(NEW YORK) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deployed a federal team to New York to investigate the case of polio detected in Rockland County.
The team will also help administer vaccinations in the county, according to ABC station WABC-TV.
It’s unclear how long the CDC will remain in the county or if the findings will be released to the public.
On July 21, the New York State Health Department announced an unvaccinated patient in Rockland County had contracted a case of vaccine-derived polio, the first case in the United States in nearly a decade.
This means the patient was infected by someone who received the oral polio vaccine, which is no longer used in the U.S.
Unlike the polio vaccine given by injection, which uses an inactive virus, the oral vaccine uses a live weakened virus.
In rare cases, the virus spreading through sewage can affect those who are unvaccinated. This is different from wild polio, which infects people by circulating naturally in the environment.
Since then, it’s been revealed the patient was a previously healthy 20-year-old man who had traveled to Europe. He was diagnosed after he went to the hospital when he developed paralysis in his legs.
Last week, the state health commissioner said “hundreds” of people in New York could be infected after the virus was found in wastewater samples in multiple counties.
As of Aug. 5, 11 samples were genetically linked to the Rockland County patient including six samples collected in June and July from Rockland County and five samples collected in July from nearby Orange County, health department data shows.
New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett called on anybody who hasn’t received the polio vaccine to do so.
The statewide rate of polio vaccination is 78.96% while the Rockland County rate sits at 60.34%, state data shows. In Orange County, the rate is even lower at 58.66%.
“Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected,” Bassett said in a statement Thursday. “Coupled with the latest wastewater findings, the Department is treating the single case of polio as just the tip of the iceberg of much greater potential spread.”
The statement continued, “We must meet this moment by ensuring that adults, including pregnant people, and young children by 2 months of age are up to date with their immunization — the safe protection against this debilitating virus that every New Yorker needs.”
Neither the CDC nor the NYSDOH immediately returned ABC News’ request for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — Joe Biden on Monday traveled to Kentucky to survey damage from severe flooding in the state — a visit that also marks his first presidential trip since he tested positive for COVID-19 last month.
He landed in Lexington on Monday morning to talk with local officials about the flooding, which killed at least 37 people after rain soaked the eastern part of the state. On Sunday, the president amended an existing emergency declaration for Kentucky to free up additional disaster assistance.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to meet with Gov. Andy Beshear and Kentucky first lady Britainy Beshear, according to the White House. The Bidens will also visit families affected by the flooding.
The president previously visited Kentucky in December to survey tornado damage in the state.
Biden told reporters at Dover Air Force Base before flying on Monday that he felt “great” and again tested negative for COVID that morning.
He was first cleared to leave isolation Sunday after testing negative for a second time following a so-called rebound case of the virus.
The president tested positive last month and, according to his doctor, experienced mild symptoms including a slight fever, cough and sore throat. He tested negative less than a week after that first positive test but received another positive test just days after that.
During his initial bout with COVID, Biden took Paxlovid, which is a key therapeutic for high-risk patients in preventing hospitalization and other severe outcomes. But it at times produces a rebound case after a patient finishes their course of treatment.
After he got the green light to leave isolation, Biden traveled to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, before traveling Monday to Kentucky.
(NEW YORK) — Scientists have made a distressing discovery on how global warming will affect known infectious diseases.
Climate hazards are expected to aggravate 58% of all known human pathogens, according to a study published Monday in Nature Climate Change. That’s over half of infectious diseases discovered since the end of the Roman Empire, Camilo Mora, a data analyst and associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaii Manoa, told ABC News.
While the impact that climate change can have on human vulnerability to a range of diseases has been well accepted, the full threat climate change poses to humanity in the context of disease was unknown, according to the researchers. Past studies have primarily focused on specific groups of pathogens, such as bacteria or viruses, the response to certain hazards, such as heatwaves or increased flooding, or transmission types, such as food or water-borne.
Mora’s team systematically screened literature that revealed 3,213 empirical cases linking 286 unique, human pathogenic diseases to 10 climate hazards, such as warming, floods or drought. Of these, 277 pathogens were found to be aggravated by at least one climate hazard, with only nine pathogens “exclusively diminished” by climatic hazards, according to the study.
