(ATLANTA) — About four in 10 adults say they’ve gotten the new bivalent booster or will get it as soon as they can, according to the latest Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor.
In the survey, 22% of adults said they have gotten the shot, while around 16% said they will soon.
The data differs slightly from the numbers provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which shows that 15.5% of adults have gotten the bivalent booster dose so far.
The findings come as the Biden administration ramps up its push to get people boosted ahead of the holiday season and winter months. In late November, officials launched six-week campaign focused on reaching seniors and communities hit hardest by the virus and making it easier to get the shot.
For adults 65 and older, who are at highest risk of COVID-19, the KFF survey found uptake is slightly higher — around 39%. And again, another 16% say they intend to get the booster soon.
But this still leaves more than half of older adults without the shot, and without any intention of getting one.
People remain unconvinced about booster’s benefits
Among people who have already gotten the original COVID vaccine series but have not rolled up their sleeves for a booster, the most common response from adults (44%) was that they don’t think they need one.
More than a third, or 37%, said they didn’t think the benefits are worth it. Another third, or 36%, said they were too busy or hadn’t had time.
About a quarter said they didn’t want to deal with bad side effects, while 17% said they were waiting to see if there would be a surge in their area first.
Why some older people, despite their higher risk, say they aren’t getting boosters
Among people 65 and older who haven’t gotten the booster, about a third of respondents said that they don’t think they need it (36%) and another third said they don’t think the benefit of the updated booster is worth it.
About a quarter said they have been too busy or have not had time to get the new booster yet.
Pandemic has negatively changed views on routine vaccines
Another key point from the December KFF polling was a growing opposition to regular vaccinations for school children, as a requirement for attending public schools.
And while the poll found that people weren’t losing trust in the vaccines — that metric has largely stayed the same over time — they felt more strongly about whether vaccines should be required or not.
The new KFF Vaccine Monitor found that nearly three in 10 adults nationwide now say that parents should be able to choose whether to vaccine their kids for measles, mumps and rubella, rather than it be required — which is up more than 10% from a 2019 poll conducted before the pandemic by Pew Research.
Among parents, opposition to requiring those childhood vaccines now stands at 35%, up from 23% in 2019, KFF found.
(NEW YORK) — Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, open up in the final episode of their Netflix docuseries about their pregnancy loss, which they say happened in July 2020, as they settled into their new home in California.
“I was pregnant,” Meghan says in the six-part series, titled “Harry & Meghan.” “I really wasn’t sleeping and the first morning that we woke up in our new home is when I miscarried.”
At the time of the miscarriage, Meghan and Harry were embroiled in a lawsuit against a U.K. tabloid publisher over the publication of a handwritten letter Meghan sent in 2018 to her estranged father, Thomas Markle.
Harry says in the docuseries that he believes the stress of the lawsuit contributed to Meghan’s miscarriage.
“I believe my wife suffered a miscarriage because of what the Mail did,” Harry said, referring to the U.K. tabloid that first published the letter. “I watched the whole thing.”
He continued, “Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course we don’t. But bearing in mind the stress that that caused, the lack of sleep and the timing of the pregnancy, how many weeks in she was, I can say from what I saw, that miscarriage was created by what they were trying to do to her.”
Home footage aired in the episode shows Meghan writing on her laptop and poring over documents related to the case.
Harry and Meghan’s lawyer, Jenny Afia, identified onscreen as a partner at Schillings, a London-based law firm, says she also saw the stress Meghan was under.
“Meghan and I would be texting at 1 a.m. or 3 a.m., her time. She’d be awake, unable to sleep thinking about this case and the wider issues and the toll it was taking,” she said. “I knew the stress the latest development was having on Meghan, and that was that the Mail were going to argue that Meghan’s friends had already spoken about the letter to People magazine, and that Meghan had authorized that article, which she hadn’t.”
Meghan’s friend and former “Suits” co-star Abigail Spencer says she was coming to help Meghan unpack her new home when she saw her fall to the ground.
“I’m driving up just like, ‘Alright, we’re going to unpack. We’re going to get settled,’ and Meg is standing outside waiting for me and I can tell something is off,” Spencer said. “She’s like, ‘I’m having a lot of pain.’ She was holding Archie and she just fell to the ground.”
