Pregnancy-related deaths for U.S. mothers climbed higher in the pandemic’s first year, continuing a decades-long trend that disproportionately affects Black people, according to a government report released Wednesday. Overall in 2020, there were almost 24 deaths per 100,000 births, or 861 deaths total—numbers that reflect mothers dying during pregnancy, childbirth or the year after. The … Read more
In the 40 years that Jennie Kahn has worked as a registered nurse, the last two have been by far the most grueling. A lot of that is due to COVID-19, which transformed health care facilities, including Thomas Health’s hospital system in Charleston, West Virginia, where Kahn works, into triage centers and forced nurses to … Read more
Spirits are high as the students file into the basement of the Galante Funeral Home in Union, N.J., to pick out their caskets. Jessica Polynice, 23, beelines toward the most ornate one in the showroom, joking that she has expensive taste. Others consider the prominently displayed price tags, from $995 to nearly $6,000, and factor … Read more
Dr. Paul Farmer, a physician, medical anthropologist, and mentor to many, died on Monday in Butaro, Rwanda. Partners in Health, the organization he co-founded, confirmed his death in a tweet on Monday. He was 62. Dr. Farmer is survived by his wife, Didi Bertrand Farmer, three children, and thousands of patients and students, like myself, … Read more
Maria Venetis got a breakthrough case of COVID-19 right around New Year’s Eve. When she called friends to cancel plans, she found herself overexplaining how and where she might have caught the virus—until one friend cut her off. “It doesn’t really matter,” Venetis, an associate professor of communication at Rutgers University, remembers her friend saying. … Read more
Getting vaccinated and boosted dramatically increases the likelihood of surviving a case of COVID-19, but many risk factors—like being biologically male—are outside of people’s control. In the U.S., 20% more men have died from COVID-19 than women, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Scientists theorize that the difference in … Read more
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California became the first state to formally shift to an “endemic” approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Thursday of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns. The milestone, nearly two years in the making, envisions a return to a more … Read more
As the pandemic has evolved and most Americans have sought vaccines for protection, and as those who chose to forgo vaccination became infected (often more than once), the risk that COVID-19 poses for most Americans has declined. It’s estimated that more than 90% of Americans have some level of immunity to COVID-19 through vaccination or … Read more
Black women died at nearly three times the rate of White women in 2020, a government report found. View original article Contributor: Salvador Rizzo
From 2011 to 2019, the number of Black Americans without health insurance who were younger than 65 dropped from 7.1 million people to 4.4 million. View original article Contributor: Akilah Johnson