(MONTREAL) — A mom who went viral while sharing her battle with ovarian cancer on social media has died.
Dr. Nadia Chaudhri, 43, died on Oct. 5, according to Concordia University, where she worked as a neuroscientist and professor.
“Nadia was a force of nature,” Concordia president Graham Carr said in a statement. “She was an incredibly talented researcher with a passion for teaching and student success matched only by her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Chaudhri, of Montreal, Canada, battled stage 3 ovarian cancer for the past year, undergoing a hysterectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy.
She gained more than 148,000 followers on Twitter during her cancer battle, which she bravely shared publicly.
@DrNadiaChaudhri passed away yesterday evening, having reached the end of her road with ovarian cancer. She leaves behind her Sun and Moon, a loving extended family, colleagues and students, friends around the world, and so many others who have been touched by her & her story 1/n pic.twitter.com/qf1q0Bfbj1
In May, when Chaudhri learned the cancer had returned, she shared on social media what it was like to tell her 6-year-old son that she was dying. On social media, she called her husband and son her Moon and Sun.
“My husband and I made the decision that we needed to tell our son what is going on because all the treatments are failing me,” she told “Good Morning America” at the time. “He already knew that I had cancer. He knew that I was still taking chemotherapy medication and trying to get better, but I don’t think he had a sense of how bad it is.”
Our hearts broke. We cried a lot. And then the healing began. My son is brave. He is bright. He will be okay. And I will watch him grow from wherever I am. Today was the hardest day of my life. Thank you for all for your love. pic.twitter.com/sCZFW9d8T5
— Dr. Nadia Chaudhri (@DrNadiaChaudhri) May 11, 2021
Several months later, in September, Chaudhri went viral again with a series of tweets detailing the many months it took for her to get a diagnosis of ovarian cancer and what she wanted other women to know.
“Know your bodies,” Chaudhri urged women. “Pay attention to fatigue and changes in bowel/urinary tract movements. Make sure you understand all the words on a medical report. Do not dismiss your pain or malaise. Find the expert doctors.”
As Chaudhri gained followers on social media, she used her platform to educate people on ovarian cancer and the work and causes near to her heart.
Chaudhri, who moved from Pakistan to the U.S. at age 17 to attend college, raised money to allow young scientists to be able to continue the research she was doing on drug addiction.
She also turned her frustration with not being able to work into an opportunity to raise money for underrepresented scholars in her field.
Her efforts raised more than $600,000 and became the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award at Concordia University, an annual scholarship to “support the training of neuroscientists from underrepresented backgrounds and honor Nadia Chaudhri’s legacy of academic achievement and mentorship,” according to the university.
(NEW YORK) — With COVID-19 vaccine mandates proliferating across the country in the public and private sectors as well as some school districts, the pushback from those unwilling or hesitant to get their shots is heating up.
The vaccination effort has raised new questions about exemptions because mandates for adults are generally rare outside of settings like healthcare facilities and the military, and the inoculations are relatively new.
While there is no overall data yet on exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines, a number of companies and state governments have seen interest in religious exemptions — a protection stemming from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This leaves employers in the difficult and legally precarious position of determining whether the requests are valid. As such, some states have tried to do away with non-medical exemptions overall for their employees.
In school settings, where vaccines have long been recognized as crucial to preventing communicable diseases, state-level mandates are common and have been tested in the courts.
“One of the most important public health practices we have to alleviate outbreaks and things like measles and whooping cough are vaccines required for school or for daycare entry,” Dr. Joshua Williams, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told ABC News.
In addition to California announcing that it is adopting a state-wide mandate, individual education boards in cities like Los Angeles have started adding the Pfizer vaccine, which was granted full FDA approval in September and is currently the only vaccine approved for children older than 12, to their list of immunization requirements.
Experts say other school districts are likely to follow suit and have strong legal ground to enforce the requirement set forth in the 1944 Supreme Court case Prince v. Massachusetts.
Here’s what to know about the debate over non-medical exemptions:
On the rise in schools
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that while requests for medical exemptions in schools remain low and fairly constant (around 0.3%), non-medical exemptions (including religious and personal belief exemptions) have risen from 1.4% in the 2011-’12 school year to 2.2% in the 2019-’20 school year (a 57% increase).
In Idaho, for instance, in the 2019-’20 school year, 7.2% of kindergarteners had non-medical exemptions, according to the CDC data. That contrasts with around 1% for states like Massachusetts, Louisiana and Alabama.
Ellen Wright Clayton, a professor of pediatrics, law and health policy at the Vanderbilt University Law School, believes that schools should take a stand against religious exemptions in the interest of protecting public health.
“The fact of the matter is, parents are not entitled, for any reason, to expose other people’s children or other people to [COVID-19] for religious reasons,” Clayton said.
Schools from all 50 states have historically required immunization starting in kindergarten level to curb the spread of contagious diseases such as measles.
Forty-four states and the District of Columbia currently offer religious exemptions to vaccines, of which 15 offer broader personal belief exemptions for personal, moral or spiritual ideologies. The remaining six states — California, Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi, New York and West Virginia — only offer medical exemptions.
More religious exemptions despite decreasing religiousness
Williams, from the University of Colorado, noted that despite a decrease in religiosity among Americans, there has been an increase in religious exemption requests for vaccination, implying that these exemptions are “no longer serving their original purpose.”
It has increased even as some religious leaders, including Pope Francis and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a leading authority in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, have made clear that vaccines are necessary for the common good and take precedence over religious beliefs.
In his research, Williams also investigated the influence of the availability of personal belief exemptions in states on the rate of religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations. In 2016, Vermont eliminated its personal belief exemption policy which was followed by an increase in religious exemption applications from 0.5% to 3.7%.
