File photo – Ato Kwamena Dadzie/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — More than a dozen people were killed and many more were injured by a massive explosion that rocked southwestern Ghana on Thursday, authorities said.
A vehicle transporting mining explosives between the gold mines of Tarkwa and Chirano in Ghana’s Western Region collided with a motorcycle in the small town of Apiate on Thursday afternoon. The truck caught fire from the collision and exploded about 15 minutes later, as residents were gathered around the scene of the crash, according to a spokesperson for the Ghana Police Service.
Police officers, firefighters, soldiers and medics rushed to the scene to rescue victims. At least 179 people were affected by the “huge” explosion, including at least 13 who died and 45 who were referred to specialist hospitals, the police spokesperson said while cautioning that the numbers could change.
Initial reports estimated the death toll to be higher because some of the wounded were in such bad condition that they were thought to be dead, according to Assistant Commissioner of Police Samuel Kwesi Ofori, who is the director-general of the Ghana Police Service’s Public Affairs Directorate.
As of Friday afternoon, 36 victims remain hospitalized and 96 have been discharged, Ofori said.
The powerful blast leveled surrounding buildings, set homes ablaze, knocked out power and left a vast crater in the ground. It took firefighters hours to extinguish the flames, according to a spokesperson for the Ghana National Fire and Rescue Service.
About 384 people have been displaced in the area due to the incident, which remains under investigation, according to Ofori.
Ghanaian Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia traveled on Friday to the site in Apiate, near the mining city of Bogoso, some 180 miles west of Ghana’s capital.
“This is a sad day,” Bawumia said.
After visiting some of the hospitalized victims, the vice president thanked nurses and doctors for doing “a fantastic job in saving lives.”
“The early intervention yesterday has helped a lot,” he told reporters outside a hospital. “We want to assure all of those patients and their families, the government is willing to be responsible fully for all their medical bills.”
(NEW YORK) — At the beginning of 2020, as the nation celebrated the start of a new year, many Americans were still unaware of the “mysterious pneumonia” that had sickened dozens of workers at a live animal market in Wuhan, China.
The illness, later identified as the “novel coronavirus”, began spreading rapidly across the globe. Several studies have suggested that the virus had already been spreading in the United States, potentially as early as December 2019.
However, it was not until mid-January of 2020, when the virus would officially be recognized as present on U.S. soil.
Two years ago, on Jan. 21, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the first domestic case of coronavirus. The positive patient was a 35-year-old man from Washington state, who had recently returned from Wuhan, China.
Now, two years later, the U.S. has confirmed more than 69 million COVID-19 cases, and 859,000 deaths, the highest in the total for any country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And the nation, despite the wide availability of highly effective vaccines and novel treatments, is experiencing its most significant surge on record due to the highly transmissible omicron variant and tens of millions of eligible Americans remaining unvaccinated.
“These last two years have brought transformational advancements spanning vaccines, treatments and testing. Though these tools are having a clear impact on reducing poor outcomes, we are still seeing one of the worst surges to date,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
‘Low’ risk morphs into pandemic
Just days before the first case was confirmed two years ago, the CDC had implemented public health entry screening at several major airports including San Francisco International Airport, New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport.
At the time, the CDC reported that while the virus was originally thought to be spreading from animal-to-person, there were “growing indications” that “limited person-to-person spread” was taking place.
“This is certainly not a moment for panic or high anxiety. It is a moment for vigilance,” Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said during a news conference that same day. “The risk is low to residents in Washington.”
Less than a week after the first domestic case was confirmed, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which is a division of the CDC, stressed that the “virus is not spreading in the community… For that reason, we continue to believe that the immediate health risk from the new virus to the general public is low at this time.”
In late February, Messonnier said she ultimately expected to see community spread in the U.S. At the time, health officials noted that the virus may not be able to be contained at the border and that Americans should prepare for a “significant disruption” in their lives.
In the months to come, Life Care Center of Kirkland, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility in Seattle suburbs, would become the first epicenter of the virus’ deadly journey across the country. The epicenter quickly then became New York City, which experienced hundreds of deaths a day at the peak of April 2020.