Meghan herself described the experience in a New York Times opinion piece about pregnancy loss, which was published in November 2020.
“I felt a sharp cramp. I dropped to the floor…I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second,” she wrote. “Hours later, I lay in a hospital bed, holding my husband’s hand. I felt the clamminess of his palm and kissed his knuckles, wet from both our tears. Staring at the cold white walls, my eyes glazed over. I tried to imagine how we’d heal.”
It is not known how many weeks Meghan was into her pregnancy when the loss occurred.
Meghan and Harry were the parents of a son, Archie, at the time of the miscarriage. They went onto have another child, a daughter they named Lili, in June 2021.
Later in the docuseries, Meghan describes the length of her court battle against the tabloid publisher, saying, “When all of this started, I had no children. And now I have birthed two and lost one and it’s still going on.”
A U.K. judge ruled in Meghan’s favor in the case last year.
What to know about early miscarriage and stress
Early pregnancy loss, or miscarriage, occurs during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, known as the first trimester. Statistics can vary, but it happens in at least 10% of known pregnancies, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
That number is likely considerably higher, as many women miscarry before they realize that they’re expecting. Additionally, one recent study indicated that 43% of women who had at least one successful birth reported having had one or more first trimester losses.
As many as half of early miscarriages happen when the embryo does not develop properly, often because it has an abnormal number of chromosomes, which is a result of an egg or sperm that fertilized with fewer chromosomes than normal, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The group says miscarriage is usually a “random event,” and not the result of external factors, such as stress.
“Working, exercising, stress, arguments, having sex, or having used birth control pills before getting pregnant do not cause miscarriage. Few medications can cause miscarriage,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states on its website. “Morning sickness — the nausea and vomiting that is common in early pregnancy — also does not cause miscarriage.”
The group notes that “some women who have had a miscarriage believe that it was caused by a recent fall, blow, fright, or stress,” but “in most cases, this is not true. It may simply be that these things happened to occur around the same time and are fresh in the memory.”
One factor that can impact pregnancy loss is age, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The frequency of early pregnancy loss doubles for women between 35 and 40 years old from 20% to 40%.
“Most end because of a chromosome abnormality,” the group states. “There also is some evidence that chromosome abnormalities in the embryo increase as men get older. But it is not clear at what age this begins for men.”
Meghan, now 41, was 37-years-old when she announced her pregnancy with Archie, and 39-years-old when she announced her pregnancy with Lili.
Other potential risk factors for miscarriages include having had two or more previous miscarriages, having problems with the uterus and cervix, including fibroids and scars, and infections like sexually transmitted infections, according to the March of Dimes.
(NEW YORK) — Over the last few weeks, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have been steadily increasing in Los Angeles County.
Public health experts told ABC News that newer subvariants circulating plus low booster uptake has led to a surge and it may be time to mask up again.
Average daily infections currently sit at 3,028, a 129% increase from the 1,322 average cases recorded one month ago, according to an ABC News analysis of data from the county’s Department of Public Health.
What’s more, hospitalizations currently sit at 1,304, a jump from the 580 hospitalizations reported one month ago, the analysis found.
‘In a winter surge’
“What we’re seeing here in Los Angeles is what we’ll describe as a winter surge,” Dr. Armando Dorian, CEO of USC Verdugo Hills Hospital and an emergency medicine physician, told ABC News. “We were at a point where we had zero COVID patients in the hospital and over the last couple of weeks, there’s been a steady increase in the number of inpatients with COVID as either the diagnosis or part of their diagnosis.”
Dorian said the surge, both at his hospital and in the county as a whole, is not like previous surges that have occurred during the winter, which overwhelmed hospitals, but that the numbers are not insignificant.
“Currently, we’re sitting just under I think around 18% of the patients in the hospital are COVID-positive,” he said.
Dr. Soniya Gandhi, associate chief medical officer at Cedars-Sinai, told ABC News it’s a similar situation at her hospital.
