healthy goal for me, so it is definitely a hard balance to strike.”

Research shows that not only do people who are in larger bodies have eating disorders at high rates, they also suffer similar medical consequences as people who are considered underweight.

Patients with what’s classified as atypical anorexia nervosa are as likely as underweight patients to suffer from bradycardia, or slow heart rate, which can lead to other complications, according to researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

Their study also found that patients with atypical anorexia nervosa may carry a heavier psychological burden than those who are underweight, with researchers attributed to “heightened preoccupations with food avoidance and more negative feelings about body shape and weight.”

Anorexia nervosa’s seriousness as a mental disorder shatters another common misconception about eating disorders that they are a lifestyle choice. The misconception is one that is particularly damaging to people who are in larger bodies.

“Society teaches us that if you’re not skinny, you’re bad and you need to lose weight,” said Pryor. “I go through periods still where I don’t think I qualify for an eating disorder just because of the way that I look.”

People who are struggling should be looked at through the lens of their symptoms, and not their body size, according to Samantha DeCaro, PsyD, director of clinical outreach and education at The Renfrew Center, an organization of residential and outpatient eating disorder treatment programs across the country.

“We do a lot of work trying to educate the public but also providers that you cannot look at someone and know what kind of eating disorder they have and you cannot look at someone and know the severity of the eating disorder,” she said. “For people in larger bodies, the eating disorder can get minimized and it can get missed entirely.”

Behaviors to look for in people with eating disorders include isolating, feeling depressed and anxious, eating alone, avoiding events where there is food, avoiding entire food groups, talking excessively about food, calories and weight, exercising even when tired or injured, using the bathroom after every meal or spending excessive time in the bathroom and weighing multiple times a day, according to DeCaro.

In addition to weight loss, physical symptoms for eating disorders can include thinning hair and swollen glands in the face, explained DeCaro.

“There are so many people who have the ability to catch an eating disorder — school counselors, teachers, parents, caregivers, doctors, nurses, dentists, therapists and dietitians,” she said. “We need to focus on the signs and symptoms of eating disorders outside of size and appearance.”

The misdiagnoses and stigma that can accompany people with eating disorders can lead them to not seek medical help, which can delay critical treatment, according to DeCaro.

“People can recover at any stage of an eating disorder and any age, but the longer an eating disorder goes on, the more difficult it can be to treat,” she said. “There are many folks in larger bodies who are just avoiding seeking out medical and mental health treatment because of the fear they will continue to be prescribed that treatment plan.”

If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or NationalEatingDisorders.org.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LOS ANGELES) — Vaccines work to dramatically reduce the risk of developing COVID-19, but no vaccine is perfect. Now, with 174 million people already fully vaccinated, a small portion are experiencing a so-called “breakthrough” infection, meaning they test positive for COVID-19 after being vaccinated.

But doctors say this virus — which can be deadly for an unvaccinated person — most often leads to much milder symptoms those who already got their shots, with a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis finding vaccinated people are 29 times less likely to require hospitalization and four times less likely to be infected with COVID-19, even when the delta variant is predominant.

“We know vaccination is not 100%,” said Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist and adjunct faculty at the UIC School of Public Health and an ABC News contributor. “That being said, we know that most people in the ICU are unvaccinated individuals.”

Still, breakthrough infections do happen.

The CDC has very specific guidance about what vaccinated people should do if they are exposed to someone with COVID-19, or if they test positive themselves.

If a vaccinated person is exposed to the virus — meaning a close contact has tested positive — they don’t need to quarantine, but they should get a COVID test three to five days after that exposure. And they should wear a mask in public indoor spaces, like the grocery store, while awaiting test results.

But if a vaccinated person receives a positive test result or has symptoms after exposure, they should isolate for 10 days. A repeat test is not needed at the end of the 10-day isolation period, though the person should be fever-free for at least 24 hours before ending quarantine.

Vaccination status does not change isolation recommendations for those who test positive because they can still be contagious, though the CDC reports that the contagious period may be shorter than in those who are unvaccinated and viral load lessens after five days.

Since those who are vaccinated and infected with COVID-19 are still able to transmit the virus, their close contacts should also be contacted and tested. A close contact is a person who has spent more than 15 minutes with a COVID-19 positive person while unmasked and less than 6 feet apart.

Fully vaccinated people who test positive may also be eligible for authorized COVID-19 treatments, if their doctor says it’s necessary. Therapies such as monoclonal antibodies can still be given to COVID-positive patients in a high-risk category, even if they are vaccinated. “Monoclonal antibodies are intended for those with COVID-19 who are high risk, which includes those over 65, and those who have chronic disease, cancer or are immunocompromised,” Bhatt said. “The chances of allergic reactions or adverse events are relatively low.”

Monoclonal antibodies, laboratory-made proteins which mimic the immune system’s antibodies, work best when given in the first few days after a positive test result or symptom onset. After receiving monoclonal antibodies, further COVID-19 vaccination, such as a booster, should be delayed by 90 days to optimize response to the vaccine.

Other treatments, such as steroids or antivirals like Remdesivir, are more commonly given for hospitalized and severe cases, which are less likely to occur in vaccinated individuals.

While breakthrough infections are likely to be mild, it’s important to follow recommended guidelines to reduce the spread of infection. Wearing masks in large crowds and staying home when not feeling well will help protect both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

Priscilla Hanudel, M.D., is an emergency medicine physician in Los Angeles and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Much has been made about people of color being hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Numbers have shown that Black and Latino vaccination rates are lagging behind those of white people in America.

About 40% of Black people and 45% of Latinos have been at least partially vaccinated as of Aug. 16, compared to 50% of white people, according to the latest data by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And as of Aug. 16, 72% of people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine were at least partially vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, researchers only have race or ethnicity data of 58% of the vaccinated population, of which 58% is white, 10% Black and 17% Hispanic.

There have been myriad efforts to explain the racial and ethnic vaccine rate disparity. Misinformation online has been blamed. Throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, many were exposed to a slew of misleading health information, including hoaxes about the COVID-19 vaccines, some specifically targeted at Blacks and Latinos. Other experts identify structural barriers to vaccines, including health literacy, vaccine safety concerns, and physical access as contributing factors. Distrust of the medical system and government was also cited as an underlying source of vaccine disparity.