It would be another seven weeks until the World Health Organization would declare the global coronavirus a pandemic, subsequently forcing borders to close, and Americans to retreat to their homes for what some thought would be just a few weeks of “social distancing” and “stay-at-home” orders.
In the first months of pandemic, through April 2020, more than 1 million Americans were sickened and 65,000 died, when the virus was still largely mysterious, treatments and supplies were scarce and hospitals were overwhelmed in large urban areas like New York. Subsequent waves of the virus each had their own characteristics from the deadly winter surge of 2020 to 2021 and the delta variant surge, which upended the optimism that the pandemic would finally come to an end after mass vaccination.
In fact, in the last year alone, more than 450,000 Americans have been lost to the virus.
17 million cases in a month
Two years into the pandemic, federal data shows that hundreds of thousands of Americans are still testing positive for the virus every day, and more than 1,600 others are dying from COVID-19.
In the last month alone, there have been more than 17.1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, and 44,700 reported virus-related deaths. In addition, more than a year into the U.S. domestic vaccine rollout, 62 million eligible Americans who are over the age of 5, about 20% of that group, remain completely unvaccinated.
“After 24 months and unprecedented medical innovation, the last month has brought millions of cases and tens of thousands of deaths. While many might declare victory on the pandemic, we are clearly very far from where want we want to be right now, especially with billions of people yet to be vaccinated,” Brownstein said, referring to the continued global crisis.
The U.S. is still averaging more than 750,000 new cases a day, about three times the surge from last winter in 2021. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that the latest omicron case surge may be beginning to recede in the parts of the country that were first struck by the variant.
Although preliminary global studies indicate that the omicron variant may cause less severe illness than prior variants, health officials say that the sheer numbers of infections caused by the new variant could still overwhelm the health care system.
Glimmers of hope
In New York, daily cases have dropped by 33% in the last week, and in New Jersey, new cases are down by 43.7%. In Massachusetts, wastewater samples indicate the state’s omicron surge is falling rapidly.
In the Southeast, daily cases in Florida are falling too — down by 30% in the last week, though the state is still averaging more than 45,000 new cases a day.
However, health officials caution that overall, the latest COVID-19 surge across much of the country has yet to peak, and hospitals could still be faced with difficult weeks ahead.
Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that the omicron surge has not yet peaked nationally.
“This is a very difficult time during this surge. We are seeing high case numbers and hospitalization rates… we’re also seeing strain in many of our hospitals around the country,” Murthy said. “The next few weeks will be tough.”
More than 160,000 virus-positive Americans are currently hospitalized across the country, a pandemic high. It was just over two weeks ago that we hit 100,000 COVID-19 positive Americans hospitalized.
Half the country – 25 states and Puerto Rico – has seen their COVID-19 related hospital admission rates jump by at least 10% in the last week, and nationwide, an average of more than 21,000 virus-positive Americans are seeking care every day.
And nationally, 99% of U.S. counties are still reporting high transmission. Out of the 3,220 U.S. counties, just 16 counties are not reporting high transmission.
Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the White House, said at the Davos Agenda, a virtual event held by the World Economic Forum, that it is an “open question” as to whether the omicron variant will lead the globe into a new phase of the pandemic.
“It’s not going to be that you’re going to eliminate this disease completely. We’re not going to do that. But hopefully it will be at such a low level that it doesn’t disrupt our normal, social, economic and other interactions with each other,” Fauci said. “To me, that’s what the new normal is. I hope the new normal also includes a real strong corporate memory of what pandemics can do.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 860,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 63.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 21, 9:09 am
Non-citizens entering US via land border, ferry terminals must be fully vaccinated
Beginning Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security is requiring non-U.S. citizens entering the U.S. via land or ferry to be fully vaccinated.
This rule, outlined in October, applies to people arriving from Mexico’s and Canada’s borders.
This requirement does not apply to U.S. citizens traveling over the border.
-ABC News’ Luke Barr
Jan 20, 10:44 pm
Breakthrough cases grew fourfold during omicron emergence: CDC
Despite waning immunity over time, vaccines still dramatically reduced the risk of severe illness caused by COVID-19 through at least the end of the delta wave, according to data updated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday evening.