A whopping 58% of an authoritative list of infectious diseases documented to have impacted humanity have already been shown to be aggravated by climatic hazards — a finding the researchers found “shocking,” Mora said.
Examples of hazards include those that bring humans closer to pathogens, such as storms and floods, which then cause displacements associated with cases of Lassa fever or Legionnaires’ disease.
Other examples are events that bring pathogens closer to humans, in which warming increases in areas over which organisms that transmit diseases, such as Lyme disease, dengue and malaria, are active.
There is a broad taxonomic diversity of human pathogenic diseases, such as bacteria, viruses, animals, plants, fungi and protozoa, as well as transmission types — for example, vector-borne, airborne, direct contact — that can be affected by warming, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, extreme precipitation, floods and sea level rise, according to the study.
Shifts in the geographical range of species are one of the most common ecological indications of climate change, according to the study. Warming and precipitation changes, for instance, were associated with range expansion of vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, birds and several mammals, which then were implicated in outbreaks by viruses, bacteria, animals and protozoans, including dengue, chikungunya, plague, Lyme disease, West Nile virus, Zika, trypanosomiasis, echinococcosis and malaria.
The researchers found 1,006 unique pathways in which climatic hazards, via different transmission types, resulted in cases of pathogenic diseases.
Warming at higher latitudes have allowed vectors and pathogens to survive winter, aggravating outbreaks by several viruses, such as an anthrax outbreak in the Arctic circle that may have stemmed from an ancient bacterial strain that emerged from an unearthed animal corpse as the frozen ground thawed, according to the study.
COVID-19 is an example of how one single disease can create a thematic change in society, Mora said, adding that he does not believe the most recent pandemic — and the animal-to-human transmission that likely caused it — could have happened without global warming.
This research reveals more evidence that humans will have difficulty adapting to climate change, especially those in developing countries, Mora said.
“The magnitude of the vulnerability when you think about one or two diseases — okay, sure, we can deal with that,” he said. “But when you’re talking about 58% of the diseases, and 58% of those diseases can be affected or triggered in 1,000 different ways. So that, to me, was also revealing of the fact that we’re not going to be able to adapt to climate change.”
Extreme weather events such as drought and wildfire in the West, flooding in both inland and coastal areas and extreme heat in places that previously did not experience such high temperatures are becoming more common, Mora said.
The findings reveal unique pathways in which climatic hazards can lead to disease, underlining the limited capacity for societal adaptation, and emphasizing the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the authors said.
(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — Sentencing is underway for the three men convicted of federal hate crimes in the death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.
Travis McMichael, who fired the fatal shot on Feb. 23, 2020, was sentenced Monday to life in prison.
His father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan could also face life sentences. They’ll be sentenced Monday afternoon at the Brunswick, Georgia, courthouse.
The three white men were convicted in February by a federal jury who decided that they followed and killed Arbery because he was Black.
After deliberating for less than four hours, the jury convicted all three men of being motivated by racial hate in interference of Arbery’s civil rights and attempted kidnapping. Travis McMichael, 36, and his 64-year-old father were also convicted of carrying and brandishing a weapon during the commission of a crime of violence. Travis McMichael was also found guilty of discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.
The McMichaels chased Arbery in their pickup truck after they saw him jogging in their neighborhood, falsely believing he had been responsible for several break-ins in the Satilla Shores neighborhood. Bryan joined the chase in his own truck, blocking Arbery from escaping and recorded cellphone footage of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun after a brief struggle.
During the trial, prosecutors released text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan repeatedly used racist slurs. Witnesses also testified to hearing both McMichaels make racist comments.
All three defendants are already serving life in prison for the killing after being found guilty of murder in a Georgia state court last fall.
(NEW YORK) — With the midterm elections three months away, Americans maintain a sour view on the state of the economy and are pessimistic about its future course, with President Joe Biden’s approval rating across a range of issue areas continuing to suffer, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.