However, this surge is different compared to previous surges because hospitals are also dealing with flu and RSV cases, in what’s been described as a “tripledemic.”
“We’re seeing now the other circulating viruses like flu and RSV, which we hadn’t experienced in prior surges,” Gandhi said. “So, we are starting to see a lot of COVID in the community. We’re starting and have been seeing a lot of flu as well in the community. Our flu positivity rate was as high as 30% last week, which is incredibly high compared to [past] years.”
However, in some good news, RSV cases appear to have peaked in early November and are now on the decline in California, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
New variants and low booster update
Experts said there are a few reasons for the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the community, one of them being new variants.
“We have newer subvariants, namely BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 that are cousins of the prior omicron variant,” Gandhi said. “They’re more infectious, and they’re increasingly prevalent in the community.”
Data from the CDC shows that in Region 9, where Los Angeles is located, the two variants make up 67.8% of all new infections.
Additionally, more people are gathering in crowded indoor spaces due to the colder weather and the holiday season, which increases the risk of spread.
However, another factor is that vaccination and booster rates are lower than what doctors would like to see. Department of Public Health data shows only 13% of those aged 5 and older have received an updated booster dose.
“The true reason to get the booster or vaccinated is so that you potentially keep yourself from getting really ill from it and avoiding hospitalization,” Dorian said. “We do see a percentage of people that potentially could have definitely prevented themselves from getting admitted to the hospital, or even getting significantly ill because they did not get boosted or vaccinated.”
Are mask mandates coming back?
Meanwhile, the potential return of an indoor mask mandate hangs over the county.
Last week, Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said during a press conference a mask mandate would not be implemented even as the county entered the “high” COVID-19 community transmission category, as defined by the CDC.
This was a reversal from a previous policy that moving into the high category would trigger a mandate. Instead, Ferrer said the mandate would be reinstated if certain hospital metrics were met such as 10% of county hospital beds filled with COVID patients.
Experts said right now the county is trending in the direction of a mask mandate.
“I think if we continue to trend in the direction, where we seem to be going, I think based on the previously outlined criteria, a mask mandate could certainly return and probably would need to be seriously considered,” Gandhi said. “That being said, I don’t think individuals should wait for a mask mandate to practice common sense.”
Dorian agreed, saying that implementing a mask mandate would be polarizing and that people should consider their own risk level and the level of those around them when considering masking.
“Do we really need somebody to tell us when to put a mask on is the question,” Dorian said. “I think if you’re not feeling well, or you’re potentially immunocompromised, or you’re going into a space where there’s a lot of people, you should just mask.”
He continued, “So, I think just continuously educating the community on why we’re asking and why there’s an increase and making sure we protect the vulnerable.”
(NEW YORK) — A ruptured ascending aortic aneurysm — the reported cause of death of American soccer writer Grant Wahl — is a rare but deadly medical condition.
Wahl, 49, a prominent journalist in the U.S. soccer community, collapsed on Dec. 9 while covering the World Cup in Qatar and could not be revived. On Wednesday, his wife, Dr. Celine Gounder, revealed that Wahl’s unexpected death was due to the rupture of an undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium, following an autopsy performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
“Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium,” Gounder wrote in a post on Substack. “No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him.”
When someone who is young and otherwise appears to be healthy dies suddenly, “we worry about the possibility of underlying health conditions,” Dr. Eric Isselbacher, the co-director of the Thoracic Aortic Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, told ABC News.
“There’s no good way to know, in a case like this, until the autopsy exactly what happened. But we do see things like this happening in young people and it’s a sobering reminder of aortic aneurysms, particularly when people don’t know about them, because it can cause rupture and death,” he said.
What is an aortic aneurysm?
The aorta is the main artery that carries blood away from the heart to the rest of the body and brain. An aortic aneurysm is a balloon-like bulge in the aorta. An aneurysm weakens that portion of the artery, allowing blood to dissect or separate its walls and can cause it to rupture. An ascending aortic aneurysm is one where there is bulging and weakening of a section of the aorta before it curves into the aortic arch.
Hemopericardium means that there was blood found in the tissue surrounding the heart that is most likely related to the aortic aneurysm. If enough blood gets in this tissue around the heart, it can prevent the heart from pumping properly.