This suggests that “perhaps people were increasingly using that religious exemption category, even though they might not necessarily have a religious objection to vaccines,” Williams said.
“One thing that people have done previously has shown that the harder it is to obtain an exemption, the lower the rate of exemptions becomes,” he added.
Unlike personal belief exemptions, which are relatively broad, religious exemptions have to be integrated into a holistic belief system, said Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law.
“You can’t just grab onto a biblical verse when it’s convenient,” Reiss, who has written about the legality of vaccine mandates in law journals, said.
How the exemptions work
Individuals’ rights to claim a religious exemption from immunization is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, as seen in some states, this right can be overruled in the interest of public health.
In the wake of the 2019 measles outbreak in the states of New York and Washington, where most cases were reported among the unvaccinated, the states eliminated religious exemptions.
In the face of a religious exemption application, employers or schools have the right to probe the exemption and question the applicant. In other words, it is on them to assess the sincerity of the belief, not the accuracy or validity.
Employers can require their employees to explain the basis of their belief in detail and don’t need to accept a cursory attestation to grant the exemption, Reiss said.
“You can’t try and assess if the belief is rational,” Reiss clarified. “You can ask them a tough question to gauge sincerity.”
However, employers cannot discriminate in favor of organized religions and hence aren’t allowed to request letters from clergy or priests as proof. Employees’ rights to challenge accommodations provided by their employer are also protected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with whom they can file an official complaint.
Employers can maintain high proportions of vaccinated individuals and still make accommodations for those with sincere religious beliefs as demonstrated by the Conway Regional Health System.
But allowing religious exemptions on the basis of how convincing the justification is, Reiss explained, is problematic because it opens the door for people who’ve attended anti-vaccine workshops or “people who are just better liars” to game the system.
Building trust for vaccinations
According to Williams, vaccine hesitancy and the misuse of religious exemptions can be attributed to not only a gap in knowledge caused due to vaccine misinformation and disinformation, but also due to a lack of trust between individuals and public health experts.
“It comes down to something scaring them of the vaccine and they’re using the religious exemption as a cover,” Reiss said.
A common concern among vaccine opponents is the use of fetal cell lines in vaccine research and development, although not an actual ingredient in the vaccine.
When asked about alternatives to curb the spread of misinformation regarding vaccine side effects and composition and the misuse of religious exemptions, Williams suggested a collaboration with religious and faith leaders whom individuals have already built trust with.
“All major faith traditions support vaccinations. And they all support COVID vaccines as well,” Williams said. Reverends and bishops across the country have started collaborating with governments to build trust in the COVID-19 vaccine. It then often comes down to individual interpretations of scripture that lead to religion-based anti-vaccine beliefs.
According to Williams, facilitating an ongoing conversation between faith leaders, public health experts and community members would provide for a safe space for individuals to voice their concerns and get answers in a comfortable environment.
With its relatively recent onset, experts agree that it might be too early to talk about the rate of religious exemptions on the COVID-19 vaccine mandate rollout.
It’s important to highlight how problematic it is to misuse religious exemptions is, Reiss pointed out. “Because in a real sense, it’s abusing religion. It’s making a mockery of real belief and encouraging people to lie about religion, which no religion I think supports.”
(NEW YORK) — Shayla, a 22-year-old from Georgia, has had days during the coronavirus pandemic when she said it has been a struggle to get out of bed.
The part-time college student said she was out of work for a time due to restaurants being closed during the lockdown, and in addition to the financial stress, struggled with not being able to see friends and socialize.
As a person with an underlying health issue, she said she also struggled with fears about getting COVID-19 since she is at risk for complications from the virus.
“It has been very hard on my mental health,” said Shayla, who asked that her last name not be used. “I had a lot of things to think about already and then COVID just added to it, so it was a lot of pressure.”
Shayla turned to therapy to cope, the first time in her life she has sought professional help for her mental health.
“It was like I was just in this box and I didn’t know how to get out of it,” she said. “Mentally and physically, I was just exhausting myself.”
Shayla is not alone in her mental health struggles during the pandemic, research shows.
In the United States, rates of anxiety and depression remain higher than they were pre-pandemic, according to data released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mental health experts have described the pandemic as a kind of “perfect storm” in negatively impacting mental health.
In addition to the fear, grief and anxiety around the virus itself, for many people the pandemic has brought on financial instability, job loss, isolation, additional caregiving responsibilities, uncertainty around school and work and related political disagreements.
Now as the global community marks World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, the pandemic has continued far beyond what people initially thought possible, for nearly two years.
“I’ve heard the pandemic described as a disaster of uncertainty because it seems like the finish line keeps moving,” said Dr. Erica Martin Richards, chair and medical director of the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. “And that makes it harder to come up with a plan [to cope].”
The pandemic has also proven to disproportionately impact women’s mental health.
One study, published by the Kaiser Family Foundation in April, found that 55% of women across all age groups said their mental health had declined during the pandemic, compared to 38% of men. Another, published last month in Lancet Regional Health-Americas, also found women were more likely than men to report higher psychological distress during the pandemic, especially anxiety.
Richards, also an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins Medicine, said women’s mental health has suffered disproportionately during the pandemic for a number of reasons.
First, even in non-pandemic times women are already two to three times more likely than men to experience a major depressive episode in their lifetime, according to Richards.
Then during the pandemic, women took on additional caregiving responsibilities and were hit disproportionately hard by job loss, data shows.
Women, and especially women of color, also faced more barriers to accessing support during the pandemic, according to Richards.
“The pandemic uncovered a lot of things that people are typically able to cope with because they’ve had years to develop those coping strategies,” she said. “When you don’t have that anymore, a lot of people felt more isolated and felt like there was a lack of overall support.”