Misinformation plays a small role in vaccine deliberation in people of color, study finds

Recent research by First Draft, a nonprofit focused on combating misinformation, found misinformation to only play a small role in vaccine deliberation among Black and Latino communities, but it also concluded that the role of misinformation should not be understated as it may be effective on people who exhibit higher levels of mistrust in institutions.

Brandi Collins-Dexter, a digital ethnographer who tracks the spread of disinformation within the Black community, said many vaccine hoaxes draw on both historical and modern instances of racism.

Latinos have also been subject to widespread vaccine-related misinformation due to social media platforms’ lack of ability to accurately detect misinformation written in Spanish. A study conducted by Change Research on behalf of Voto Latino, in March found that 51% of unvaccinated Latino respondents stated they would not get vaccinated against COVID-19 and found the primary agent driving such resistance was Facebook and its role in spreading misinformation.

In 2020, an analysis by Avaaz, a nonprofit organization that investigates disinformation, found that Facebook did not post warning labels on 70% of Spanish-language misinformation, compared to 29% of English-language content.

For instance, a Facebook post written in Spanish claimed that one could kill the virus by drinking a lot of water and gargling with water, salt or vinegar, according to the Avaaz report. Though the original post has been taken down, its clones continue to replicate online.

The Markup, a nonprofit organization using a data-driven approach to investigate tech companies like Facebook, found in May that Facebook was still full of anti-vaccine groups and misinformation despite the company’s commitment to shut down unauthorized health groups and curb COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

“The most common reason respondents gave for not wanting to get vaccinated, or being unsure about getting vaccinated, is fear that the vaccine is not safe… 37% of Latinx respondents said they had seen material or information that made them think the COVID-19 vaccine is not very safe or not very effective,” said Lauren Goldstein, the lead researcher on the Voto Latino poll.

The federal government, recognizing the racial and cultural disparity in vaccination rates, has organized outreach programs to try and reach out to minority communities that have been more reluctant to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services launched “culturally resonant” mass media campaigns in partnership with trusted messengers like faith leaders to reinforce the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, according to a report published by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

The federal government has also addressed structural barriers to getting vaccinated – including transportation, time and vaccine site locations – by expanding mobile vaccine options to homebound individuals and setting up pop-up vaccine clinics in underserved areas.

But the challenges in reaching these communities are more deeply rooted and go beyond disinformation – many simply lack access, experts say.

‘Time to stop blaming the vaccine hesitant’

Though the media frequently places blame for the Black community’s distrust on the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study in 1932, the current distrust stems from more contemporary issues such as access, said Karen Lincoln, a professor at University of Southern California specializing in social work.

According to preliminary results from a voter survey conducted by HIT Strategies, the majority of Black respondents are willing to get vaccinated and do not know how, waiting to see how the vaccine develops over time, or could be incentivized immediately.

“It is time to stop blaming vaccine-hesitant individuals and arm people with the information and tools they need to overcome the real and perceived barriers that they are experiencing,” said Terrance Woodbury, founding partner and CEO of HIT Strategies.

“The most common reason respondents gave for not wanting to get vaccinated, or being unsure about getting vaccinated, is fear that the vaccine is not safe… 37% of Latinx respondents said they had seen material or information that made them think the COVID-19 vaccine is not very safe or not very effective,” said Lauren Goldstein, the lead researcher on the poll.

For older African American adults, culturally tailored health information – using plain or colloquial language – can help enhance understanding and receptiveness, Lincoln said, but there is currently a lack of structured intervention with tailored information about the vaccines.

“There’s no real focus on tailoring information or an overall focus on language because the expectation is that if we speak English, we can read English. And that’s not necessarily the case,” said Lincoln.

In addition to gaps in health literacy, Lincoln said that the older adults she works with cite a variety of reasons for waiting on getting vaccinated. Some are more concerned about other medical or personal issues, for instance, in which case vaccines are simply not a priority, said Lincoln.

But an underlying sense of distrust toward medical institutions always persists, Lincoln said, which is no different during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When vaccinations first became available, there was not enough focus on equitable distribution, during which white and affluent people got vaccinated first. So when vaccine sites later started popping up in Black neighborhoods, some may have experienced a cognitive dissonance between the existing health gaps and a sudden heightened level of concern for the Black community, Lincoln said.

“It’s really hard to reconcile. What does that mean and what do I believe? It can cause a level of confusion and I think that feeds into this larger discussion around hesitancy,” Lincoln said.

For Latinos as well, mistrust toward official institutions may play a role in engendering vaccine deliberation. The First Draft research found that often, vaccination sites are perceived as “deportation traps” by Latinos, especially by undocumented immigrants.

Though there are hopes that the formal Food and Drugs Administration approval of the Pfizer vaccine would increase vaccination rates, Lincoln said those who were already distrustful of official institutions may remain hesitant.

“There are other factors that we need to consider to ensure that people have true access to the vaccine,” said Lincoln.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(FLAT ROCK, Mich.) — A gas leak that likely originated at a Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Michigan has prompted health officials to recommend that residents evacuate as the fumes from the fuel drift to nearby neighborhoods.

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Wayne County Health Department have urged people living east of Interstate 75 in Flat Rock, Michigan, about 30 miles southwest of Detroit, to leave their homes until further notice due to the possible presence of hazardous fumes from the fuel spill, according to a joint news release from the agencies.

The chemical of concern is the carcinogen benzene, a flammable and colorless liquid used to make other chemicals and can be hazardous to humans, according to the Michigan state health agency. Benzene is typically found in gasoline, crude oil and tobacco smoke.

Breathing in large amounts of Benzene, which has a sweet odor, can cause sleepiness, dizziness, headaches, vomiting or rapid heart rate. Long and short-term exposure can increase the risk of cancer, cause blood problems and harm the immune system, state health officials said.

More than 6 parts per billion of Benzene has been measured in sanitary sewers and some homes, but not every home, officials said.

“We don’t believe there is any imminent danger to residents at this time,” MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel told reporters at a news conference Sunday. “However, we are acting out of an abundance of caution at this time.”