In November, unvaccinated adults had a four times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19, and a 15 times greater risk of dying from COVID-19, compared to vaccinated individuals, according to federal data pulled from 28 states and jurisdictions.
Additionally, unvaccinated adults had a 13 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a 68 times greater risk of dying from it as compared to fully vaccinated individuals with a booster.
The emergence of omicron does appear to have increased the occurrence of breakthrough cases. Between late November and late-December, the rate of infections among the fully vaccinated increased more than fourfold. Even so, unvaccinated Americans remained twice as likely to test positive for the virus.
Similarly, the rate of infections among the fully vaccinated and boosted Americans testing positive increased by nearly tenfold. However, unvaccinated Americans remained 3.8 times as likely to test positive for the virus.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 20, 4:54 pm
Wastewater data finds omicron may have been in US as early as Nov. 21
A new CDC study finds that the omicron variant was likely in the U.S. more than a week before the first case was detected.
The first official case was detected on Dec. 1 in California. But a review of the national wastewater surveillance system indicates that the variant could have been present as early as Nov. 21, according to samples collected in New York City.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos, Sony Salzman
Jan 20, 4:37 pm
Hospitalizations at record high, cases dropping in some areas
More than 160,000 COVID-19-positive Americans are currently in hospitals — a pandemic high and double the number from about three weeks ago, according to federal data.
It’s still not clear how many were admitted with COVID-19 and how many tested positive for the virus after they were admitted for other reasons.
The U.S. is reporting an average of 760,000 new cases per day, according to federal data.
Although case levels remain high, there’s growing evidence to suggest the omicron surge is receding in the parts of the country first struck by the variant.
In New York, daily cases have dropped by 33% in the last week, while in New Jersey new cases are down by 43.7%.
Wisconsin now leads the nation in new cases per capita, followed by Rhode Island, Utah and South Carolina.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 20, 3:12 pm
San Francisco appears to pass peak of omicron surge: Officials
In San Francisco, COVID-19 cases are “dropping rapidly” following record highs that appeared to peak on Jan. 9, officials announced.
While “cases are still extremely high,” they “have plateaued and are starting to go down,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the Department of Public Health.
“We’re looking at data from other places … the consistent data seem to show that cases go up very fast, they started to come down very fast. So we’re on that downward trend now,” Colfax said.
Shore, Anderson, with producer Michael Rotenberg in 1992 — Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
It appears comedian Louie Anderson‘s cancer battle may have taken a turn for the worse. Comedian and actor Pauly Shoretook to Twitter to call for prayers for his friend, after visiting the 68-year-old comic and Emmy-winning Baskets actor.
“I say this with a heavy heart,” Shore wrote. “[J]ust left the hospital in Las Vegas where Louie Anderson his sisters and close friend were kind enough to let me say my goodbyes.”
Shore added, “he’s still with us but keep him in your prayers.”
A rep for Anderson told ABC Audio earlier this week that the Coming to America star is battling diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and had been “resting comfortably” in the hospital.
Shore addressed his comments to “comedians and @TheComedyStore alumni” — Shore’s mother Mitsi owned the iconic Los Angeles venue where Anderson and many famous stand-ups got their start.
Comedienne Kathy Griffin, who recently battled lung cancer herself, replied to Shore’s post, noting, “Pauly. So sorry. Thinkin about nights with Louis and Judy Toll. Cant laugh harder than that.”
Fans also responded, including one who urged Shore, “Please let him know that we love him,” to which the Encino Man star replied, “I did.”
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A small handful of Instagram content creators can now directly charge followers a monthly subscription fee for exclusive content and benefits in the latest shakeup to impact the ever-evolving digital creator economy.
Instagram’s parent company Meta announced the news in a company blog post, saying it is part of an effort to help enable creators to make a living through its platforms. Meta-owned Facebook launched a similar subscriptions service in 2020 and is now rolling the service out as a test on Instagram after positive feedback from Facebook content creators.
Meta previously said it would not collect any fees from creators on Facebook Subscription purchases until 2023 at the earliest, and said this will also apply to Instagram Subscriptions.