For some women, their mental health struggles may have played out during the pandemic in an increasing dependence on alcohol, or increased control over their food, according to Dr. Jessi Gold, an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine.
Data shows that incidences of eating disorders and alcohol-related liver disease rose during the pandemic, particularly among young women.
“Those are easy coping mechanisms that people know work,” said Gold. “There are ways that people can deal. And there’s a lot of people who function to a point, until they can’t.”
Both Gold and Richards said they have seen an increasing need for professional mental health as the pandemic has continued on, at some points with seemingly no end in sight.
“Anxiety was the thing that emerged first for a lot of people because anxiety does not like uncertainty and that’s what we’ve been dealing with during the pandemic,” said Gold. “And the longer the anxiety goes on, the more people start to feel on the depressive side of things.”
Warning signs that it is time to seek professional help for mental health include everything from depressive and hopeless thoughts to undesired weight loss or weight gain, suicidal thoughts, excessive feelings of worry, irritability and changes to sleep patterns. They key is to notice if any of those things begin to affect your ability to function in your daily life, according to Richards.
“When stress is becoming overwhelming, ask for help from a professional,” she said. “That professional can come in a number of ways — religious leaders or groups, OB-GYNs, primary care doctors. Those people should be able to, if not help, point you in the right direction.”
There are also ways people can protect and strengthen their mental health on their own, tools that become even more critically important as the pandemic continues, according to Gold.
“There will be things that will continue to be frustrating about this experience,” she said. “Things will be up and down and we have to have some acceptance about that. Just think, ‘I’m just trying to do the best I can,’ and that’s where you have to land.”
Here are five mental health-boosting tips from Gold and Richards:
1. Get plenty of sleep: “It’s easier said than done but it makes a big difference,” said Gold. “Sleep is all about routine, which is why as a kid it worked that your parents gave you a bath, put you in your pajamas and read books. It works the same as an adult, we just don’t take time to do things like that.”
2. Take time for yourself, especially when you think there’s no time: “When you spend the majority of your life focused on other people, try to factor in time for yourself in some capacity,” said Gold. “Ask yourself how you’re doing and name the feelings and validate them and let them be something that you take the time to stop and acknowledge instead of powering through.”
“Doing self-assessments like that can make you stop and say, ‘I’m here, too. What am I feeling?'” added Gold. “Ask yourself, ‘Have I been sleeping? Have I been eating? What have I enjoyed about the day? What’s been hard?’ and listen to your body in moments like that, too.”
3: Keep the positives of the pandemic: “I think we have to embrace some of the changes that have come out of the pandemic,” said Richards. “For some people, it was I can stay home, I can bake more, I can take a walk with my loved ones twice a week, I can go check on my neighbor.”
“A lot of people have really made commitments to those sorts of things, and it’s important to continue that, but it is also important to understand what our social needs are as a community as well, and the importance of getting together, safely,” she said. “Everyone has to find their own balance, not only with what keeps them safe, but what really they find helps with their mental health as well.”
4. Say no when you need to: “It is sometimes important to really just say no and set limits,” said Richards. “Even though that might seem difficult, you’re actually able to help people more down the road if you’re able to really take time for your own mental health first.”
5. Do self-care you enjoy, not what you think you should do: “Look at self-care or coping skills as hobbies and things that you actually enjoy,” said Gold. “So do you like meditating or are you doing that because someone told you that’s the way to feel better? Do you like exercise, or do you want to watch a TV show instead? Figuring out what you like and what makes you feel better is more important than doing things you’re told you’re supposed to do.”
If you are in crisis or know someone in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. You can reach Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 (U.S.) or 877-330-6366 (Canada) and The Trevor Project at 866-488-7386.
(NEW YORK) — Dr. Jennifer Ashton’s anxiety attacks started to happen after she had a severe allergic reaction to a food.
“I had a couple of episodes where I thought mistakenly that I had eaten that same food that I was allergic to,” said Ashton, ABC News’ chief medical correspondent and a board-certified OBGYN. “And even though I was not having any true physical symptoms of an anaphylactic reaction, once my mind went there, it was almost like a marble rolling off the edge of a table.”
“I started to feel dizzy. I started to feel chest tightness. My heart was racing. I was short of breath, but objectively, I was not having an allergic reaction,” she said. “And even though I recognized that I was having an anxiety attack, I was unable to stop it.”
Ashton spoke out about her own experience with anxiety during Mental Health Awareness Month to put a spotlight on a condition that is common but not always easily understood.
Anxiety is the feeling evoked when someone experiences fear of something bad happening, and it can lead to avoidance, attacks, excessive worrying or other symptoms. Everyone has anxiety sometimes, but when anxiety becomes overwhelming to the point it consistently interferes with daily life, or in the case of Ashton, prompts anxiety attacks that interfere with daily life, it can be an anxiety disorder, according to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health (OWH).
Anxiety disorders are so common they affect about 40 million American adults every year, according to OWH.
And women are more than twice as likely as men to get an anxiety disorder in their lifetime, a discrepancy not yet completely understood from a medical perspective. Some experts say it may be due, in part, to women’s changing hormones and different responses to stress, and women may report symptoms of anxiety more frequently than men.
The prevalence of anxiety underscores that it is a serious mental health concern and not something to be dismissed by doctors or patients, according to Ashton.
“What I learned from my own experience with anxiety attacks is that I think a stigma occurs in a lot of society with people thinking that it’s not real, or it’s not serious or it’s insignificant because we all know that there’s no actual situation occurring,” she said. “But none of that matters. The physical manifestations, the symptoms that I felt when I experienced these anxiety attacks, were absolutely real.”