On Friday, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy identified the Ford Motor Company assembly plant at Flat Rock as the fuel source of benzene found in Detroit sewers.

Initial estimates indicate that between 1,000 and 3,000 gallons of fuel leaked from the plant, said Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy spokeswoman Jill Greenberg, the Detroit Free Press reported. Firefighting foam is being used to suppress the vapors.

A representative for Ford did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

It is unclear when the leak occurred, but Ford discovered “what originally looked like a small leak in a pipe that carries gasoline used to fuel vehicles built at the plant” on Wednesday afternoon, Bob Holycross, vice president of sustainability, environment and safety engineering for Ford, said in a statement Friday.

“We shut down the fuel pipe, called in experts to remove gas from a containment tank and the primary storage tank, and notified officials of what we found,” Holycross said. “We believed then that the leak was contained to our property.”

Personnel are “urgently” working to address the fuel spill at the plant, which was closed over the Labor Day weekend, Holycross said, apologizing for the leak.

Although the evacuations are contained to a specific region, a larger area is expected to have been impacted by the gas leak, health officials said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency last week in response to the spill.

“My top priority is ensuring that every resource is available to the city of Flat Rock, Wayne County, and Monroe County to determine where the odor originated so that we can clean up the affected area and prevent further harm,” Whitmer said in a statement.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Vaccine hesitancy has subsided in the face of the delta surge, with the share of Americans who are disinclined to get a coronavirus shot now just half what it was last January. Support for mask mandates is broad and President Joe Biden’s approval for handling the pandemic has dropped sharply.

Alongside the steep rise in cases, there’s been a jump in perceived risk of catching the virus, from 29% in late June to 47% now, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds. Yet worries about the consequences of infection are moderate, expressed by 39%, partly reflecting broad awareness of vaccine efficacy.

While 75% of adults have gotten a shot, per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some hesitancy persists. Among unvaccinated adults, about 7 in 10 are skeptical of the vaccines’ safety and effectiveness, 9 in 10 see vaccination as a personal choice rather than a broader responsibility and just 16% have been encouraged by someone close to them to get a shot. Each is an impediment to uptake.

Further, few unvaccinated Americans, 16%, say the FDA’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine makes them more likely to get a shot; 82% say it makes no difference. And among those who work, again just 16% say they’d get a shot if their employer required it; many more say they’d quit.

The poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds approval of Biden’s handling of the pandemic dropping steeply, from 62% in June to 52% now. Forty-one percent disapprove, with the rest undecided. (Biden’s overall approval rating is just 44%, pulled down by criticism of his handling of the Afghanistan pullout, as reported Friday.)

Policies

• On the policy front, the survey finds broad support for mask mandates, with smaller majorities lining up behind vaccine requirements:
• Sixty-seven percent support school districts requiring students, faculty and staff to wear masks. As many support state or local orders requiring masks in public places.
• Fifty-nine percent support school vaccine mandates for teachers and staff; 54% support this for students if a vaccine is approved for their age group. Public school parents, though, are less apt to support student mandates – 47% vs. 56% among others.

Close to half of all adults, 52%, support businesses requiring vaccination for employees who come into work – but that ranges from 45% among people who work for pay to 66% of all others. Many fewer people who work for an employer, 18%, say their employer currently has a vaccine mandate in place.

Marking the strength of vaccine resistance among some Americans, if a workplace mandate were imposed, three-quarters of unvaccinated workers say they’d quit their job (42%) or seek a health or religious exemption (35%). If those who sought an exemption didn’t get one, most say they’d then quit. In all, assuming no exemptions, 72% of unvaccinated workers not currently facing a workplace mandate threaten to walk if faced with one.

On the issue of vaccine information, one-third of unvaccinated Americans say they’ve heard or read things about the vaccines that have swayed them against getting a shot. (Many may have been predisposed to be receptive to that kind of information in the first place.) Just 4% say they’ve been swayed in favor, likely because nearly all such people are vaccinated by now. Sixty-two percent of the unvaccinated report no impact of what they’ve heard or read.

The survey touches on a few items unrelated to the pandemic. In one result, Biden has a 45-49% approval rating for handling the economy, with approval down 7 percentage points since it last was measured in April. Also 53% support $3.5 trillion in federal spending on new or expanded social programs, educational assistance and efforts to address climate change. Forty-one percent are opposed.

Vaccine attitudes

As noted, 47% of Americans think they have a high or moderate risk of getting sick from the coronavirus, up sharply from 29% in June as the delta variant has surged. Still, just 39% are worried about it, with only 7% very worried. (Worry is broader among vaccinated people, at 45% vs. the unvaccinated at 22%.)

In a different question in January, many more expressed concerns about infection: 60% overall were worried that they or a family member might get sick. That peaked at 69% at the start of the pandemic in the United States in March 2020.

About 7 in 10 Americans see the vaccines as safe and as many call them effective. Yet there are compunctions. Many fewer — 43% — call them very safe or very effective. And 27% don’t think they’re safe or effective. Vaccine hesitancy soars among people who hold these doubts; in a statistical analysis called regression, they’re crucial predictors of not getting a shot. As noted, among the unvaccinated, seven in 10 question vaccine safety and efficacy.

Another key predictor of vaccine uptake is the sense that it’s a responsibility to protect others, not just a personal choice. Yet the public only divides on this: 50% call it a personal choice; 48%, a broader responsibility. Among unvaccinated people, the share calling it a personal choice soars to 91%, and 8 in 10 of them feel strongly about this. Among the vaccinated, by contrast, 62% say it’s a responsibility to others.

Two other predictors of getting vaccinated, albeit weaker ones, are a sense that people who care about you want you to get a shot and one’s level of worry about getting infected.

In the first, fewer than half of adults overall, 47%, say someone who cares about them has encouraged them to get vaccinated. About as many, 43%, say those who care about them have stayed out of it; 5% say they’ve been actively discouraged from taking action.

Notably, among unvaccinated adults, only 16% say people who care about them have encouraged them to get a shot, versus 58% among vaccinated adults — evidence of how establishing a social norm of vaccination is another way to encourage uptake.