“With Instagram Subscriptions, creators can develop deeper connections with their most engaged followers and grow their recurring monthly income by giving subscribers access to exclusive content and benefits, all within the same platform where they interact with them already,” Meta stated.
The test of subscriptions on Instagram rolled out Wednesday with a small handful of creators, who can set a monthly price of their choice, unlock a “subscribe” button on their profile and offer new benefits to these subscribers including exclusive Instagram Lives and Stories. Content creators will also see a subscriber badge next to comments and messages from their subscribers to more easily identify them.
“Creators do what they do to make a living, and it’s important that that is predictable,” Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter. “And subscriptions are one of the best ways to have a predictable income, a way that is not attached to how much reach you get on any given post, which is inevitably going to go up and down over time.”
The announcement comes as fellow social media giant Twitter recently announced a similar subscription business model for users, and as Meta and more social media platforms have invested heavily in content creators for their platforms.
Meta alone said last July that it plans to invest more than $1 billion in programs “that give creators new ways to earn money for the content they create on Facebook and Instagram.”
The major investments also come, however, as lawmakers and regulators have renewed scrutiny on the power and reach of U.S. tech giants in recent months — and particularly their impact on the mental health of young people. Just last month, Mosseri was called to testify before lawmakers for the first time specifically about the platform’s impact on young users.
Despite the high-profile attention out of Washington, D.C., policymakers have struggled to agree on any concrete law or regulatory changes to crack down on Big Tech.
Dr. Death star Joshua Jackson has been cast opposite Lizzy Caplan in the Paramount+ original series, Fatal Attraction, a reimagining of the classic 1980s psychosexual thriller film starring by Michael Douglas and Glenn Close. Jackson will star in Douglas’ former role of Dan Gallagher, the object of her lover’s obsession following a brief affair. Caplan will take on Close’s former role of his lover, Alex. The new series, per the streamer, “will explore fatal attraction and the timeless themes of marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes towards strong women, personality disorders and coercive control”…
Don’t Look Up filmmaker Adam McKay and The Comey Rule creator Billy Ray are teaming up for a feature film about the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to Deadline. The film, which was originally envisioned as a limited series, will take a “journalistic approach” to chronicling the deadly assault on the citadel of American democracy,” according to the outlet, which adds that the project will be shopped to studios and streamers soon. “The goal was to do a ground-level view of a momentous day,” Ray tells Deadline. “It’s about protesters who became rioters and cops who became defenders of democracy. Someone else can tell the story of the chaos at the White House on that day. I wanted to stay in the trenches”…
Let the battle begin…again! Netflix has ordered Iron Chef: Quest for an Iron Legend, a reboot of the classic Japanese import-turned Food Network series. According to the streaming service, “Five new trailblazing Iron Chefs will welcome brave Challenger Chefs to the reimagined Kitchen Stadium, where they’ll face off and be pushed to the limits of endurance and creativity, as they cook up extraordinary culinary creations.” The competition’s most successful Challenger will return to battle in a grand finale for the chance to be named the first ever “Iron Legend.” A previous American reboot saw Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck and Michael Symon holding the Iron Chef title…
Variety reports that season two of Mike White‘s The White Lotus will take place in Italy — Sicily, to be exact. Once again a Four Seasons Hotel will stand in for White’s fictional luxury chain of White Lotus hotels, specifically the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in the exclusive Sicilian resort town of Taormina. A source close to the show tells Variety. Season two will star F. Murray Abraham, Adam DiMarco, Tom Hollander, Haley Lu Richardson, Aubrey Plaza and Michael Imperioli. Jennifer Coolidge will also return for season 2…
Hardy Krüger, the German actor best known for starring alongside Laurence Olivier in Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far, died “suddenly and unexpectedly” at his home in Palm Springs on Wednesday, his German agency in Hamburg said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. He was 93. Krüger’s other credits include Howard Hawks’ Hatari!, alongside John Wayne, and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, opposite Ryan O’Neal…
A live-action adaptation of the animated classic, The Aristocats, is in early development at Disney, according to Variety. The original 1970 film follows a family of aristocratic cats who live a luxurious life in Paris until their owner’s butler finds out the cats are set to receive a massive fortune, and kidnaps them and abandons them in the country. To recover their fortune, they must befriend an alley cat named Thomas O’Malley. Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Hermione Baddeley, Dean Clark, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and Roddy Maude-Roxby led the voice cast of the original film, which grossed $191 million worldwide. Disney is the parent company of ABC News…
(NEW YORK) — A peanut allergy treatment often used on children 4 years old and up in the U.S. appears to be safe for toddlers too, a new study has found.