Ashton noted the coronavirus pandemic, an anxiety-inducing global event that has now lasted more than one year, should have highlighted for people the importance of taking anxiety seriously and treating it just as one would any other medical condition.
“There was not a week that went by that I didn’t hear from patients that they were experiencing anxiety,” she said. “I think what needs to happen is a very objective assessment, not only of ourselves as individuals, but collectively, and what’s going on in the world, so then you can say, ‘This is not surprising, really … it’s common. It’s understandable.'”
What to know about anxiety disorders
Like most mental health conditions, anxiety falls on a spectrum, with differing degrees of severity.
Generalized anxiety disorder is described as worrying, “excessively about ordinary, day-to-day issues, such as health, money, work, and family,” according to OWH. Women with GAD may be anxious about just getting through the day, may have difficulty doing everyday tasks and may have stress-related physical symptoms, like difficulty sleeping and stomachaches, according to OWH.
Panic disorder, also twice as common in women as in men, may see people having panic attacks, described by OWH as “sudden attacks of terror when there is no actual danger.” People having panic attacks may feel like they’re having a heart attack, dying, or losing their minds.
A third type of anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, is diagnosed when people “become very anxious and self-conscious in everyday social situations,” including embarrassing easily, according to OWH. People with social anxiety disorder can often have panic attack symptoms around social situations.
The fourth type of disorder, specific phobia, is an intense fear of something, like heights, water, animals or specific situations, that poses “little or no actual danger,” according to OWH.
In addition to fearful thoughts, all four types of disorders also have physical symptoms that can include shortness of breath, chest tightness, nausea, sweating, numbness around the mouth and hands and hyperventilation, according to Ashton.
“There’s a spectrum of severity, so it can be mild, it can be severe. It can be intermittent or it can be constant,” she said. “Most people will admit to having anxious thoughts or feeling anxious at some point during their lives; however, people who really suffer from a true anxiety disorder find that those thoughts feelings or symptoms are occurring more frequently with greater severity.”
Ashton also pointed out that the causes of anxiety can range from the known to unknown.
“Sometimes there is an actual trigger and a clear-cut, rational explanation for where it started. For example, in my case, I had an anaphylactic reaction and experiencing that medical emergency triggered anxiety attacks in similar situations or what I thought were similar situations,” she said. “But other times, people develop an anxiety disorder and they have no known actual trigger. That doesn’t make it any less real. That doesn’t make it any less severe.”
Even with the number of people affected by anxiety during the pandemic, and with celebrities like Camilla Cabello and Prince Harry recently speaking out about their experiences, the topic of anxiety, like most mental health disorders, is still a taboo topic.
“Having an anxiety disorder is still something that’s whispered about, still something that has a societal bias or stigma,” said Ashton. “In a lot of ways, any psychological, emotional or psychiatric disorder still tends to be looked at as a sign of weakness.”
“It is definitely past time that we change that,” she said. “As a medical doctor, I literally do not look at anything that occurs from the neck up as any different than something that occurs from the neck down, so anxiety should be looked at no differently than asthma. As such, it should be managed with a full arsenal of approaches meaning support groups, talk therapy, behavioral therapy, modifying one’s environment or behavior and, if necessary, prescription medication.”
When it comes to medication, a prescription medication to treat and prevent future episodes of anxiety on a long-term basis is different than a medication like Xanax or Valium that is intended for infrequent treatment of acute anxiety, noted Ashton.
“I see this all the time in women where they think, ‘Well, it’s happening more and more frequently, so I’ll just take the medication more and more frequently,'” she said. “[Drugs like Xanax and Valium] are not meant nor are they really safe for long-term, chronic use on a daily basis. That’s why you really should be managed by a psychiatrist by a credentialed mental health professional.”
Treatment for anxiety disorders often includes a combination of counseling and medication — and both together is often most effective. When it comes to counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is often used to help people change thinking patterns around their fears, according to OWH.
The differing degrees of anxiety may make it difficult for people to determine whether they should seek treatment, but what matters is how it is affecting a person individually, according to Ashton.
“There is a big difference between someone who has one anxiety attack or a panic attack per year and someone who has one per day,” she explained. “There’s a big difference between someone who can manage their anxiety and still function at home and in the workplace, and someone who has to leave meetings at work or who has to go home from celebrations or social gatherings. So whether or not you have anxiety that is interfering in your life is very subjective, but in general, it’s whether or not it’s interfering to a degree that is not acceptable to you.”
Other factors like physical activity, nutrition and mindfulness can also play a role in coping with anxiety, although less is known about the role they play in treating anxiety disorders, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, an entity of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Ashton said women can look to their gynecologist or family physician as their first point of contact in discussing the possible need for anxiety treatment.
“Bring this up with your gynecologist. He or she is very familiar with dealing with anxiety disorders in patients — we see it as women’s health experts on a daily basis,” she said. “This is something that you should bring up at your next well-woman checkup with your gynecologist, with your nurse practitioner, with your family practitioner, and talk about it just like you would talk about a change in your period or if you were having daily headaches.”
Speaking of what it should be like for a person to speak about their anxiety out loud, Ashton added, “We’re just admitting something as plainly as we’re saying it’s cloudy outside.”
(NEW YORK) — The flu season is notorious for being difficult to predict. However, flu trends from last year and from other parts of the globe can help us make informed estimates.
So far, experts are on the fence if this year’s flu season may be mild like last year’s, or if it may take a turn for the worse. But experts do agree on one thing; we can do our part by getting vaccinated.
And according to newly released U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, about 52% of the U.S. population got a flu vaccination last flu season, which was similar to the prior season. The CDC and other public health agencies are trying to get even more people vaccinated this year because experts are worried about a worse flu season this year because population immunity is low due to a mild flu season last year.
