This story also ran on The Washington Post. It can be republished for free.

Many parents are filled with angst as they prepare for their children to exit a year of pandemic isolation: Will it be OK to send them to school, per the recent recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? Will school feel like school if students are masked and can’t trade snacks? Will children’s development be impaired by nearly a year of seeing few friends?

With 20-20 hindsight, I can provide some reassurance, because my kids were 8 and 10 when SARS hit Beijing nearly two decades ago, shutting down the city for months: Your children will likely be fine, and maybe even better as human beings for having lived through this tragic experience.

I’ve heard Americans say that SARS was not as bad as covid-19. It was if you lived in Beijing in 2002-03, … Read the rest

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“Becerra supports Bernie’s government takeover of your health care, eliminating your employer-provided coverage.”

— TV ad funded by Cotton for Senate, Feb. 22

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

A digital ad running in Georgia and New Hampshire says Xavier Becerra, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, supports “Medicare for All.”

“Becerra supports Bernie’s government takeover of your health care, eliminating your employer-provided coverage,” the narrator says.

The ad, funded by the campaign PAC of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), is part of a blitz from conservative groups against Becerra’s confirmation. It first aired last week and will continue until the Senate’s confirmation vote. The gritty, foreboding ad includes a range of other attacks, including criticisms of California’s covid-19 response and Becerra’s role in legal cases on reproductive rights.

Another ad, this one funded by Heritage Action for America … Read the rest

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This story also ran on LAist. It can be republished for free.

The twinkle in his eyes, the delight in his smile, the joyous way he moved his disease-withered frame. They all proclaimed a single, resounding message: Grateful to be alive!

“As my care team and my family tell me, ‘You were born again. You have to learn to live again,’” said Vicente Perez Castro. “I went through a very difficult time.”

Hell and back is more like it.

Perez, a 57-year-old cook from Long Beach, California, could barely breathe when he was admitted on June 5 to Los Angeles County’s Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He tested positive for covid-19 and spent three months in the intensive care unit, almost all of it hooked up to a ventilator with a tube down his throat. A different tube conducted nutrients into his stomach.

At a certain point, the doctors told his family … Read the rest

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KHN senior correspondent Noam Levey discussed Xavier Becerra’s nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with KQED’s “Forum” on Tuesday.

• Click here to hear Levey on KQED
• Read “‘It’s a Minefield’: Biden Health Pick Must Tread Carefully on Abortion and Family Planning” by Levey and California Healthline correspondent Rachel Bluth

KHN senior correspondent JoNel Aleccia discussed the story of an organ transplant patient who died after receiving lungs infected with covid-19 on KFI’s “The Daily Dive” podcast on Wednesday.

• Click here to hear Aleccia on “The Daily Dive” (her segment begins about 17 minutes in)
• Read Aleccia’s “Organ Transplant Patient Dies After Receiving Covid-Infected Lungs“

California Healthline senior correspondent Anna Maria Barry-Jester discussed vaccine distribution in California with KALW’s “Your Call” on Thursday. She also was part of a panel discussion about inequities in the vaccine rollout with Venice Family Clinic’s “Health and Justice” series on … Read the rest

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Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on SoundCloud.

More than a month into President Joe Biden’s term, nominees to fill some of the top posts at the Department of Health and Human Services are finally getting confirmation hearings in the Senate, starting with the nominee for secretary, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Barring something unexpected, it appears that Becerra, along with the surgeon general nominee, Vivek Murthy, and the nominee for assistant secretary for health, Rachel Levine, will all be confirmed, despite criticisms raised by some Republicans.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging the Trump administration’s rules for the federal family planning program that effectively evicted Planned Parenthood from participation. And the Biden administration asked the court to cancel oral arguments scheduled for late March about work requirements approved by the Trump administration for adult Medicaid recipients in some states.

This week’s panelists … Read the rest

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This story also ran on NBC News. It can be republished for free.

Covid-19 infections from variant strains are quickly spreading across the U.S., but there’s one big problem: Lab officials say they can’t tell patients or their doctors whether someone has been infected by a variant.

Federal rules around who can be told about the variant cases are so confusing that public health officials may merely know the county where a case has emerged but can’t do the kind of investigation and deliver the notifications needed to slow the spread, according to Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

“It could be associated with a person in a high-risk congregate setting or it might not be, but without patient information, we don’t know what we don’t know,” Hamilton said. The group has asked federal officials to waive the rules. “Time is ticking.”

The problem … Read the rest

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The result of lockdowns “has been the destruction of millions of lives across America as well as increased deaths from suicide, substance abuse and despair without any corresponding benefit in covid mortality.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Feb. 2, 2020

For months, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has boasted about his state’s “open for business” strategy in dealing with covid-19 and how it’s working better than so-called lockdown states.

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

Unlike in some other states, all Florida public schools are open for in-person learning, restaurants and bars have few restrictions, and the state has barred local governments from penalizing individuals for not wearing a mask in public.

In a recent rant against social network companies such as Facebook and Twitter, DeSantis suggested that states that had instituted heavy restrictions on residents experienced severe repercussions for residents without reducing the … Read the rest

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This story also ran on Fortune. It can be republished for free.

The U.S. government has invested billions of dollars in manufacturing, used a wartime act dozens of times to boost supplies and yet there’s still not enough covid vaccine on the way to meet demand — or even the government’s own goals for national immunization.

President Joe Biden, in remarks at the National Institutes of Health this month, said the nation is “now on track to have enough supply for 300 million Americans by the end of July.” But at the current rate of production, Pfizer and Moderna will miss their targets of providing at least 100 million doses each by the end of March, let alone 200 million more doses each has promised by July.

Moderna would need to more than double its vaccine production rate from January — when it made roughly 19 million doses — to … Read the rest

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Médicos dicen que una mujer en Michigan desarrolló covid-19 y murió el otoño pasado, dos meses después de recibir un trasplante doble de pulmón de un donante que portaba el coronavirus que causa la enfermedad, a pesar de que no mostró signos de la enfermedad y que inicialmente dio negativo.

Autoridades de la Escuela de Medicina de la Universidad de Michigan sugirieron que podría ser el primer caso comprobado en el país de covid en el que el virus se transmitió a través de un trasplante de órganos. Un cirujano que manipuló los pulmones del donante también se infectó y se enfermó, pero luego se recuperó.

El incidente parece ser aislado, el único caso confirmado entre casi 40,000 trasplantes realizados en 2020. Pero ha generado el pedido de que se hagan pruebas más exhaustivas a los donantes, con muestras tomadas de las profundidades de los pulmones, así como de la … Read the rest

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This story also ran on CNN. It can be republished for free.

In the midst of a national shortage of N95 masks, the U.S. government quietly granted an exception to its export ban on protective gear, allowing as many as 5 million of the masks per month to be shipped overseas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency issued the waiver in the final moments of Donald Trump’s presidency last month, allowing a Texas company to export its products after it failed to secure U.S. customers, according to the FEMA letter obtained by KHN.

National Nurses United president Zenei Triunfo-Cortez called the export waiver “unconscionable” and said N95s remain under lock and key in many hospitals. She said she still has to “beg” for a new N95 if hers gets soiled during a shift caring for covid-19 patients.

Health care employers “and a federal agency that is supposed to be protecting the … Read the rest

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