Around 2% of children in the country suffer from the allergy, some to a debilitating degree, which is why the discovery is “extremely exciting,” said Dr. David Stukus, professor of clinical pediatrics and director of the Food Allergy Treatment Center at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
In the study, conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases across multiple hospitals, researchers added powder containing peanuts to the daily diets of children, and found that over time, a large majority of them became desensitized to peanuts.
A smaller group of children even achieved full remission, meaning they were no longer allergic to peanuts at all.
While almost all the children studied had reactions to the peanut products, most were mild to moderate in severity, experts said.
The study also found that the younger the patients were when they started the treatment, the better they were able to tolerate peanuts, and the more likely they were to achieve full remission.
This means the treatment may be more effective if started while children’s immune systems are still developing.
“This suggests that if we do start treatment younger, there is a potential to help some children become non-allergic,” said Dr. Lisa Wheatley, section chief at the NIAID Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation.
Pediatric immunology experts interviewed by ABC News said they believe the study marks an important step in allergy research; still, they said more studies are needed to better understand young children’s immune systems and how they change.
The experts said children with a history of severe allergic reactions were excluded from the study, and warned that adding peanut products to the diets of children with known peanut allergies can cause serious reactions and should only be done under the guidance of a physician.
They added that while the study’s findings are promising, there is no one-size-fits-all treatment plan for children with peanut allergies, and parents must weigh the risks, benefits and expectations before letting their kids receive a treatment of any kind.
Aubrie Ford is an emergency medicine resident at Northwell Health, in New York, and a contributor to the ABC News Med Unit.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 860,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 63.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jan 20, 10:44 pm
Breakthrough cases grew fourfold during omicron emergence: CDC
Despite waning immunity over time, vaccines still dramatically reduced the risk of severe illness caused by COVID-19 through at least the end of the delta wave, according to data updated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday evening.
In November, unvaccinated adults had a four times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19, and a 15 times greater risk of dying from COVID-19, compared to vaccinated individuals, according to federal data pulled from 28 states and jurisdictions.
Additionally, unvaccinated adults had a 13 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a 68 times greater risk of dying from it as compared to fully vaccinated individuals with a booster.
The emergence of omicron does appear to have increased the occurrence of breakthrough cases. Between late November and late-December, the rate of infections among the fully vaccinated increased more than fourfold. Even so, unvaccinated Americans remained twice as likely to test positive for the virus.
Similarly, the rate of infections among the fully vaccinated and boosted Americans testing positive increased by nearly tenfold. However, unvaccinated Americans remained 3.8 times as likely to test positive for the virus.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 20, 4:54 pm
Wastewater data finds omicron may have been in US as early as Nov. 21
A new CDC study finds that the omicron variant was likely in the U.S. more than a week before the first case was detected.
The first official case was detected on Dec. 1 in California. But a review of the national wastewater surveillance system indicates that the variant could have been present as early as Nov. 21, according to samples collected in New York City.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos, Sony Salzman
Jan 20, 4:37 pm
Hospitalizations at record high, cases dropping in some areas
More than 160,000 COVID-19-positive Americans are currently in hospitals — a pandemic high and double the number from about three weeks ago, according to federal data.
It’s still not clear how many were admitted with COVID-19 and how many tested positive for the virus after they were admitted for other reasons.
The U.S. is reporting an average of 760,000 new cases per day, according to federal data.
Although case levels remain high, there’s growing evidence to suggest the omicron surge is receding in the parts of the country first struck by the variant.
In New York, daily cases have dropped by 33% in the last week, while in New Jersey new cases are down by 43.7%.
Wisconsin now leads the nation in new cases per capita, followed by Rhode Island, Utah and South Carolina.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Jan 20, 3:12 pm
San Francisco appears to pass peak of omicron surge: Officials
In San Francisco, COVID-19 cases are “dropping rapidly” following record highs that appeared to peak on Jan. 9, officials announced.