“We are preparing for the return of the flu this season. The low level of flu activity last season could set us up for a severe season this year,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, speaking during a press event hosted by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
With many Americans staying home, washing hands and practicing social distancing, last year’s flu season saw the lowest rates of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths from the flu since the CDC started recording this data in 2005.
“It was the lowest influenza season we’d had in memory. It was really virtually no influenza,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease and preventative medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University, told ABC News.
Dr. Richard Webby, director of a World Health Organization Influenza Collaborating Center and infectious disease specialist, adds that it may be a “global phenomenon.”
“I think international travel has been low so, you know, just infected people moving around the globe and seeding other geographic spaces has been reduced,” Webby told ABC News.
And these changes have meant that there have been lower levels of the flu virus globally.
“The flu hasn’t really circulated for three successive seasons: southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said.
The southern hemisphere – South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand – experiences its flu season during our summer. Their flu patterns can give us an idea of what to expect come fall in the U.S. And this past summer, the southern hemisphere experienced another low flu season.
“The flu is often in a cycle between the northern and southern hemispheres,” Adalja told ABC News. “There’s a high likelihood that it could also still be a mild flu season just because there’s less flu circulating on the planet, in general.”
But as COVID restrictions continue to evolve, southern hemisphere flu patterns may be less helpful for knowing what lies ahead. For example, COVID-19 restrictions are easing up in many places in the United States, but remain in place in parts of Australia, which is often a litmus test for the flu.
“I think that, generally speaking, we turned to, you know, other parts of the globe to make better predictions, and the unfortunate situation now is, given the complexity of COVID restrictions, travel pattern changes, it makes it a little bit more difficult to have a complete predictive lens on what might happen,” said Dr. John Brownstein, infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and ABC News contributor.
And as more people get vaccinated and return to work and social gatherings, along with children returning to school, there is a real possibility that this year’s flu season may be worse than last year’s.
“When they are infected with flu, they shed very large amounts of virus, more than adults and for longer periods of time,” Schaffner said. “They are a real distribution mechanism for the virus.”
Along with the potential for more spread, we may have slightly lower immunity to the flu.
“We have been through one and a half seasons, with no real flu circulation. So, it’s also possible that, as a population, our immunity to flu is a little bit lower,” Webby said.
Faced with the possibility of a worse flu season, experts said the flu shot is crucial.
“Go out, get your flu shot. This year, continue being protected,” said Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist in Chicago and ABC News contributor.
Newly released CDC data highlighted some alarming new trends. Only 59% received the flu shot last season compared with 64% the prior season. And racial and ethnic disparities widened, with 56% of white Americans getting the flu shot, compared to 43% of Black Americans and 45% of Hispanic Americans.
The flu shot is not a 100% guarantee that you won’t get the flu, but it will reduce your symptoms, and the likelihood of winding up in the hospital.
“We want to prevent severe hospitalizations and death, but we want to prevent symptomatic infection, too,” Bhatt told ABC News. “Symptomatic infections can keep people out of work, can make you feel miserable.”
If you are eligible for a COVID vaccine booster, that is a great time to get your flu vaccine as well, health experts like Dr. Paul Goepfert, professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Alabama and Director of the Alabama Vaccine Research Clinic said.
“It’s perfectly fine to get them both at the same time,” Goepfert told ABC News.
And for those who worry they may get sick from the vaccine, Goepfert added, “I know a lot of people say they get sick and they got, you know, flu from the flu vaccine and that’s just not possible.”
Experts also encourage pregnant women to get the flu vaccine.
“That’s a group that, you know, if they get any of these viral infections, they can do poorly if they don’t have adequate protection,” said Dr. Simone Wildes, associate director of infectious disease at South Shore Health and ABC News contributor.
And with the uncertainty of the coming flu season looming, the CDC and other government health officials are now encouraging all eligible Americans to sign up for a flu shot, and help prevent a possible “twindemic” – a bad flu season in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, Walensky said, “it’s doubly important this year to build up community immunity.”
Sara Yumeen, M.D., is a dermatology resident at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and is a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
(ATLANTA) — Over 140,000 children have experienced the loss of a parent or caretaker since the COVID-19 pandemic started, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Thursday.
The study, which considered data from April 2020 until June 2021, quantified an under-discussed issue of the pandemic: the magnitude of trauma children who’ve lost guardians have suffered at home, even as the virus continues to largely target adults.
It also found that the burden of grief has fallen hardest on children of color.
Nearly one in 500 children have lost a mother, father or grandparent who cared for them since April of 2020, the study found. But the majority of children, almost seven out of every 10 who have lost parents or caretakers during the pandemic, are Black, Hispanic or Native American.
The authors of the study called for federal attention and resources to address the trauma, which will continue to grow as long as the pandemic continues. Already, the authors estimate the number of children who’ve experience loss is higher than 140,000, because of the delta variant surge that hit the U.S. over the summer after the study concluded.
One of out of every 168 American Indian and Alaska Native children have lost a parent or grandparent who cared for them. During the same time, one out of every 310 Black children have faced such loss. For white children, the risk is lower; one out of every 753 children have lost a parent or caregiver.
The study showed the highest burden of death occurred in Southern border states for Hispanic children, Southeastern states for Black children, and in states with tribal areas for American Indian/Alaska Native populations.
“We were quite disturbed by the racial and ethnic disparities that were appearing in our data,” Susan Hillis, the lead author on the CDC study, told ABC News.
The CDC didn’t collect data to explain why those disparities exist, but research over the course of the pandemic has shown grave inequities in health care have led to higher death rates for communities of color. The CDC study published Thursday also found that parents generally had more children in demographics that were hit hardest by loss.