Groups

Lingering vaccine hesitancy — defined as people who say they definitely or probably will not get the coronavirus vaccine (as noted, 17% overall) — is especially high among rural residents (36%), very conservative people (36%), Republicans (30%), conservatives overall (30%), evangelical white Protestants (28%) and those with no more than a high school diploma (26%).

Attitudinally hesitancy peaks among those who lack confidence in the vaccines’ safety (57%) and effectiveness (52%). It’s 33% among those who think they have no risk of getting sick from the coronavirus and essentially the same (32%) among those who see getting vaccinated as personal choice rather than a broader responsibility.

By contrast, hesitancy is lowest among those with a post-graduate degree (6%), liberals (6%), Democrats (4%), those who’ve been encouraged to get vaccinated by people close to them (4%), those with confidence in the vaccines’ effectiveness (4%) or safety (2%) and those who see getting vaccinated as a broader responsibility (1%).

Methodology

This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 30-24-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. In addition to traditional sample weights for age, race/ethnicity, sex and education, results were adjusted to reflect CDC vaccination rates.

The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Maryland. See details on the survey’s methodology here.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(LOCKPORT, La.) — Ross and Angeline Eschette and their 7-year-old son evacuated their home state of Louisiana for Texas this weekend as Hurricane Ida prepared to hit.

The Eschettes will return to their home in Lockport later this week as a family of four after Angel Eschette gave birth while evacuated.

“She wanted to be part of the hurricane party,” Ross Eschette said of the couple’s newborn daughter, Adeline Grace, born on Aug. 30, just after Ida battered Louisiana as a fierce Category 4 storm.

Angeline Eschette’s original due date was Sept. 17, but her water broke overnight on Aug. 30 as they stayed with extended family members at a hotel in Nacogdoches, Texas.

The Eschettes, both natives of Lockport, a small town of about 3,000 people one hour outside of New Orleans, said they had weathered hurricanes before, but did not want to take any chances with Ida while expecting their second child.

“My No. 1 concern was to get as far away from the storm as possible, just to keep her from having the baby,” said Ross Eschette, 36. “In planning the evacuation, it wasn’t just let’s find a [hotel] room and go there, it was let’s find a hospital and then find a room nearby.”

The Eschettes said they not only had to evacuate their home and find a hospital away from home that they could be near, but also did so while Angeline Eschette, 33, dealt with a higher risk pregnancy due to gestational diabetes and was quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19.

“I was waiting to get vaccinated until after I gave birth. Even though they said there’s no harm, I still had my concerns about it,” she said. “But I was very lucky to not have a severe case.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month strengthened its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, stating that all women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or trying to get pregnant now or might become pregnant in the future should get a COVID-19 vaccine.

The Eschettes and their family members drove an RV six hours from their home in Lockport to Nacogdoches, where Angeline Eschette gave birth at Nacogdoches Medical Center.

Ross Eschette, who did not contract COVID-19, was able to stay with his wife and daughter in the hospital room, but was not allowed to leave due to COVID restrictions.

Adeline Grace was born healthy, weighing in at 8 pounds and one ounce, according to her parents.

Both of Adeline’s great-great-grandmothers are, by chance, named Ida, according to Angeline, who said she did not consider the name for her daughter.

“When Hurricane Katrina hit our area, everybody named their babies Katrina after that, so my nephew thought it would be funny to name her Ida and then said he was going to call her Ida Lynn,” said Angeline. “I said, ‘No, that’s not going on the birth certificate.'”

Both Angeline and Ross Eschette said they have had to balance their joy at the birth of their daughter with the heartache of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ida, particularly in Lockport.

The family said the hospitals in the area, including where Angeline planned to give birth, all had to evacuate their patients during the storm for various reasons.

“In the situation that we were in, we definitely made the right choice,” said Ross Eschette. “And we’ve been treated with the utmost respect [at Nacogdoches Medical Center]. They definitely made our experience everything we needed it to be.”

“I feel lucky to be safe in a place that was out of harm’s way and that I had a safe place to deliver,” added Angeline Eschette.

The couple said they have heard from neighbors that their home’s roof was severely damaged but their house is still standing. They expect electricity in their town to be out for the next three to four weeks.

As of Wednesday, over 884,000 customers remained without power in Louisiana, according to a report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) obtained by ABC News.

“It’s hard for us to stay here for a while financially so we will try to make our way back home towards the end of the week,” said Angeline Eschette, who was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday. “We have a camper and they have a few campgrounds where we’re going to try to set up because we can’t go back home right now. Our town is just a disaster.”

Ross Eschette said he has been in touch with friends who stayed behind in Lockport to see what supplies are needed so that they can try to get them in Texas before they drive home.

“People are watching the news and seeing the devastation of what our hometown and the surrounding area are going through, but the number one thing about us is we are the most resilient people in the world,” he said. “We all come together and we’re going to rebuild better than ever. It’s definitely not going to stop us.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — When Kat, a 23-year-old living in Central Texas, discovered they were pregnant, it was five days before a law that bans nearly all abortions after six weeks was to go into effect.

“I was stuck with this reality that I was pregnant days before one of the worst abortion bans that I’ve seen in my life gets implemented in Texas,” Kat, whose gender pronouns are they/them and who asked that their last name not be used, told Good Morning America. I was scared.”

Kat said that after estimating they were likely between four and six weeks pregnant, they feared not having access to an abortion after Sept. 1, the day the law, Senate Bill 8, went into effect. They also learned the two abortion providers in town were “completely booked” due to the pending deadline.

“I thought I can’t be pregnant right now. I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t have the time or money to travel out of state [for an abortion],” said Kat. “I knew I had to do what was best for me and my best option was to have an abortion at home.”

Kat said they went through with a self-managed abortion at home and while medically safe, the experience felt terrifying.

A self-managed abortion is one that occurs outside of a clinical setting. It is typically done by taking medication that induces a miscarriage.

“The reality is that I was at home alone having an abortion,” they said. “I was worried about going to the hospital, worried about complications and didn’t have anyone there with me because of COVID.”