Doctors say aortic aneurysms that develop slowly over time, like Wahl’s, may not have any related symptoms until it gets large, dissects or ruptures. If an aneurysm dissects or ruptures, someone may feel sharp chest pain, have trouble breathing, become confused or pass out.
It is reported that Wahl was recently experiencing some cold symptoms and was treated for bronchitis.
“The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms,” Gounder also wrote.
Doctors say it is possible that some symptoms of a growing aortic aneurysm could mimic symptoms of a respiratory infection like cough or chest discomfort, but it is not known if that is what happened in Wahl’s case.
It is also unlikely that an automated external defibrillator would have saved Wahl’s life during the medical emergency; only surgery can repair a ruptured aortic aneurysm.
Who is at risk?
This condition is rare. There is no routine screening test recommended for an ascending aortic aneurysm. While it is unclear exactly how many people have this condition, one recent study estimated the prevalence of thoracic aortic aneurysms, including the ascending type, is around 0.16% of the population.
Nearly 10,000 people died from aortic aneurysms or aortic dissections in 2019, reported the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Abdominal aortic aneurysms, located in a lower section of the aorta, have “very clear risk factors” — tending to occur in people in their late 60s and 70s, in smokers and people with high blood pressure or high cholesterol, Isselbacher said. Aneurysms that are in the chest, such as an ascending aortic aneurysm, however, are generally not due to those typical risk factors and tend to be due to an abnormality of the aorta from birth or inherited conditions, he said.
“The problem with those is because they don’t have the typical risk factors, people don’t know if they might have them or not,” he said. “But there are a few clues that you’re at risk for them.”
For Isselbacher, it’s important for people to know their family history, including if there is a relative with heart rhythm issues or one who died at a young age from sudden death, and if you have a bicuspid aortic valve, as that could go along with an enlarged aorta, he said.
“Because if you can catch that, you can do something about it,” he said.
Though the “vast majority” of patients with aortic aneurysms detect them incidentally from an imaging study ordered for another reason, he said.
“They had a cough, so they got a chest X-ray. They were smokers, so they got a lung cancer screening CT scan. They had some palpitations, they got an echocardiogram. And then those studies, incidentally, show the enlarged aorta,” he said.
According to the CDC, ascending aortic aneurysms can also be associated with high blood pressure, sudden injury and inherited connective tissue disorders like Marfan syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, though they can also happen in people with no known risk factors. It is not known if Wahl was diagnosed with any related genetic conditions.
People who are known to have a risk factor like Marfan syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos do often get routine imaging done to see if underlying problems like aneurysms are present. But there are others who don’t know they have an underlying risk factor or an aneurysm until they have a problem like this.
According to the American Heart Association, if an aortic aneurysm is found, the decision of when to repair it can depend on related symptoms, the size of the aneurysm, how fast it grows and the person’s underlying health conditions. The two main treatment options are medications and surgery.
Jennifer Cantley at home with her children. – ABC News
(NEW YORK) — In Carson City, Nevada, one family is choosing to spend more time indoors because they said smoke from wildfires and soaring temperatures caused by climate change are sometimes making it difficult for them to breathe outside.
Jennifer Cantley, who is a mother of three, told ABC News that she checks the air quality outside before she lets her children go out and play. Cantley said she and two of her children have asthma, which she said makes the conditions more dangerous for them.
“When the smoke comes in and we start seeing these beautiful Sierra mountains behind me disappearing, it’s first of all, it’s really hard because we’re having our beautiful view taken away from us,” she said. “But at the same time, now that means we’re going to be back indoors and we can’t leave for sometimes it’s a whole month.”
Cantley is part of “Moms Clean Air Force,” a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization made up of more than 1 million parents. Cantley helped push local legislators to install an air quality monitor in her community.
56% of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 45 say they are worried about the effects of climate change on children’s physical health, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. In a separate question, 71% of parents with children under the age of 18 say they are concerned about the impact that climate change will have on their children. This number rises to 79% of parents living in the western U.S.