During the research period, Hillis said she was picturing a group of first-graders, all from different backgrounds and parts of the country.
“In my mind’s eye, there’s five children standing together and having such an extreme difference in their risk of having to face the death of the very person who is supposed to provide their love, security, education and care,” she said.
“We’re compelled to mount a response that’s effective for them — for all of them,” she said.
The data suggests that the country needs to build an “urgently needed” pillar into its COVID-19 response, specifically for children, Hillis said.
While she was working on the research, Hillis met a 16-year-old girl named Katie who had lost her dad to the virus.
“She said, ‘People with COVID in our country, most of them do recover, even though my daddy didn’t. However, I will never recover,'” Hillis recalled. “I will not have my daddy with me when I go to the prom, to take pictures beforehand, he will not walk me down the aisle, he will never be with me for another special event in my whole life. I need people to understand, recognize, see and help people like me.”
Losing a parent leads to an increased risk of mental health problems, abuse, unstable housing and poverty, the study said, and for children of single parents, it could mean an immediate need for new housing — whether that is moving in with other family members who can step in and care for them, or going to foster care.
“The critical point to remember is: Not only does it affect the child now, in the short term, but it does really stay with them for the rest of their lives,” Hillis said. “The good news is we do have programs that can help address them, and we have people ready to help implement the programs that work, so I’m encouraged about that.”
(NEW YORK) — It’s the critical aspect of the fight against the pandemic that the U.S. is still figuring out nearly two years after the first documented cases of COVID-19, which has claimed more than 700,000 American lives: coronavirus testing.
At first, testing supply was extremely limited with long lab turnaround times, and only a handful of Americans could access them before things improved as tests became more widely available. Then suddenly, testing demand dropped as mass vaccinations began.
Now, despite billions of dollars in federal investment and more than 20 months into the pandemic, COVID-19 tests are getting harder to find as millions return to offices and schools.
The struggle to keep up with demand also comes amid shifting federal guidance on who should be tested and when as some companies and schools conduct extensive testing, even in situations that may not require it.
The nation’s largest COVID-19 test manufacturers say they have seen a significant increase in the demand for coronavirus tests. Some major test manufacturers — including Abbott Laboratories — scaled back their production in the spring and early summer when daily testing numbers declined.
Many large test-producing companies say their rapid testing products are quickly flying off store shelves nationwide and are out of stock for online shoppers.
“We’ve ramped up our capacity significantly and, by the end of October, we’ll be producing as many or more rapid tests as we were at the height of our production,” said John Koval, an Abbott spokesperson. “To get there, we’ve hired additional employees and have turned on parts of our self-established manufacturing network.”
Although there is a faster result turnaround for rapid antigen tests, they are not as accurate as PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests, which often involve a nasal swab. PCR tests are widely considered the gold standard for COVID-19 testing, due to their sensitivity, as they provide a more definitive answer as to whether someone may have active coronavirus.
More than 51 million coronavirus tests were administered in the month of September only the second time this year, after January, when test numbers were comparably high.
According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, testing in September increased by a record 82% compared to that period last year when many schools and workplaces were still fully virtual.
The U.S. now conducts nearly 2 million tests a day on average after hitting its peak for the year on Sept. 27 with 3.6 million.
Tests can be administered in a variety of locations, including testing sites, doctor’s offices and even at home and new technology is being developed to make the process easier, more available and cost-effective.
Here’s what we know about the testing landscape in the U.S.:
Return to work and school, in person
The return of Americans to work and school, along with the spread of the delta variant and a small but rising number of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated, created an increase in test demand that many suppliers are only now beginning to catch up with.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that we find ourselves back in this situation that we were in pretty much at the start of the pandemic,” said Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, lead epidemiologist for the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. “Employers really haven’t pulled back on screening testing that they’re doing even among vaccinated workforce, so that all added together stacks up to a fairly sizable demand for tests.”
Preparing for the return of employees back to the workplace, many U.S. employers have already purchased thousands of COVID-19 tests in bulk.
Prominent investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is based in New York, now requires staff in all of its U.S. offices to take weekly coronavirus tests, even if they’re fully vaccinated.
Other large employers, such as banks, retail stores and supermarkets have begun testing as well, with some using rapid tests and others using self-administered PCR tests.
Labcorb, a U.S. medical diagnostics company, insisted to ABC News that it didn’t reduce its capacity when demand dwindled, and that it has enough supply.
Labcorp sells large quantity collection kits to businesses, which are processed in their labs. Companies can distribute them to their employees to mail in for results.
The company says that equipping businesses both large and small with coronavirus tests is a key priority.
“By making it easier for employees to get tested, we are supporting communities and small businesses across the country,” said Dr. Brian Caveney, chief medical officer and president of Labcorp Diagnostics.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for example, partnered with Labcorp in March to implement a voluntary COVID-19 testing program for agency employees and contractors doing in-person work at government buildings or elsewhere.
Approximately 3,000 PCR tests a month are expected to be provided to FDA employees over the course of the program’s year-long contract.
As vaccinations increased among the general population in early spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) loosened mask policies for vaccinated individuals indoors and said that the vaccinated didn’t have to get tested.
Testing companies heeded that guidance, and significantly rolled back their production as their stock prices dipped in response to the lower demand.
But the rapid spread of the delta variant in the summer coinciding with a lull in vaccinations, compelled the CDC to update its guidelines.
The CDC now advises that vaccinated people who come in contact with others who have a confirmed case of COVID-19 get tested regardless of whether they have symptoms, and quarantine only if their test results are positive.
More than 186 million people — 56% percent of the U.S. population — have been fully vaccinated.