Kat’s experience is one that abortion rights advocates worry will become all too common across Texas, the nation’s second most populous state with now the most restrictive abortion law in the nation.

The law, enforced after the U.S. Supreme Court failed to intervene, does not make exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape. It allows anyone to sue a person they believe is providing an abortion or assisting someone in getting an abortion after six weeks.

When a person is six weeks pregnant, it typically means the embryo started developing about four weeks prior, based on the formula used to figure out when a person will give birth. People don’t often realize they are pregnant until after the six-week mark.

Cardiac activity is typically first detected five to six weeks into pregnancy, or three-four weeks after the embryo starts developing.

“A lot of people don’t think about abortion access until they need an abortion,” said Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which provides financial and logistical support for people who travel to New Mexico for abortions. “There are likely people in Texas that don’t know they’re pregnant yet today but will find out they’re pregnant next week or the week after and will call their local clinic and find out that they can’t be seen.”

Lamunyon Sanford’s organization and others that help cover the costs of travel for people to seek abortions say they are already seeing an increase in services needed, and bracing for more.

“We anticipate it’s going to really start increasing next week or the week after, but we’re ready,” said Lamunyon Sanford. “Instead of the shame or stigma that people may have faced in Texas, we’ll make sure that they are able to follow through and get the health care that they need.”

There are currently less than two dozen abortion clinics in Texas, home to more than 6 million people of childbearing age, as of 2019. As the clinics in Texas have stopped scheduling abortion-related visits for people more than six weeks pregnant, the lengths people have to go in order to access abortions has multiplied exponentially.

The new law has increased the average miles a Texan must drive one-way to seek an abortion from 12 miles to 248, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.

A trip from Texas to Wichita, Kansas, for someone seeking an abortion is, on average, 650 miles roundtrip. People have been making that trip with increasing frequency already this week, according to Ashley Brink, clinic director of Wichita’s Trust Women clinic.

“Yesterday I felt like our phones were constant. Multiple phone lines lit up and ringing,” said Brink. “We have already seen an increase.”

Brink said she has been preparing for the influx for weeks, making sure the clinic has enough supplies and trying to get more physicians in the clinic, a difficult task in Kansas, where she says over 90% of counties don’t have an abortion provider.

In Oklahoma City — more than 460 miles from South Texas — the Trust Women clinic there typically receives calls from three to five people from Texas per day. On Tuesday and Wednesday, as the law went into effect, the clinic scheduled 80 appointments, and of those, as many as 55 were patients from Texas.

“That’s just going to increase as people from farther away start to look to see where they can get access,” said Zack Gingrich-Gaylord, communications manager for Trust Women Clinics. “Throughout the Gulf [Coast] and the I-35 corridor, the center of the country and the Southwest, that’s all going to radiate and start to have a lot of strain put on those clinics and people are going to have to travel farther and farther.”

“If you had to travel overnight to go see a dentist, you would think that’s ludicrous,” he said. “But it’s expected of people seeking abortion care, that they are going to have to significantly disrupt their own lives.”

Adding to the difficulty of seeking abortion care outside of their home state is the fact that abortion is difficult emotionally and physically, and time sensitive, according to Dr. Iman Alsaden, an OBGYN in Missouri and Kansas and medical director for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which provides care in Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

“It’s absolutely devastating that people are being forced to leave their communities to seek safe, essential health care outside of the state,” said Alsaden, also a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health. “It’s heartbreaking to think of all of the people who may not be able to make it to a desired appointment to receive abortion care.”

Alsaden said her clinics have seen an “influx of patients” from Texas over the last few weeks, noting, “We have adjusted our schedules to ensure that we can take care of as many patients as possible, no matter where they’re coming to us from.”

Lori Williams, a nurse practitioner and the clinic director at Little Rock Family Planning Services in Little Rock, Arkansas, described the patients her clinic is seeing from Texas as “frantic.”

“Many didn’t realize that this was coming or didn’t know that they were suddenly not going to be able to obtain care,” said Williams, also chair of the National Abortion Federation Board, a membership association of abortion providers. “I had patients today driving seven hours to see us and Arkansas has a [72-hour] waiting period so that means these patients will have to travel twice.”

Williams said she worries that as many patients from Texas as the clinic expects to see over the coming weeks and months, she knows there will be just as many, or more, who cannot access care.

“We know there are patients that tell us, ‘I don’t have a car that can make it that far,’ ‘I can’t get off work that many times,’ and these are the challenges we’re trying to have our patients navigate,” she said. “It’s the time off work, the child care, the expense, all the things that go along with this, which makes this an economic crisis for women, in addition to an access to care crisis.”

The rates of unintended pregnancy in the U.S. are highest among low-income women, women aged 18 to 24 and women of color, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Meanwhile, people denied an abortion are more likely to experience long-term economic hardship and insecurity than people who received an abortion, according to a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH).

“The women who have the means will obtain the care, but the women who were already struggling financially, who are socioeconomically disadvantaged are the ones who are going to be impacted the most,” said Williams. “There are going to be women out there who are forced to carry a pregnancy than they don’t want to.”

“This is really going to have an impact more so than the abortion providers are going to see,” she said.

Maleeha Aziz, a community organizer with the Texas Equal Access Fund, one of Texas’ nearly one dozen abortion funds that provide support to women seeking abortions, said it cost her about $1,500 to travel from Texas to Colorado for an abortion eight years ago.

Her organization and other abortion funds in the state are now working to raise additional funds and figure out the logistics needed for people in Texas to travel farther distances for care.

“While it’s a lot harder, we’re going to do whatever we can legally, even if that means flying someone out of state,” said Aziz. “We are going to need so much more money because the cost [is high].”

Adding to the financial and logistical challenges is the fact that Texas is surrounded by states that have also have laws limiting abortion access. Those laws, called targeted restrictions on abortion providers, or TRAP laws, by abortion rights advocates, have been implemented in mainly conservative states to avoid being overturned in court and still limit abortion access in a variety of ways.

In the four states with which Texas shares a border, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico, there were just 21 facilities providing abortions combined as of 2017, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Robin Marty, operations director at the West Alabama Women’s Center, said the clinic is bracing for a trickle-down effect of patients from Texas making their way to Alabama because of a lack of access in other states.