More than two-thirds (69%) of Americans think the nation’s economy is getting worse — the highest that measure has reached since 2008, when it was 82% in an ABC News/Washington Post poll. Currently, only 12% think the economy is getting better and 18% think it is essentially staying the same.
Americans’ views of Biden’s handling of the economic recovery remain overwhelmingly negative — and are virtually unchanged from the same poll in early June, with only 37% of Americans approving of the job the president is doing and 62% disapproving in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.
The president’s rating on inflation is even worse, with 29% of Americans saying they approve, while 69% disapprove. This number is also unchanged since June.
The only area where Biden sees some improvement in this poll is on his handling of gas prices. Just over one in three Americans (34%) approve of the president’s handling of gas prices — up seven points since June.
This comes as the country has seen the average cost for a gallon of gas come down — price drops celebrated by the White House.
The low confidence in Biden’s handling of the economy and inflation comes on the heels of Friday’s jobs report, which showed that 528,000 jobs were added in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Americans also saw the unemployment rate go down to 3.5%.
In a statement released Friday, Biden touted the July jobs report, saying that it shows that his administration is “making significant progress for working families.”
When asked how enthusiastic they were about voting in November, the poll found that 75% of Republicans are either very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting, compared to 68% of Democrats and 49% of independents. In ABC News/Ipsos polls conducted in April and June this year, Republicans were more likely to report that they were very enthusiastic about voting than Democrats. That gap has narrowed to five points in this August poll.
There are other glimmers of hope for the Democrats in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll when it comes to the potential impact abortion could have on how voters cast their ballots this November.
The poll asked voters which candidate they would support if one favored keeping abortion legal and available and the other candidate supported limiting abortion except to protect the mother’s life. About half of Americans (49%) would be more likely to support the candidate who would keep access to abortion legal compared to the 27% of Americans who would be more likely to support the candidate who favors limiting abortion. Meanwhile, 22% of Americans say that abortion would not have an impact on how they would vote.
This comes after voters in the deep red state of Kansas voted to preserve the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, shocking the country in the first state-level test since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
In a statement from Biden on the defeat of Kansas’s abortion amendment, he called on Congress to “listen to the will of the American people and restore the protections of Roe as federal law.”
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using Ipsos Public Affairs‘ KnowledgePanel® August 5-6, 2022, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 665 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.2 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 29-25-40 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News’ Ken Goldstein and Dan Merkle contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As more states enact near-total bans and restrictions on abortion, providers say many patients are experiencing delayed care which can force them into later stages of pregnancy.
Abortion care options are becoming more limited and complex in some cases, which often means higher costs for patients. For example, medication abortion, which is less costly than other options, is only an option up to 10 weeks into pregnancy.
The most recent data available, from 2017, shows the average cost of an abortion in the first trimester nationwide was about $550, whether it was medication or procedural, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive rights.
Any abortion care for pregnancies further along than 12 weeks costs more than that. The median cost of abortion care for pregnancies at 20 weeks in 2017 was $1,670, Dr. Rachel Jones, a principal research scientist at Guttmacher, told ABC News.
Jones said that access to abortion care for patients in their second trimester has always been limited, and those patients have always had to travel further.
Almost every clinic offers abortions up to nine and 10 weeks into pregnancy and 75% offer abortions until the second trimester, Jones said.
“After that, the percentage of clinics that offer abortion at each week of gestation starts dropping off. And so people are going to have to travel further to get to a facility that can provide care at those gestations. And of course this is all going to be incredibly exacerbated given the overturning of Roe,” Jones said.
Dr. Bhavik Kumar, a provider in Texas and the national medical spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, told ABC News that how far along a pregnancy has to be before costs go up varies between clinics and across states.
Whether a patient has insurance coverage is also a main factor in determining cost. In some states, patients may not have to pay anything because abortion is covered by insurance, Kumar said.
Abortions for pregnancies that are further along can cost more because of fewer healthcare professionals that can provide that care and their limited availability, abortion procedures becoming more complicated and requiring medications or abortions needing to happen over two days, Jones said.
Second trimester abortions could also require more surgical preparations like medications or dilators, sometimes an extra procedure to insert dilators, all of which requires more time in the clinic and is factored into higher costs, Kumar said.