“As a result of climate change, children are suffering more heat related illness, more asthma attacks from breathing forest fire smoke,” Frederica Perera, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, told ABC News. Perera is also the author of the recent book “Children’s Health and the Peril of Climate Change.”
“They’re suffering more physical injury and psychological trauma from severe storms and floods,” she said. “Also, we’re seeing more infectious diseases that are carried by ticks and malaria that have moved to new areas due to climate change and also from air pollution.”
In one study published this year, Perera and her co-authors wrote fetuses, infants and children “can be vulnerable to exposure to air pollution and climate change.”
“We used to think the placenta was a perfect barrier and the baby was literally in a cocoon, protecting them from the factors that the mother might experience in her environment,” she said. “And that’s not true. Air pollution is capable of reversing, moving across the placenta into the fetus.”
“My number one goal is making sure now my children, but the future generations have clean air, clean water and public lands,” Cantley said.
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® November 14-16, 2022, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,328 adults ages 18-45. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.0 points, including the design effect. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.
(ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.) — A mother is speaking out about how dangerous respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, can be as her 2-year-old battles the disease.
Jazlynmae Gonzalez just spent her birthday in the pediatric ICU at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque and has been trying to fight off the virus for the last two weeks.
Her mother, Melissa, told ABC News that Jazlynmae was having such trouble breathing that she was intubated and had to spend eight days on a ventilator.
Now, her family and her doctors hope she’s slowly on the mend, though still on oxygen, working to breathe on her own.
“You could see like her ribs, like her skin sucking through like her ribs,” Melissa told Faith Abubey Wednesday afternoon. “She had a lot of shoulder breathing, nose flaring and just like if somebody was running a marathon and just breathing you know hard and fast.”
She called seeing her daughter get so sick the “scariest thing” she’s seen.
“Knowing I can’t do anything to make it better, and just do ‘mommy’s little quick fix,’ and just wake her up, and tell her, it’s okay,” Melissa said. “That’s been the hardest thing.”
Over the past several weeks, pediatric hospitals have been reporting they are at capacity or near capacity due to an early surge of RSV cases.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RSV is particularly dangerous among infants and young children, including those with weakened immune systems, have chronic lung or heart conditions or have neuromuscular disorders.
Every year, between 58,000 and 80,000 children younger than age 5 are hospitalized every year and between 100 and 500 children die from the condition.
Also complicating matters is an early flu season and COVID-19 cases ticking up after holding steady for months,
UNMH staff said the hospital has been struggling to deal with the “tripledemic” and is currently well over 100% capacity.
“It’s hard. Our ERs are full, our waiting rooms are full,” lead pediatrician Dr. Anna Duran told ABC News. “Our physicians are having to examine patients in the waiting room, you know, and we’ve run out of space.”
She continued, “We just have to continue seeing each and every patient, because they will continue to come.”
UNMH said it put up a tent outside of its emergency department on Friday to help relieve some of the strain.
The hospital is in its eighth straight week of the children’s hospital being above capacity — and in recent weeks, it has now seen the same exact thing happen on the adult side, spokesperson Chris Ramirez told ABC News.
However, data from the CDC shows RSV cases may be receding after peaking in mid-November.
Weekly cases have declined from 15,188 the week ending Nov. 26 to 12,571 the week ending Dec. 3, according to an ABC News analysis of the data.
Melissa said she hopes Jazlynmae is home by Christmas and that by sharing her daughter’s stories, other parents can watch for the signs of RSV before it progresses to a serious condition.
“I don’t want another mom, another dad, another sibling to go through what we went through,” Melissa said. “It’s the most heart-wrenching thing to watch your baby go through…and it’s not just a little cold. Because that little cold? I could have lost my baby.”
(NEW YORK) — States that imposed strict abortion laws this year were already more likely to have significantly higher maternal and infant death rates as well as fewer doctors providing care to women, according to an analysis released Wednesday by an influential nonprofit research group.
In 2020, for example, maternal death rates were 62% higher in the states that later passed or implemented abortion restrictions compared to the states where abortion remains accessible, the study by the Commonwealth Fund, which aims to address gaps in health care, found.