“I believe that for people who are pregnant in Texas, I believe that a lot of them, if they were in early pregnancy, probably thought that they could just hold on for a while and see how everything’s sorted out,” she said. “So I expect next week to be the point at which things are really going to become clear what this does to the landscape, because people are going to start first calling Louisiana, where they’re probably going to find out that there is a very long wait, because there already is, and then they’re going to try to go next to Mississippi and will find mostly the same thing. And by that point, we’re talking, when you come to Alabama, that’s an eight-and-a-half hour drive.”

Adrienne Mansanares, chief experience officer for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which provides health care in Colorado, New Mexico, and Las Vegas, said that while their clinics are already seeing the immediate impact of Texas’s law, they are also planning for the long road ahead.

“That last bit of hope that there would be a solution, that there would be a backstop, that there would be protections for this procedure, that being gone has really shook a lot of us,” Mansaneres said of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to not block the ban.

“With that, we are absolutely prepared for and doing the really dark, hearty work of trying to figure out what does this look like for years to come, and if it’s not just this law in Texas, what other laws can it be and what other states across the country are going to be this emboldened to continue with these really hostile bans,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s looking very dark.”

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(CARLOS, Minn.) — A Minnesota father is celebrating a new chance at life thanks to his daughter, who donated part of her liver to save his.

“Now I can take all of Molly’s positive traits because they’re in me,” said Mike Maudal, of Carlos, Minnesota, referring to his daughter, Molly Maudal. “I certainly have a tremendous appreciation for Molly.”

Mike Maudal, 62, was preparing to retire from his job as a loan officer nearly six years ago when he went to his doctor for a routine checkup before his medical benefits ran out.

The doctor noticed something unusual in his blood work and sent him to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, about four hours from the family’s home.

It was at the Mayo Clinic that Mike Maudal was diagnosed with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an aggressive form of fatty liver disease, which can progress to cirrhosis and liver failure, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Mike Maudal said he was “very surprised” by the diagnosis, which doctors initially treated with diet changes and medication.

He was even more surprised when two years later, in 2018, doctors told him he would ultimately need a liver transplant.

“I pretty much went into denial. I really didn’t think I was that sick or that I’d need a transplant,” said Mike Maudal. “I thought I was going to beat the odds.”

At home, Molly Maudal, 23, and her mother, Cindy Maudal, watched as their dad and husband, respectively, began to quickly decline both physically and mentally.

“It was really hard. He just got sicker and weaker and was struggling with everyday tasks,” said Cindy Maudal. “And then the fear of what does this mean every time he had some new issue develop … and the [fear of] what if he didn’t make it, what would life be like? What would that be like for me and Molly? And then trying to hold down the house at home, trying to work full-time, take care of his medications, it was stressful.”

Molly Maudal, an only child, said she struggled most with seeing her father’s mental decline, which occurs in people with NASH because the liver is unable to remove toxins from the blood.

“When I was growing up, he was so sharp and to see him lose that to the disease was really hard,” she said. “He was always really jovial and would joke around and people loved him for his humor. It was like his personality changed.”

Mike Maudal was placed on the liver transplant waiting list but doctors, and his family, worried that he would not be strong enough physically to undergo a transplant by the time he was eligible for a liver from a deceased donor.

The Maudals then began to consider a living-donor liver transplant, in which a portion of the liver from a healthy, living person is removed and placed into someone in need of a working liver, according to the Mayo Clinic.

A living donor is able to donate just a part of their liver because the remaining liver regrows to its normal size and capacity within a few months, and the donated portion of the liver also grows and restores normal liver function in the recipient.

“It’s amazing the amount of people who have told us, ‘Oh, I thought I could only donate when I was deceased. I didn’t know I could do this when I was alive,'” said Mike Maudal. “It was news to us too when we started down this path years ago.”

When Cindy Maudal did not qualify as a donor for her husband, the family quietly began to ask loved ones and close friends about the possibility of donating, but fell short of finding a match.

The Maudals all also knew that Molly Maudal, with the same blood type as her dad, could possibly match as a donor, but neither of her parents wanted to put that pressure on her.

“Molly was in college and we wanted her to finish her education,” said Cindy Maudal. “She was young and as a parent, you don’t want to ask for something like that.”

Molly Maudal though said she had been preparing to step up if she was needed, explaining, “In the back of my mind, for several years through it all, I was thinking about being a donor and in several ways wanted to arrange my life so that just in case he needed an emergency transplant, I could be there.”

That moment came in late 2020, when doctors at Mayo Clinic told Mike Maudal that his only chance at surviving liver disease was to find a living donor.

“It hit home in a whole new way hearing that,” said Molly Maudal. “My mom knew I had been thinking about [donating] and she said, ‘Hey Mol, if you’re thinking about this, now is probably a good time to get tested.’ I was totally in agreement.”

Molly Maudal then began the process of being evaluated as a potential donor for her dad, undergoing bloodwork and physical exams and meeting with doctors as well as a psychiatrist and social worker.

She learned she was eligible to save her dad’s life during a phone call with the Mayo Clinic nurse at the end of April.

“It was such a relief to know that we had a match and the wait and the uncertainty of finding a donor was over, just to know that he had a chance now,” she said. “I just had this sense of calm about my decision to move forward. It just felt right.”

Just two months later, on June 11, the Maudal father-daughter duo underwent a living-donor liver transplant at Mayo Clinic.

The approximately four-hour transplant surgery involved a team of three surgeons led by Dr. Julie Heimbach, director of the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center in Rochester.

“I’ve been taking care of Mr. Maudal for several years before transplant and every time I saw him, he was doing worse, so I was very worried about him,” said Heimbach. “He’s an amazing guy and I’m just so happy it worked out.”

“That we can take one side of a healthy person’s liver and give it to somebody else who is really struggling and have them both leave doing great is unbelievable,” she said of living-donor procedure.

The Maudals recovered in hospital rooms near each other and were discharged within one day of each other, Molly on June 17 and Mike on June 18.

