Amanda Kostroski, a 911 dispatcher in Madison, Wisconsin, leaves her busy job once a week to go to a county health clinic to be tested for COVID-19. She’s been making the 15-minute drive from work since late September, when Dane County mandated all employees get vaccinated or tested weekly. The testing is free, and she…
WHILE developing a rapid test that detects the coronavirus in someone’s saliva, Blink Science, a Florida-based startup, heard something startling: The Food and Drug Administration had more than 3,000 emergency use authorization applications and didn’t have the resources to get through them. “We want to try to avoid the EUA quagmire,” said Peb Hendrix, the…
IF you’ve ever had a serious illness or cared for someone who has, you know how quickly the medical bills can pile up: from labs, radiology clinics, pharmacies, doctors, different departments within the same hospital — some of them in your insurance network, others not. It can be extremely confusing, no matter how clever you…
EVEN as the U.S. prepares to roll out a covid-19 vaccine to elementary school-aged kids, its efforts to inoculate teenagers — who have been eligible for the shot since May — continue to meet with a lackluster response. So far, about half of kids 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated in the U.S., compared with…
THE number of people with symptoms of depression and anxiety has nearly quadrupled during the covid pandemic, which has made it even more maddeningly difficult to get timely mental health care, even if you have good insurance. A California law signed Oct. 8 by Gov. Gavin Newsom could help. It requires that mental health and…
LOS ANGELES — Christopher Manzo, a boy with curly brown hair and bright-blue-and-yellow glasses, has lived a third of his five years at home because of the pandemic. And he is more than ready for kindergarten. Hand in hand with his mother, Martha Manzo, he walks into the Blind Children’s Center, a low-rise building nestled…
By Jenny Gold/California Healthline IN September 2020, Congress passed bipartisan legislation creating a three-digit national suicide hotline: 988. Think of it as an alternative to 911 for mental health emergencies. The system is intended to make it easier to seek immediate help during a mental health crisis. Instead of calling 911 or the 10-digit national…
WORKERS in adult and senior care facilities and in-home aides have been added to the list of California health workers who must be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. Those who work directly with people with disabilities — such as employees paid through the state’s regional center network, aides contracted by agencies, and in-home support service…
WITHIN a day of testing positive for COVID-19 in June, Miranda Kelly was sick enough to be scared. At 44, with diabetes and high blood pressure, Kelly, a certified nursing assistant, was having trouble breathing, symptoms serious enough to send her to the emergency room. When her husband, Joe, 46, fell ill with the virus,…
IN recent months, some European airlines have banned the use of cloth face coverings to control the spread of the coronavirus during air travel, instead favoring surgical masks — sometimes referred to as medical or disposable — and N95 respirators. It’s another salvo in the debate over the effectiveness of the ubiquitous cloth mask, which…
By Hannah Norman/Kaiser Health News RAPID at-home covid tests are flying off store shelves across the nation and are largely sold out online as the delta variant complicates a return to school, work and travel routines. This story also ran on NBC News. It can be republished for free. But at $10 or $15 a…
MEDICAID enrollees are getting vaccinated against COVID-19 at far lower rates than the general population as states search for the best strategies to improve access to the shots and persuade those who remain hesitant. Efforts by state Medicaid agencies and the private health plans that most states pay to cover their low-income residents has been…
COLLEGE is a time of transition, but for those managing chronic medical conditions, it may also be the first time they will be wholly responsible for their own health: setting appointments, securing supplies and pharmaceuticals, and monitoring symptoms. For those heading to schools far from home, it can be especially tricky navigating the complex world…
AMID the latest surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the United States hit a milestone that some thought was unattainable: 90% of people 65 and older are at least partly vaccinated against the disease. That’s more than 49 million seniors vaccinated. Overall, 70% of adults have been inoculated, at least partly, and nearly 68% of…
As COVID resurges across the country, driven by the highly infectious delta variant, experts are extending our understanding of the pandemic’s toll on older adults — the age group hit hardest by the pandemic. New research offers unexpected insights. Older adults living in their own homes and apartments had a significantly heightened risk of dying…