While “cases are still extremely high,” they “have plateaued and are starting to go down,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the Department of Public Health.
“We’re looking at data from other places … the consistent data seem to show that cases go up very fast, they started to come down very fast. So we’re on that downward trend now,” Colfax said.
(NEW YORK) — There’s no denying therapy can be a valuable resource for guiding you through life’s ups and downs.
However, it’s also important to recognize that your first meeting with a therapist may not feel like the perfect match for your needs.
For Emily Maldonado, a 27-year-old New York City-based public relations and marketing manager, it took almost a year before she realized her first therapist was not a good fit. After opting to discontinue services, she realized what she actually was looking for in therapy, and that helped her evaluate other therapists with a clearer direction.
“Now, I love my therapist and we’ve been going strong for over a year,” said Maldonado. “My original therapist just listened, but now I know I’m the type that appreciates action items and homework.”
She added, “My current therapist is also Latinx like me so there are some things she just gets.”
Licensed therapist, relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Nedra Glover Tawwab told Good Morning America the process of finding the best therapist can be done like speed dating.
“It’s a way for you to figure out pretty quickly, in 15 or 20 minutes by phone or video, if this person will be a good fit,” said Tawwab. “You just talk for 15 or 20 minutes and sort of figure out if it would be a good situation — and yes, you can talk to a few therapists within the same week to figure out who might be the best fit.”
What to know before you go to your first therapy session
Experts agree that nerves are normal as you’re talking to a stranger and telling them very deep, personal information.
“There is no other space in which we do that, so there’s nothing to compare it to. So it is an awkward and uncomfortable encounter, initially,” said Tawwab.
Talkspace therapist Elizabeth Keohan advised that you shouldn’t expect immediate resonance in the beginning.
“It takes time to acquire a good fit with a therapist, so an openness to feeling emotionally challenged can help navigate whatever is causing tension,” she said.
Kate Rosenblatt, another Talkspace therapist, suggested doing a pre-interview to ask questions such as, “What would our therapy look like together? And have you worked with other people in a similar situation? How were the outcomes?”
It’s generally recommended to attend a minimum of three sessions before evaluating if a therapist is or isn’t right for you.
Once you’ve had a few sessions, and you are unsure if your therapist is the right fit, Rosenblatt shared that there are quite a few factors to consider before choosing to “break up” with your therapist.
Three key questions to ask yourself before moving on
1. Am I making progress in therapy?
“If you’re not where you want to be, and you’ve brought this up to your therapist and you’ve tried something new in therapy, but nothing has changed, it might be time to consider finding a new therapist,” said Rosenblatt. Or, alternatively, if you have made incredible progress, she suggests letting your therapist know it might be time for a break.
2. What do I want more of in therapy that I’m not currently getting?
It’s common for your focus to change throughout therapy, but it’s important to work with someone qualified to support the specific needs you’d like to focus on.
“If you speak with your therapist about your needs, and your therapist cannot adequately meet them, it might be time to find a therapist who can best support you,” said Rosenblatt.
3. Is therapy in general making me feel uncomfortable, or am I feeling uncomfortable with my therapist?
As therapy can bring up some difficult memories or experiences, Rosenblatt highlighted that you’re not going to leave every session feeling better immediately. However, she also advised that it is important to distinguish between your experience in therapy versus with your therapist.
“If your therapist has said or done things that feel unprofessional, uncomfortable or demonstrate a lack of cultural competency, see if it would feel right for you to address these with your therapist and then go from there,” she recommended.
After closely examining your experience, and coming to the conclusion that you’d prefer to move on from your therapist, Tawwab said that it’s truly a matter of preference when it comes to “breaking up” and your therapist, as a professional, is prepared for your relationship to end on your terms. “Believe it or not, therapists are ghosted all the time,” she said.
“It’s a part of the culture. We know everyone won’t come back,” added Tawwab. Still, she suggests that it is helpful to give feedback to aid the therapist in understanding where things might not have aligned.
Once you’ve parted ways with your initial therapist, there are a few tips to help navigate the process of finding someone new without getting discouraged.