When the pandemic first hit, Texas said abortions were not essential health care, forcing patients to travel across state lines or not get care. When abortion care resumed, a study documented that there were more patients coming in at later stages of pregnancy, Jones said.
Other abortion restrictions, like having to make in-person visits or having to return to a clinic before getting care can also delay care by several days and push patients from one trimester into another, Jones said, citing Guttmacher research.
When Texas was one of the only states implementing a ban, wait times were around one to three days. As time progressed, within one to two months, providers saw wait times jump to one to three weeks depending on which clinic you look at, Kumar said.
Kumar said he is seeing a lot of patients who are looking to get care in another state seeing delays of several days or several weeks and some clinics are so overwhelmed, they are not even making appointments.
States with the least restrictions, that do not have mandatory wait times are where Kumar says he is hearing about longer wait times.
“It seems like there’s sort of hotspots that are forming for abortion access and the states that come to mind are Illinois, Kansas, Colorado [and] California because of the lack of most restrictions and the ability to get care,” Kumar said.
Experts said waiting longer into pregnancy increases costs.
Dr. Katie McHugh, an abortion provider who works at three clinics in Indiana, told ABC News that abortions for pregnancies that are less than 14 weeks cost around $800.
These patients are getting medication abortions or simple procedures, McHugh said.
The cost of abortion for pregnancies further along than 14 weeks range from $900 to $1,200, depending on the stage of pregnancy and need for anesthesia or if the abortion is done over multiple days, McHugh said.
Some states like Indiana had mandated that abortion care be done in a hospital after a certain number of weeks, which costs “many thousands of dollars,” McHugh said. The cutoff for when care is required to be in a hospital is regulated by states and varies around the country.
It costs less to get care at a clinic than a hospital because clinics have less overhead costs. Abortions at later gestations cost more largely because they need to be done in a surgical or hospital setting, McHugh said.
Asked whether her clinic has received patients further into pregnancy because of bans or restrictions in their states, McHugh said “absolutely.”
“Most of the people that we’re seeing from out of state, had to be referred here because of the restrictions in their own states. And then some of them, they tried to be referred to here, but they can’t get here in time. And so then we are having to refer them to Illinois,” she said.
On Friday, Indiana became the first state to enact near-total abortion ban since the U.S. Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe.
Kumar said that for patients with medically complex pregnancies who need abortion care for health reasons, delaying their care complicates risks.
People likely to have complications like preeclampsia, gestational hypertension, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes or who have had past hemorrhages are also likely to be people who experience other barriers to access. Those people are often uninsured people, people of color and low-income people, Kumar said.
Patients who have to travel to get care also face other costs that vary from patient to patient.
“So much of that depends on where people are traveling from, how much work they have to miss, how much they have to pay in childcare, not to mention gas and lodging and all of those costs,” McHugh said.
(WASHINGTON) — Nearly uniform Republican opposition in the Senate on Sunday stripped a proposed cap on insulin prices in private insurance from Democrats’ party-line climate, health and tax bill.
Democrats had sought to overrule a decision from the Senate rules official, the parliamentarian, that a $35-per-month limit on insulin costs under private insurances did not comply with the budget reconciliation process, which allowed Democrats to pass their bill with a bare majority.
The cap, which was proposed by Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., needed 60 votes to pass and remain in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It ultimately failed by a 57-43 vote.
Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan voted for the measure with Democrats. All 43 “no” votes came from Republicans.
The cap’s scrapping was quickly seized on by Democrats and stirred controversy beyond them, with critics of the GOP citing the sometimes startling cost of needed insulin for diabetics.
Republicans, in turn, accused Democrats of being misleading about a vote that they said amounted to a technicality rather than a policy difference.
“Lying Dems and their friends in corporate media are at it again, distorting a Democrat ‘gotcha’ vote. In reality, the Dems wanted to break Senate rules to pass insulin pricing cap instead of going through regular order,” Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson tweeted afterward, noting that he previously “voted for an amendment, that Dems blocked, to provide insulin at cost to low-income Americans.”