Those conclusions are likely to be cited by abortion rights advocates who have long argued that states leading the charge on abortion bans are also the least equipped to care for women giving birth.
“Compared with their counterparts in other states, women of reproductive age and birthing people in states with current or proposed abortion bans have more limited access to affordable health insurance coverage, worse health outcomes, and lower access to maternity care providers,” according to the study.
The study did not look at the impact on the abortion bans specifically — a much tougher metric that could take years to analyze. Still, the researchers warn that, according to their findings, abortion restrictions risk widening the existing disparities between states.
“The result is a deepening of fractures in the maternal health system and a compounding of inequities by race, ethnicity, and geography,” the researchers conclude.
Republicans including Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, whose state successfully challenged Roe v. Wade — the Supreme Court case that guaranteed national abortion access — have argued that it’s possible to restrict the procedure while also improving care for pregnant women.
Earlier this year, Reeves said his state plans to improve its care system for pregnant women and infants.
“The pro-life movement must dedicate itself to ensuring mothers and their babies receive the support they both need during pregnancy and after,” he said in June.
So far though, such a system hasn’t fully materialized: Mississippi is among a dozen states that have declined to expand Medicaid, the government’s health care for poor and disabled Americans. Of those 12 states, 10 of them have also imposed strict abortion laws.
Republicans in those states contend that expanding Medicaid might not be financially sustainable. But Medicaid, its supporters say, expands health care access for struggling Americans who might otherwise forgo care entirely, including women who might not see a doctor until months into a pregnancy.
In an interview with ABC News, the lead researcher on the Commonwealth Fund study, Dr. Gene Declercq, said that lack of health coverage is a big reason why women living in certain states struggle with pregnancies and birth.
Declercq, a professor at Boston University, said his study found that many areas with abortion restrictions also had few or no providers caring for women.
“If you have a whole policy that’s geared toward not really taking care of women’s health, except when they might be pregnant and you want to support the health of a baby, we shouldn’t be surprised when we find out that there’s problems with women’s health,” he said.
The question for politicians, Declercq said, is whether or not a state’s health care system is set up to protect women and children — or if that’s just campaign rhetoric.
(NEW YORK) — More than 3,500 Americans have died from long COVID-related illnesses, according to new federal data.
The report, published early Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, looked at death certificate data from January 2020 through the end of June 2022.
The NCHS team looked for several key terms including “long COVID,” “long haul COVID,” “chronic COVID” and “post COVID syndrome.”
Results showed long COVID played a role in 3,544 deaths, with the condition listed as either an underlying or a contributing cause of death.
“This is the first time that we’ve used death certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System to identify deaths with long COVID,” Farida Ahmad, a health scientist at the NCHS, told ABC News. “Because this is a new analysis and the first time we’re looking at long COVID in death certificates, I think a lot of the aspects of the report stand out as unique.”
While not an insignificant number, this means long COVID deaths made up less than 1% of the more than one million COVID-19 related deaths during this period.
Long COVID occurs when patients who have cleared the infection still have symptoms at least four weeks after recovery. In some cases, these symptoms can persist for months or even years.
Patients can experience a variety of lingering symptoms including fatigue, difficulty breathing, headaches, brain fog, joint and muscle pain, and continued loss of taste and smell, according to the CDC.
It’s unclear what causes people to develop long COVID but research is ongoing.
The report found February 2022 was the month with the highest number of long COVID deaths with 393.
Additionally, the percentage of deaths linked to long COVID peaked in June 2021 at 1.2% and in April 2022 at 3.8%, both of which coincided with decreasing numbers of COVID-19 deaths, according to the report.
The team then looked at differences in COVID-19 deaths and long COVID deaths between males and females over a 12-month period from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022.
While a larger percentage of COVID-19 deaths, or 56%, occurred among men, long COVID deaths were more evenly split with 51.5% occurring among males.
Similarly to COVID-19, long COVID deaths were most common among elderly Americans.
Those between ages 75 and 84 accounted for 28.8% of long COVID deaths followed by those aged 85 and older at 28.1% and those aged 65 to 74 at 21.5%.