Rosenblatt’s best practices to keep in mind include being clear on your priorities in what you want, sourcing therapist referrals from your communities and doing your own research.
With patience and hope, many people have found amazing therapists after some trial and error, and experts concur that one bad experience shouldn’t be the end-all when it comes to taking care of your mental health.
“Meeting the right therapist is like any sort of relationship where you’re learning someone else,” said Tawwab. “If you’re in school, it’s going to be 20 people in your class and you may have one to two friends.”
“If you’re dating, every relationship won’t work out and it’s that same sort of thing,” she continued. “You keep going. Hopefully, you don’t give up on dating or making friends or any of these sort of things, so please don’t give up on finding the right therapist.”
(OKLAHOMA CITY) — Oklahoma doctors say they are seeing a massive surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among children — more than during any previous wave of the pandemic.
Between Jan. 9 and Jan. 15, more than 16,000 children under the age of 18 tested positive for COVID-19, making up 18.7% of all cases in the state that week, according to a weekly epidemiology and surveillance report from the Oklahoma State Department of Health.
That’s a 138% increase from the 6,700 children who contracted the virus the week before and a 566% spike from the 2,400 children who tested positive for the virus the week before Thanksgiving.
“If l look back just to two months ago — kind of October, November — that number tended to be between five and 10,” Dr. Cameron Mantor, acting chief medical officer at OU Health, told ABC News. “In the past three weeks now, we’ve just seen it continue to skyrocket.”
At Oklahoma Children’s Hospital OU Health, more than 50 pediatric patients are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 for the first time ever — a tenfold increase from just two months ago and three times as high as last winter’s surge.
Kids of all ages have been admitted, from as young as 2 weeks old up through teenagers, according to Mantor.
He said it’s not clear whether more children have been hospitalized because the omicron variant — which is fueling the recent wave — causes more severe illness or because the number of children being infected is so high that, naturally, the hospitalization rate will rise too.
Compared to adults, though, children with COVID-19 at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital have required intensive care treatment at lower rates, he said.
About 10% of children who have been admitted to intensive care units need oxygen support or mechanical ventilation compared to 25% of adults at OU Health.
However, even though most children recover from COVID-19, this doesn’t mean they don’t suffer complications.
Mantor said more kids have been diagnosed with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, during this wave than in previous waves.
MIS-C is a condition in which different body parts can become inflamed, such as the heart, lungs and kidneys, and is often seen in children after they are diagnosed with COVID, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Additionally, during an OU Health roundtable discussion held on Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Stephanie DeLeon, inpatient medical director at Oklahoma Children’s Hospital OU Health, said the hospital has recently seen children diagnosed with COVID encephalitis, meaning these patients have inflammation in their brains and have symptoms including altered mental states and seizures.
Health officials have stressed the importance of vaccinating children.
The weekly report from the OSDH shows that as of Jan. 8 — the latest date for which data is available — there were 32 children aged 17 and younger hospitalized statewide over the last 30 days.
Of those children, 31 were unvaccinated, including 17 children aged 5 and older who are eligible to receive vaccines.
Just one fully vaccinated child was hospitalized and no partially vaccinated children were admitted to hospitals.
“When we look at the state of Oklahoma, around 60% have had at least one vaccine dose, but the kids 5 and older who can get vaccinated, that percentage is still very small,” Mantor said.
Only 33.6% of Oklahoma children between ages 12 and 17 are fully vaccinated, according to the OSDH report. For kids aged 5 to 11, just 9% are fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccines for children under age 5 have not yet been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“It’s the same old message that we’ve been preaching for two years now that to try to prevent the transmission of the disease, both amongst our pediatric patients but also from our pediatric patients to mom and dad and to grandma and grandad, is we have to get vaccinated,” Mantor said.”The kids that haven’t been vaccinated have to get vaccinated. It’s safe, it’s effective, it works.”
He added, “It’s not perfect. People are still getting infected with the virus but their likelihood of requiring hospitalization or becoming severely ill is much, much less if you’re fully vaccinated, so vaccines are so important. We need to really continue to push that in our aged 5 and older patients.”