While the proposed cap was not expected to get the 10 Republicans needed to have the measure preserved as part of the Democrats’ sprawling reconciliation deal — the 60-vote threshold would have overcome the parliamentarian’s objections about using the 51-vote reconciliation — the process allowed the party to put GOP senators on the record on a popular policy.
Republicans used a similar tactic in voting on Biden’s immigration policy as part of possible amendments to the IRA.
The parliamentarian had said the insulin cap would violate the Byrd Rule, which requires that a measure have an effect on the federal budget that is not “merely incidental” in order to qualify to pass through reconciliation.
The parliamentarian, meanwhile, did allow Warnock’s $35 insulin cap to apply to those covered under Medicare.
(NEW YORK) — Wild swings in the share price of a largely unknown Hong Kong-based fintech company in recent days have reminded some analysts and traders of the “meme stock” craze, which grabbed headlines and stoked controversy early last year.
On Tuesday, the stock price of online financial services company AMTD Digital was more than 21,000% above the price at its initial public offering last month.
The price fell in recent days to end the week well below the earlier peak but still, as of market close Friday, the stock price stood at $721, which amounts to a 127% jump for the week and a 9,143% increase since its IPO. The stock debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on July 15 at $7.80 per share.
At the height of AMTD Digital’s stock rise on Tuesday, the company reached a valuation of $310 billion, making it larger than Coca-Cola and Bank of America, according to FactSet. The nearly 3-year-old company brought in just $25 million in revenue last year, according to a regulatory filing.
The dramatic rise in the company’s stock price owes to a targeted surge in online retail trading akin to that which sent shares skyrocketing in companies like GameStop and AMC early last year, Dan Ives, an equities analyst at Wedbush Securities, told ABC News.
Some observers, however, questioned the designation of AMTD Digital as a meme stock.
The phenomenon of a meme stock trade describes a trend in which retail investors see shares rise steeply as others back a firm, then more jump into the fray, pushing the stock price further upward and enticing another wave of investors. A surge of such trades last year prompted a congressional hearing and investigation.
AMTD Digital did not respond to a request for comment. But a statement released by the company on Tuesday expressed gratitude to investors for the support, while acknowledging the stock is “still undergoing our initial stabilization period.”
“During the period since our initial public offering, the Company noted significant volatility in our ADS price and also observed some very active trading volume,” AMTD Digital said.
“To our knowledge, there are no material circumstances, events nor other matters relating to our Company’s business and operating activities since the IPO date,” the company added.
Citron Research, an equity research firm, rebuked the designation of AMTD Digital as a meme stock, citing the relatively low trading volume of shares in the fintech company compared with the run-up last year of GameStop, which trades under the symbol GME.
“$HKD is NOT a meme stock,” Citron Research tweeted on Wednesday, referring to AMTD Digital by its stock ticker HKD. “Has not captured the imagination of retail traders like $GME.”
Citron Research said in the tweet that 339,000 shares of AMTD Digital were traded on Tuesday.
Almost 900,000 individual accounts traded shares of GameStop each day at the height of the trading frenzy last January, a dramatic rise from less than 10,000 accounts each day earlier that month, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation found.
Still, the volatility in the price of AMTD Digital renewed a debate among some over meme stock trading.
“So we’re all just going to ignore the $400B meme stock in the room?” prominent short-seller Jim Chanos tweeted of AMTD Digital on Tuesday. “We literally had Congressional hearings over the $30B runs of $GME and $AMC, but just [crickets] today.”
Ives, of Wedbush, said the volatility of AMTD Digital in recent days shows that the emergence of a meme stock remains possible, even if it has become less common.
“This is more the rarity than the norm,” he said. “Most of that is in the rearview mirror.”
“But the situation brought to light that the meme era still has oxygen,” he added.
(WASHINGTON) — Basketball star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan should hopefully be released from Russia as part of a “two-for-two” prisoner swap, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson said Sunday.