There were also disparities when it came to race. White Americans made up the most deaths from long COVID at 78.5% followed by Black Americans at 10.1% and Hispanic Americans at 7.8%
Comparatively, Asian Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives and other multiracial Americans made up less than 2% of long COVID deaths per group.
However, the long COVID death rate was highest among American Indian/Alaska Native people at 14.8 per 1 million. Meanwhile, white Americans had the second highest rate at 6.7 per 1 million.
Although Black and Hispanic Americans have traditionally higher COVID-19 mortality rates, they had lower long COVID death rates at 6.4 per 1 million and 4.7 per 1 million, respectively.
According to the report, this may be because Hispanic and Black Americans have higher COVID-19 death rates, meaning there are fewer survivors to experience long COVID, as well as fewer diagnoses due to less access to health care.
Ahmad said she hopes the report is a first step in being able to more accurately track long COVID deaths.
“We don’t use an official classification code for long COVID on death certificates and so this report is kind of that first step and if we do, it might be easier to track these kinds of deaths over time,” she said. “And if there is a need for kind of guidance for how deaths certificates should be filled out, when long COVID is suspected as a contributing cause of death, that might help have more accurate data on the death certificate.”
(NEW YORK) — As the so-called “tripledemic” of flu, RSV and COVID-19 continues across the United States, health officials are encouraging people to wear face masks again, especially children.
Health officials in multiple states, including New York, California and Arizona, are strongly recommending people wear masks because of the ongoing threat of flu, COVID-19 and RSV happening all at once.
The U.S. has already surpassed 10 million cases of flu-like illnesses, leading health experts to warn this could be the worst flu season the country has seen in a decade. Currently, over 40 states are reporting high or very high rates of flu-like illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition, COVID-19 cases and deaths rose by 50% over the past week, despite the rate previously remaining flat for a long period of time, according to the CDC.
The number of cases of RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, hit a two-year high in November, leading the CDC to issue an official health advisory in response to the rise in respiratory infections in children.
The ongoing higher rates of flu, RSV and COVID-19 come at a time when children tend to be indoors more often due to colder weather, and when families tend to be busy with school activities and holiday gatherings.
With the ongoing surge, health officials highly recommend wearing a face mask when in crowded, indoor spaces to avoid both spreading and catching viruses.
The CDC continues to recommend mask-wearing for children and adults on public transportation, including trains, planes and buses.
ABC News’ Good Morning America spoke with Dr. Elizabeth Murray, a mom of two and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, to answer parents’ questions about wearing face masks once again.
1. When and where should kids wear face masks?
Both children and adults should wear face masks when possible in indoor, crowded settings, according to Murray, who is also a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In the absence of mask mandates, Murray said that families need to make the best decisions for themselves, knowing that each family and each individual child is unique.
“It would be so awesome and so easy if we could just kind of say, ‘You always do this,’ or, ‘You never do that,’ and it really is not at that point,” she said. “But as we head into the holidays and we want to make sure we’re healthy to see our families, now is the time to really take those precautions.”
Murray gave the example of her own family, noting that her oldest daughter, at age 13, can make decisions on her own about where and when a mask would help.
“She is able to, at her age, to kind of make decisions of, ‘I’m in a big group working close with a bunch of people, so now is a good time for me to wear a mask,’ versus, ‘I’m sitting in a study hall with three other students and we’re all spaced out so I probably don’t need to wear a mask at this point,'” said Murray. “She also is really active in a lot of extracurricular activities that are really important to her, so she is more comfortable wearing a mask during school or in large group activities because she wants to make sure that she stays healthy so she can participate in her cross-country meet and participate in her school play and things like that.”
On the other hand, Murray said her 6-year-old daughter struggles with wearing a face mask in school, where it is not required.
“We found that [wearing a mask] is really not something we were able to do with her because nobody else is doing it,” Murray said. “So for her, we’re focusing on other things like making sure she does a really good job of washing her hands. At any sign of an illness, we’re making sure we’re keeping her home so she won’t be spreading illness. And we do outdoor activities or other things with smaller groups of people where she’s not having as many exposures.”