Posts circulating on Facebook and Instagram claim the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will stop using its covid-19 test because it cannot differentiate between the covid virus and flu viruses. “CDC has just announced they will revoke the emergency use authorization of the RT-PCR tests first introduced in 2/20,” reads a July 25…
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Getting clean drinking water cost Ignacio Padilla his health insurance. The World War II veteran needed to repay the loan for the water pump installed on his 1-acre property in rural Tulare County, the only source of water to his mobile home. He carefully socked away a few thousand dollars so he…
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — A few months ago, the boxy, teal truck parked outside a McDonald’s in this Inland Empire city might have drawn hundreds of people willing to stand in line for hours under the scorching sun. The truck is San Bernardino County’s mobile vaccine unit, which brings COVID-19 vaccines directly to people. But…
By Elisabeth Rosenthal / Kaiser Health News The drugmaker Pfizer recently announced that vaccinated people are likely to need a booster shot to be effectively protected against new variants of COVID-19 and that the company would apply for Food and Drug Administration emergency use authorization for the shot. Top government health officials immediately and emphatically…
SANTA ANA, Calif. — One week the food pantry had frozen crabmeat; other weeks, deli meat or plant-based “meat.” The week before the Fourth of July, there was no meat at all, and a reminder that the pantry would be closed the next two weeks. Even though she never knows exactly what she’ll get, Lesli…
By Samantha Young/Kaiser Health News When a parent takes an infant to the Children’s Health Center in San Francisco for a routine checkup, a pediatrician will check the baby’s vitals and ask how the child is doing at home. Then Janelle Bercun, a licensed clinical social worker, who is also in the room, will look…
IN the past two weeks, many medical experts started to question whether the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is administered in a single dose, would be as effective as the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine in protecting against the new, highly transmissible delta variant that is poised to become the dominant strain in the U.S….
THE Supreme Court on Thursday, June 17 turned back its third chance to upend the Affordable Care Act, rejecting a lawsuit filed by a group of Republican state attorneys general claiming that a change made by Congress in 2017 had rendered the entire law unconstitutional. By a vote of 7-2, however, the justices did not…
By Bernard J. Wolfson / Kaiser Health News FOR more than a year, public health officials have repeatedly told us that masks save lives. They’ve warned us to keep our distance from our neighbors, who’ve morphed into disease vectors before our eyes. Now they are telling us that if we’re vaccinated, we no longer need…
LABOR Department officials on Thursday, June 10 announced a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers, saying they face “grave danger” in the workplace from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The new standard would require employers to remove workers who have covid-19 from the workplace, notify workers of covid exposure at work and strengthen requirements…
By Angela Hart / California Healthline California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a longtime Democratic state lawmaker, comes to his new role well known for pursuing an unabashedly progressive agenda on criminal justice issues. He has pushed for legislation to eliminate cash bail and to ban for-profit prisons and detention centers. But Bonta also has a distinctive record…
By Carmen Heredia Rodriguez/Kaiser Health News Q: THE federal government approved the Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds. What does this mean for my child? Extending the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to preteens and young adolescents adds nearly 17 million more Americans to the pool of those eligible to be immunized against COVID-19,…
By Philip Reese, Kaiser Health News Amid a pandemic that left law enforcement agencies stretched thin and forced shutdowns that left young men with little to do, California registered a devastating surge in homicides in 2020 that hit especially hard in Black and Latino communities. The number of homicide victims in California jumped 27% from…
By Carmen Heredia Rodriguez MORE than 120 million Americans have joined arguably the most sought-after club on Earth: those immunized against the coronavirus. Fully vaccinated people were given the green light in March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to gather with other fully vaccinated people or with low-risk unvaccinated people from one other…
By Jane Spencer/The Guardian and Christina Jewett/Kaiser Health News More than 3,600 U.S. health care workers perished in the first year of the pandemic, according to “Lost on the Frontline,” a 12-month investigation by The Guardian and KHN to track such deaths. Lost on the Frontline is the most complete accounting of U.S. health care…