Testing protocols driving demand
Public health experts say that testing protocols for students returning to the classroom, employer testing mandates, in addition to continued spread of the virus, even in a limited way among the vaccinated, is part of what’s driving the demand for COVID-19 tests.
“We’re coming out of a fairly substantial surge of infections, so that has clearly prompted a need for more testing,” said Dr. Nuzzo, from Johns Hopkins. During the summer, the 7-day average of infections surged to levels not seen since the fall and winter spike of last year, when vaccines were not widely available.
When President Biden first took office, he committed to establishing a national pandemic testing board to “massively surge” and guarantee free access to coronavirus testing. But much remains unknown about the goals of the board, particularly when it comes to developing a national testing strategy.
A Health and Human Services spokesperson told ABC News that the board is comprised of officials from across the federal government and “includes a focus on addressing supply issues – the supply group meets regularly to review testing capacity.” Testing strategy has been left largely up to states.
The Biden administration has awarded billions in contracts to private sector companies to surge testing, with the goal of eventually getting those tests widely distributed. But industry experts have observed those actions have not been nearly enough to keep up with the pace of the demand to effectively change the ground game on testing access.
“I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious to everyone that with the fall there would be an increasing demand for testing, particularly because of the push to return kids back to school,” said Nuzzo. “We never had enough tests for that.”
The White House has promised to double the number of rapid tests on the market over the next 60 days with a special focus on reducing test prices, which is still a significant barrier to access for many Americans.
In September, the White House said it plans to spend $2 billion to purchase nearly 300 million rapid tests.
On top of that, the Biden administration recently announced plans for another $1 billion in spending on at-home rapid COVID-19 tests, which officials believe will increase the number of tests available to Americans to 200 million a month, beginning in December.
“The manufacturing is scaling up significantly, doubling across the next couple of months, and we’re just going to keep at it to encourage those manufacturers to increase capacity and to drive down the cost of those tests,” said White House COVID-19 Coordinator Jeff Zients.
Cost a factor
The cost of COVID-19 tests in the U.S. varies, as the price often depends on factors including where you live and the type of labs where tests are processed.
While some COVID-19 tests are free and lowly priced, others are not, and even the insured could be left with a sizable bill.
Many rapid antigen tests, which can provide results in a matter of minutes, cost at least $12 at many U.S. retail stores, compared to prices less than half of that in many European Union countries, including Germany and the U.K.
“We have made a fair amount of progress there. Is it enough? No,” said Mara Aspinall, an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation and professor of practice in the biomedical diagnostics program at Arizona State University. “It’s still too expensive for many Americans who’ve got two kids to buy $65 worth of tests.”
Many retailers including Amazon, CVS, and Walmart are out of stock of Abbott’s Binax Now COVID-19 antigen self-test, which sells for $24.
Testing experts believe that even amid the current COVID-19 testing supply problems, there are other under-utilized tools that can be applied to mitigate the spread of the virus.
“Our focus is surveillance and then outbreak control, and when you do that, we’ll be doing more wastewater testing, more air monitoring, I think we need to be using more COVID sniffing dogs, and scratch-and-sniff tests,” said Aspinall. “We can’t be short-sighted, we need to be thinking about the U.S. and around the world.”
(NEW YORK) — Ellume is recalling nearly 200,000 rapid at-home COVID-19 antigen tests out of concerns over an abnormally high rate of false positives observed from certain lots of its tests.
Roughly 427,000 test kits, including thousands sent to retailers and some provided to the Department of Defense, have been impacted by the issue.
About 195,000 of these kits are still unused and subject to the recall. About 202,000 have already been used, the company said. Of those, there have been around 42,000 positive results, of which as many as a quarter of those positives could have been inaccurate. However, the company said it’s difficult to determine an exact ratio.
Ellume is removing the affected product from store shelves and said distributors should cease distribution and quarantine those products immediately.
This recall yanks hundreds of thousands of rapid COVID-19 tests off the shelves at a time when demand for these tests has already skyrocketed. Amid shortages, many of the major retail pharmacy stores announced they are limiting purchases to contend with supply constraints.
Meanwhile, Ellume is notifying consumers, retailers and distributors affected by the recall. It’s warning those consumers who have tested positive to take confirmatory tests, as their initial Ellume results may have been incorrect.
Ellume CEO Sean Parsons apologized for the incident, acknowledging how much rides on accurate test results during this pandemic.
“We understand that trust is central to fulfilling our purpose as a company, and we recognize that this incident may have shaken the confidence of some of those who trusted Ellume to help them manage their health and to take back a bit of control of their lives during this pandemic,” Parsons said in a statement. “To those individuals, I offer my sincere apologies – and the apologies of our entire company – for any stress or difficulties they may have experienced because of a false-positive result.”
“You have my personal commitment that we have learned from this experience, we have implemented additional controls to ensure our product meets our high quality standards and we are going to do everything in our power to regain your trust,” Parsons said in the statement.
Ellume said it has identified the root cause as an issue in variation with one of its test kit’s components, and said it has “implemented additional controls” and are “continuing to work on resolving the issue that led to this recall.”
While the recall was triggered by false positives, the company said the reliability of negative results from its kits is unaffected by this issue: approximately 160,000 tests from affected lots produced negative results.
(LOS ANGELES) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the “Momnibus Act” into law on Monday to address racial disparities in maternal and infant health, a victory especially for families of color.
The law will create a fund to grow and diversify the midwifery workforce, extend California’s Medicaid coverage for doulas — trained professionals who support mothers through pregnancies — and extend Medicaid eligibility for mothers experiencing postpartum depression from two to 12 months.
The law is part of a sweeping effort to change stark numbers in the state.