2. Did wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic cause the surge of illness now?
According to Murray, children’s immune systems were not permanently damaged by wearing masks during the pandemic.
“The mask just helps to decrease transmission of a lot of the common illnesses,” said Murray. “Now that people are not wearing masks anymore, now that schools are back in an in-person setting and now that it’s fall and winter when we see some of these germs start to come around, it makes sense that everything is back.”
She continued, “We had years when kids just were not seeing as much illness and now everybody’s getting sick because all of the germs are back at once.”
3. What type of face masks should children wear?
Murray recommends that children wear “high-quality” masks that they feel comfortable in and will wear.
“There are different styles that can work equally well, so really making sure that you have a mask that your child likes and fits comfortably on their face is important,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard to find smaller masks but there are good resources out there.”
In order for a mask to be effective, it needs to fit over the nose and cover under the chin and should lay flat on the skin.
Experts say it is fine for kids to use clips or bands to relieve pressure on their ears when wearing a mask.
One technique to check the quality of your child’s mask is to hold the mask up to the sun. If you can see light through the mask as you hold it stretched, it’s not thick enough.
4. At what age can a child start wearing a face mask?
Children can start wearing face masks starting at age 2, according to both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
5. Do adults need to wear face masks too?
Yes, adults are also encouraged to wear face masks in crowded, indoor settings. Murray said it is especially important for parents and caregivers to wear masks in order to set an example for their children.
6. What else can parents do to protect their kids from flu, RSV and COVID-19?
Murray said it is critical that children and adults are up to date with their vaccinations.
Children ages 6 months and older are eligible to get a flu vaccine as well as a COVID-19 vaccine, with “rare exceptions,” according to the CDC. Both vaccinations are free and are widely available at doctors’ offices and local pharmacies.
Murray said she also encourages her patients and others to stay home if they are sick and to keep their children home from school and activities if they are showing symptoms of illness.
“I think people have a lot of pressure to get back to work and all of those things, but still we really need to make sure that regardless of what you’re sick with, when people are ill, they need to stay home,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — Maintaining a healthy weight has numerous health benefits, but primary care doctors may not always give specific, effective weight loss advice to their patients, according to a new study in Family Practice.
The study, which was led by researchers in the U.K., analyzed over 150 audio recordings from primary care visits, finding doctors often vaguely encourage patients to “eat less” or “do more” rather than recommending tried-and-tested weight loss strategies. Only 20% of visits included specific, actionable instructions for patients.
Although the study was based in the U.K., doctors say it has broad implications in the United States and beyond. In both countries, roughly two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese.
Dr. Selvi Rajagopal, an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics who specializes in obesity medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said telling patients they need to lose weight by moving more or eating less is not helpful and can be harmful.
“It puts a lot of the blame on the patient. And it also gives them no really clear tangible action plan of what to do,” Rajagopal told ABC News.
The study authors suggest that more specific clinical guidelines on effective weight loss counseling would better support primary care doctors who are trying to help their patients lose weight.
The National Institute of Health encourages health care providers to partner with their patients who want to lose weight to make an individualized plan together, but a study in 2020 also found that primary care providers often said they have a lack of confidence in weight loss treatments and lack of knowledge about effective weight loss methods. Doctors also have a lot of time-constraints that can limit adequate patient counseling.
“There’s just so little time. There are so many other tasks, [doctors] feel overwhelmed,” Rajagopal said.
Research has shown that setting goals can be an effective weight loss method that health care providers can incorporate into patient visits. Weight loss goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-sensitive (S.M.A.R.T.) as opposed to advice that is too broad or vague.
An example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal is telling someone who drinks two sugary beverages a day to aim for just one sugary beverage a month. This is more actionable than simply making it a goal to drink less sugary drinks. But Rajagopal also emphasized that only the individual can decide what is realistic and achievable for them.
“If it’s something that just isn’t within their bandwidth for whatever reason, whatever life circumstances, telling them to do something unachievable is not going to happen,” said Rajagopal.
Jade A Cobern, MD, a board-eligible in pediatrics and MPH candidate, is a member of the ABC News Medical Unit and general preventive medicine resident at Johns Hopkins.