“My view is optimistic, I think she’s gonna be free. There’s gonna be a prisoner swap — I think it’s gonna be two-for-two. Can’t forget about Paul Whelan,” Richardson, who is an outside adviser involved in Griner’s case, said in an exclusive interview with ABC This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Griner has been detained since February and was sentenced last week to nine years in prison after she was found guilty of drug charges in a Moscow-area court; she has said she accidentally traveled with vape cartridges containing hashish oil.
Whelan, who worked in corporate security after the Marines, was convicted of espionage — which he and the U.S. deny.
Late last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed the administration had made a “substantial proposal” to release Griner and Whelan, which sources told ABC News included freeing notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S.
Richardson said Sunday that he didn’t fully agree with the Biden administration’s messaging strategy. “I wouldn’t have gone public as much as they did,” he said.
But, he said, sometimes comments about prisoner negotiations are made strategically when talks stall: “You want to throw a little bit of a bomb, and I think that’s what they did.”
Richardson described himself as a “catalyst” working on Griner’s case, along with other detainees. “I’ve been talking to the Russians. I talked to the White House,” he said, though he would not detail specifics of his communications.
The founder of the Richardson Center for Global Engagement — which “promotes global peace and dialogue,” according to the center’s website — Richardson recently helped free U.S. journalist Danny Fenster in Myanmar, he said. He was also involved in helping free ex-Marine Trevor Reed, who was released by Russia in April in another prisoner exchange.
Stephanopoulos questioned Richardson about why, in its comments on Griner and Whelan, the White House has publicly omitted Marc Fogel, an American educator held in Russia since August 2021.
“He’s facing a prison sentence right now. His infraction was similar to Brittney Griner’s. Shouldn’t he be included in this?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“All of these that are wrongfully detained need to come home. And our objective should be, despite prisoner exchanges that are not popular, to bring American hostages home,” Richardson said. “Some of these prisoner exchanges are not good. They don’t — the optics are not good. But we have to do it sometimes.”
Stephanopoulos followed up to ask if such trades “will encourage America’s adversaries to actually detain more Americans”?
“There’s no data that supports that,” Richardson said. He cited the case of Fenster: “All they wanted was a photo-op. So data doesn’t support that prisoner exchanges are always the case. Yes, they’re increasing, especially with countries like Iran, Venezuela, Russia. But as unpleasant as they are, we have to bring American hostages home.”
Blinken said in late July he had spoken with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, to try and push forward on negotiations.
Richardson on Sunday complimented Lavrov’s role in the issue.
“Lavrov, he and I were U.N. ambassadors together at the same time,” Richardson said. “And I’m pleased that he’s pragmatic, that he’s sort of in charge and sent a good signal. I think the negotiations are going to be undertaken.”
(BOULDER CITY, Nev.) — Human remains were again found in Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir that continues to shrink amid a decades-long drought, officials announced Sunday.
According to the National Park Service, someone made the discovery at the park’s Swim Beach in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, on the Nevada side, around 11:15 a.m. Saturday. This marks the fourth time since May that human remains were found in Lake Mead, where water levels continue to recede at historic levels.
With the help of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s dive team, park rangers responded and set up a perimeter to retrieve the remains, the NPS said.
Officials have said the reservoir’s water levels are so low they could hit “dead pool” status, which means that the water is too low to flow downstream.
The minimum water surface level needed to generate power at the Hoover Dam is 1,050 feet, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Anything below that is considered an “inactive pool,” and a “dead pool” exists when the water level hits 895 feet, according to the federal agency.
Satellite images released last month by NASA show side-by-side comparisons of Lake Mead, one taken on July 6, 2000, and the other more than two decades later on July 6 of this year.
A result of the diminishing water level is that bodies and human parts have been emerging.
On May 7, human skeletal remains were found near the lake’s Callville Bay, according to the National Park Service. The discovery came a week after the decayed body of a man was found stuffed in a steel barrel near the reservoir’s Hemenway Fishing Pier, more than 20 miles from Callville Bay, according to the LVMPD.
On July 25, human remains were also found at Swim Beach.
Officials launched an investigation into the most recent discovery on Saturday, and the Clark County Medical Examiner has been contacted to determine the cause of death.
ABC News’ Julia Jacobo contributed to this report.