Black women in California are four to six times more likely to die within a year of pregnancy than white women, according to data from 2014 to 2016 compiled by the California Department of Public Health. Nationally, Black and American Indian women are two to three more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes compared with white women, according to a 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
In California, even though the state’s infant mortality is lower than the national average, Black babies still die at more than double the statewide average, lawmakers said in the bill.
Mashariki Kudumu, director of maternal and infant health initiatives for the March of Dimes in Los Angeles, helped work on “Momnibus.”
“We know in California, there’s about nine counties that don’t have an obstetric provider, areas known as maternity deserts. Especially during COVID, we’re seeing hospitals shut down their maternity units. Getting care has been a barrier for a lot of people during this time. And so being able to have more midwives that can provide prenatal care throughout the state, especially in these maternity deserts, will be a great benefit,” Kudumu said.
“Everyone deserves a healthy and joyous and dignified pregnancy birth. And this bill really does help do that,” she added.
The bill was authored by Democratic Sen. Nancy Skinner with support from statewide maternal health and racial justice groups.
A major part of the “Momnibus Act” is to have a committee improve data collection and reviews of maternal deaths in the state, including interviews of affected family members affected, to better study what contributes to maternal and infant mortality rates. The committee plans to publish findings and recommendations every three years.
Some of the bill’s provisions already had been included in the 2021-22 state budget, including the establishment of a guaranteed income pilot program for pregnant low-income Californians and extensions of Medicaid coverage.
The legislation applies to all women who need but can’t afford the services, regardless of immigration status.
Tiffany Sagote, an obstetric medical assistant in San Francisco who’s pregnant with her third child, told ABC News the law is “super special for women of color who have often been overlooked in health care, professionally and emotionally, during such a beautiful milestone in our life.”
“The most exciting thing,” she added, “is receiving an extension of postpartum management with Medi-Cal, like mental health services, which at times are often cut short for women of color … there is an idea in the Black community where, like, needing help is kind of taboo or a sign of failure. But in reality, it is the best thing to help us maintain a solid foundation and give our children the best version of ourselves.”
She said having diverse doulas and midwives will help expectant mothers be able to advocate for themselves, especially when they aren’t listened to.
“I have unfortunately experienced it myself, seen and dealt with racism and mistreatment in the health care field that leads to the statistics among black mothers and infants,” Sagote continued. “Having more access to Black and Indigenous doulas will help mothers not feel intimidated to stand up for themselves in a medical setting.”
Kudumu said the bill’s services will lessen stress among mothers of color or those who come from low-income backgrounds.
“We know Black women have a preterm birth rate that’s higher than other women in California. Adjusting some of the reasons behind that — in terms of stress, in terms of racism, economic opportunities — is important,” she said.
Nourbese Flint, executive director of the Black Women for Wellness Action Project, joined the signing ceremony with her 7-week-old baby and called the bill signed on Monday her “second baby.”
While she called the law “a win,” she said that “there’s still more work to do.”
Stacey Stewart, president and CEO of March of Dimes, said the organization is pushing for a federal version of California’s “Momnibus,” a version of which was reintroduced this session with the support of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“California passing its ‘Momnibus’ is also a model for what other states can do as well. And we hope we hope other states will look to California for that leadership,” Stewart said. “If fully implemented, and fully funded [on a federal level], we should have every expectation that there should be a significant increase in health outcomes for moms and babies of color.
(NEW YORK) — A North Carolina school board voted Monday to make masks optional for students and staff indoors, even as 430 students are under quarantine.
The Harnett County School Board voted 4 to 1 for the optional mask policy Monday and it takes effect Tuesday.
Prior to Tuesday, masks were mandatory in the school district, which has more than 19,600 students.
The board also voted to pass an amended quarantine policy allowing students exposed to COVID-19 who haven’t tested positive to return after seven days instead of 10 days. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that those who are unvaccinated should quarantine at home for 14 days after exposure. However, 10-day or seven-day quarantines are acceptable if combined with testing and a negative test result.
According to the school district’s COVID-19 dashboard, as of Monday there are 53 positive virus cases among students and 13 among staff. Further, seven staff and 430 students are currently under quarantine.
The school district has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
Mask mandates in schools have been an ongoing heated debate as more than 48 million children under the age of 12 are still ineligible to be vaccinated.
Pediatrician Dr. Lori Langdon spoke at the boarding meeting, saying: “Your students are my patients. I want you to remember that not all students in Harnett County are healthy … Some of them live in homes with immunocompromised parents and grandparents.”
“Our concern is that if we don’t have a mask mandate, we’re just going to be on the countdown back to virtual school and that’s not what any of us want,” she added. “My mask protects you and your mask protects me from you.”
Local residents shared their opinions both for and against the mask during the virtual meeting Monday night.
Parent Gina Carucci said during the meeting, “Obviously this is very political. Masks and virus has nothing to do with the virus, it has to do with complying with the government.”
“You’re taking away their freedom of speech, their freedom to talk to their friends, their freedom to show their smiles,” she said. “These children … it should be their choice.”
Board member Vivian Bennett was the lone member to vote against making masks optional.
“I think the best interest for the people of this county is for there to be masks,” she said before the vote. “My neighbor died, and her sister is taking care of her daughter. She says that she wears a mask every minute, even sleeps in one … I could never vote to think that I might hurt some of the people that I know and don’t know in this county.”
The move by Harnett County Schools comes as a slew of other school districts have imposed mask requirements for students and staff, at times in defiance of state -level bans on mask mandates.
Vaccinations for students will likely be the next frontier of debates. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday a state requirement for COVID-19 vaccines for all school children between 12 to 17 once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants full approval of the vaccine for that age group.