“I remember Dr. Heimbach and another surgeon came up and told me, ‘Your liver was perfect for your dad.’ That was a fantastic feeling,” said Molly Maudal. “And I remember visiting dad in his room and we could visibly see him improving. His eyes weren’t as sunken and his color was improving. His sense of humor and personality came back so fast. It was amazing to see firsthand.”

The Maudals, who are both recovering well and returning to their normal daily activities, including work as an occupational therapist for Molly, say they want to share their story to encourage more people to become living liver donors.

The need for living liver donors is great because the demand so far overwhelms the number of livers available from deceased donors.

Of the 8,000 liver transplants performed in the United States in 2017, only about 360 involved living donors. But more than 11,000 people were registered on the waiting list for a liver transplant, according to the Mayo Clinic.

In addition, living-donor liver transplants can help save the lives of children, for whom suitable deceased-donor organs can be hard to find.

In order to be a living liver donor, a person typically needs to just have a matching blood type and meet the health requirements for a transplant, according to Heimbach.

“The liver is more forgiving from an immunology standpoint,” she said. “With a kidney, we are looking at a match pretty closely but with a liver, we’re just looking at having a compatible blood type.”

Cindy Maudal, who watched her two closest family members undergo surgery at the same time, said the family feels likes “one of the lucky ones” in finding a living liver donor.

“I’m not sure Mike would still be here if Molly hadn’t been a match to be a donor for her dad,” she said. “I’m so grateful that the two people I love the most are still with me.”

It was also not lost on the family that June 11, the day their transplant took place, was the same day 24 years ago that Cindy and Mike Maudal found out they were pregnant with their only child.

“That’s the day we found out we were giving Molly life, and it ended up being the same day years later that she gave her dad new life,” said Cindy Maudal.

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(NEW YORK) — In a stunningly short period of time, the delta variant has changed the course of the COVID-19 pandemic by evolving to become more transmissible than previous versions of the virus.

Compared to the alpha variant, which is estimated to be 50% more transmissible than the original virus strain identified in Wuhan, China, scientists believe the delta variant, now dominant worldwide, is 40% to 60% more transmissible than alpha.

But how exactly did the delta variant evolve into the highly infectious strain that the world is now struggling to contain? Scientists have a few theories.

“This is a new virus for humans,” explained Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “You can think about like a baby. The virus came to humans for the first time. He has not learned still everything.”

The so-called variants of concern — alpha, beta, gamma and delta — show the virus is evolving. “What we are seeing is that there are mutations that are being selected that make the virus even better at transmission,” Garcia-Sastre said. For now, scientists don’t know whether the delta variant, the most transmissible of the four, has reached its full potential for transmissibility. But the more the variant circulates, the more chances it has to evolve and reach full potential to infect humans at maximum scale.

“That’s what makes a winner if you’re a virus — more replication,” he added.

How viruses evolve to be more transmissible

“Every time the virus replicates, or makes a copy of itself, it tries to make a copy that’s identical,” Garcia-Sastre said. But like human cell replication, which can sometimes result in cells with new mutations, viruses make mistakes when they copy themselves. In most cases, those mistakes make the virus weaker. But if a single mutation makes the virus stronger and also manages to infect a new host, “it will start to propagate and start to dominate,” he said. While stronger mutations are the exception to the rule, widespread transmission of the virus means more chances for mutations that could include less common, but stronger variants.

In general, there are a few pathways by which this could happen. High community transmission, as was seen in the United Kingdom and India before the alpha and delta variants were detected there, is one pathway. Another is in people with so-called chronic infections, meaning they are infectious for longer than the typical duration of COVID-19 (not to be confused with long-haul cases), which could occur if someone has a weakened immune system or is taking immunosuppressant drugs.

“Some individuals have a persistent or a prolonged or a chronic infection. Then you have accelerated evolution inside that individual,” said Dr. Richard Lessells, an infectious disease expert at Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform in Durban, South Africa, where he researches beta, the virus variant first identified in the country.

“If that virus is then transmitted and has some evolutionary advantage in the population, it can spread from there,” Lessells said.

Nevan Krogan, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has collaborated on papers with Garcia-Sastre during the pandemic.

“It’s like the mother of all selections in the world. It’s the biggest experiment that’s ever happened,” Krogan said. “We’re forcing the virus to mutate, which it loves to do.”

In addition to mutations, there is another way that viruses can acquire new changes that may make them more transmissible, according to Garcia-Sastre, although it’s a pathway that’s difficult to study and not well understood. Viral recombination happens when two different parent strains of the virus enter the same cell. They then can combine and make new mixtures when they replicate.

“Someone can get, for example, an alpha and a beta together,” Garcia-Sastre explained. That could explain why the delta variant has 20 mutations, a high number for a virus that has not evolved very quickly.

Still, Garcia-Sastre cautioned of the recombination theory — “it is very difficult to prove.”

While the vaccines are holding up well against the variants in terms of protecting against hospitalization and death, the delta variant is a bit more likely to infect fully vaccinated people — so-called breakthrough cases — than past variants.

“It shows the possible beginning of a trajectory and that’s what worries me,” Aris Katzourakis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, told Science magazine in August.
Changes to the virus’s spike protein could make it more transmissible

All four variants of concern have mutations in the virus’s spike protein, the protein that protrudes from the surface and makes it look like it’s wearing a crown.

“The thing that is happening with all of these variants is that they bind better to the receptor,” Garcia-Sastre said. “It finds the cells faster because it binds better to the receptor. If the virus has acquired the ability to bind better, then it has a better chance to start infections.”

While alpha, beta, gamma and delta all have mutations on their spike proteins, they are all different mutations, Garcia-Sastre explained. “That’s what’s interesting. They gain a better ability to process the spike and then a better ability to enter and replicate.”

Beyond spike

“Everyone is focused on spike. Yes, spike is playing a role, no question about it, but there are other mutations that could be equally as important as spike,” said Krogan.

Krogan’s research, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, suggests that once the alpha variant gets inside a cell, it suppresses the immune response compared to other variants. A suppressed immune response allows the virus to replicate more, resulting in increased transmissibility and ultimately increased mortality, he explained.

It could also explain why the alpha variant spreads so rapidly. Now Krogan’s team is doing tests on the delta variant to see if it has similar immune response suppression causing it to be even more transmissible than the alpha variant. “We are investigating if a similar mechanism exists with delta and other variants of concern.”

Importantly, as far as scientists can tell, the alpha variant did not evolve into the delta variant. Instead, the two variants developed independently of one another in countries where high community transmission was occurring.

“The alpha variant came from England and the delta variant came from India, it just kind of got to the same place,” Krogan said. “Different mutations could have the same results.”

A glimmer of hope

As vaccinations ramp up in wealthier and well-connected countries, it puts selection pressure on the virus to mutate so it’s able to continue to infect hosts. The only way out is to vaccinate faster or adapt vaccinations to beat out newer versions of the virus as they crop up.

“We’re in this battle with the virus,” Krogan said. “Are we going to use the tools we have right now? Or will those tools become obsolete very quickly?”

Garcia-Sastre struck a more optimistic note on the role of vaccines.

“If you can bring this virus from killing 5 million per year to 500,000 per year, this virus will have the same consequences as an influenza,” Garcia-Sastre said of the power of vaccinations. “If we can reduce the mortality of this virus 10 times by vaccination, the problem is still is there, but now it’s a different problem.”

While having dueling infectious disease threats of the flu and COVID-19 each year would certainly burden the health care system, it would be a significant improvement over the overwhelming crisis that many countries have faced over the past 18 months. “We are not going to be completely able to prevent death — that’s clear — but if we can reduce it at least 20 times, then I think we can say that the pandemic is over,” Garcia-Sastre said.

In his mind, the goal was never getting to COVID zero. “It was quite clear for me that it was going to be very difficult to eradicate this virus,” he said. “But we can make it manageable. Then it will be a nuisance. It’s unfortunate for the people who get severe disease — the same thing as with flu — but at least it is not impacting all the sectors of the society like it is right now.”

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(NEW YORK) — As students return for a third school year affected by the coronavirus pandemic, trauma and grief support are top of mind among educators addressing the wide-reaching impacts of the crisis.

For many students, loss due to the pandemic hits close to home. More than 140,000 children in the U.S. lost a primary or secondary caregiver, such as a live-in grandparent or another family member, in a COVID-19-associated death, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention obtained by ABC News in late July. More than 640,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.

Most, if not all, students may have experienced loss in other ways, from financial or housing instability to a prolonged disruption to their sense of normalcy or routine.

In Georgia, Atlanta Public Schools plan to screen over 30,000 pre-K to 12th grade students on their social-emotional behavior this fall.

“Many of our students had been at home and participating virtually since March of 2020,” Shannon Hervey, director of student support and interventions for Atlanta Public Schools, told ABC News. “We don’t know what our students may have faced, and so we wanted to take a proactive approach and say, ‘Let’s get to know our students more so that we can determine what their needs are and help to provide for that.'”

The district will be screening for external behaviors like hyperactivity or aggression, and internalized risks like depression and anxiety. From there, they hope to determine what students’ needs are and how the school can support them. The district also added 25 new school social workers and plans to train employees in trauma-informed practices this year, among other measures, to address the mental health needs of its students this year.

Other school districts are also looking to bolster support around trauma and grief due to the pandemic. Chicago Public Schools had previously announced a $24 million, multiyear plan to invest in mental health and trauma support programs for students and staff. Miami-Dade County Public Schools has provided staff with social-emotional learning and mental health awareness trainings as they welcomed students back, as well as hiring 45 mental health coordinators.

Identifying and accommodating students impacted by trauma and grief are key, as those who have experienced significant loss may need long-term support in the classroom, said Maria Collins, the head of New York Life Foundation’s Grief-Sensitive Schools Initiative, a program that provides resources and tools for school communities to support grieving students.

“Grief can have a serious impact on learning, academic performance, social withdrawal, behavioral issues, if not supported,” Collins told ABC News. “It’s really understanding and acknowledging that the loss exists, and this impacts how they learn and also how present they are in the classroom.”

While educators largely recognize the importance of supporting students’ emotional needs, most don’t feel they have the training to do so. A 2020 survey by the New York Life Foundation and American Federation of Teachers found that only 15% of educators said they feel comfortable addressing the grief or trauma tied to the pandemic.

The Grief-Sensitive Schools Initiative has seen an “increasing need” for support during the pandemic, Collins said, with nearly 100 schools and school districts reaching out in the past year. The organization has also partnered with the National Parent Teacher Association to help provide similar resources and support for parents.

“We’re educating new generations; we’re educating educators, parents and children about grief and grief support,” Collins said.

Dr. David Schonfeld has also seen an increase in interest from schools for grief support during the pandemic, particularly for younger students. As the director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement, which provides schools with crisis, trauma and grief support, he’s done over 200 trainings, workshops and presentations since the pandemic started. Much of the center’s work focuses on grades K-12, though they have seen “lots of demand” at the preschool level, Schonfeld said.

The National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement has shifted most of its training to focus on how to support students during the pandemic, which has “heightened” grief, he said.

The pandemic has “raised people’s interests and importance” of grief and trauma support, he said, “but also made it very challenging for them to find the time and have the capacity to schedule the training. Schools are frankly overwhelmed by everything they need to do. Opening the door is now a big challenge.”

Educators have also often questioned how to best support students when they themselves may be struggling with grief or trauma, Schonfeld said.

“A lot of people say, ‘What are we supposed to do? We’re grieving or we’re struggling or we’re exhausted,'” he said. “What I try and tell them is we’re really not asking classroom teachers to counsel children over the death of their parents. We’re not asking them to do therapy. We’re asking them to show sympathy and be present for the child and show concern and then maybe make accommodations to help them learn.”

Collins advocates for schools to become “grief-sensitive” and have a specific bereavement plan that can help connect families with local resources.

“We’re not saying that educators need to be grief specialists,” she said. “They just have to have the awareness and know where to refer and have the resources to give to the parents.”

For Schonfeld, the impacts of the pandemic are so wide-reaching that staff may need to support all students on some level.

“We need to figure out how to help everyone and still keep our eyes open for those who need more,” he said. “If educators know how to provide universal support, they will be better prepared to know when someone needs more than that.”

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