Gani

A tidal wave of grief and loss has rolled through long-term care facilities as the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 91,000 residents and staffers — nearly 40% of recorded COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. And it’s not over: Facilities are bracing for further shocks as coronavirus cases rise across the country. Workers are already emotionally drained and exhausted after staffing the front lines — and putting themselves at significant risk — since March, when the pandemic took hold. And residents are suffering deeply from losing people they once saw daily, the disruption of routines and being cut off from friends and family. In response, nursing homes and assisted living centers are holding memorials for people who’ve died, having chaplains and social workers help residents and staff, and bringing in hospice providers to offer grief counseling, among other strategies. More than 2 million vulnerable older adults live in these facilities. “Everyone is aware that this is a stressful...

The night before I chopped off my hair, I got nervous. This decision felt bigger than me, given all the weight that Black women’s hair carries. But after three months of wearing hats and scarves in a pandemic when trips to the hairdresser felt unsafe, I walked into a salon emotionally exhausted but ready to finally see my natural hair. I thought a few tears would fall, but, as the last of my chemically straightened hair floated to the floor like rain, I felt cleansed. Free. I laughed hysterically as I drove away from the salon. Friends and family cheered me on virtually, but my father quietly worried about my decision. My dad grew up in the Jim Crow South, where many women straightened their hair to land jobs, husbands and respect. Before my big chop , he never said much about my hair beyond the occasional compliment, which is why I was surprised when he issued a warning. “Watch it out there. Your hair is cut now,” he blurted when he saw me walking out of the house. My mother hear...

Dr. Megan Ranney has learned a lot about COVID-19 since she began treating patients with the disease in the emergency department in February. But there’s one question she still can’t answer: What makes some patients so much sicker than others? Advancing age and underlying medical problems explain only part of the phenomenon, said Ranney, who has seen patients of similar age, background and health status follow wildly different trajectories. “Why does one 40-year-old get really sick and another one not even need to be admitted?” asked Ranney, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University. In some cases, provocative new research shows, some people — men in particular — succumb because their immune systems are hit by friendly fire. Researchers hope the finding will help them develop targeted therapies for these patients. In an international study in Science, 10% of nearly 1,000 COVID patients who developed life-threatening pneumonia had antibodies that disable key...

KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal discussed how to manage unexpected health care costs with CBSN on Wednesday. Click here to watch Rosenthal on CBSN KHN chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed the Affordable Care Act case before the Supreme Court with WBEZ’s “Reset” and WDET’s “Detroit Today” on Tuesday and with WHYY’s “Radio Times” on Wednesday. Click here to hear Rovner on WBEZ Click here to hear Rovner on WDET Click here to hear Rovner on WHYY Read Rovner’s “ What to Know as ACA Heads to Supreme Court — Again “ KHN partnerships editor and senior correspondent Mary Agnes Carey discussed the ACA Supreme Court case on Newsy’s “Morning Rush” on Tuesday and on Connecticut Public Radio’s “Where We Live” on Nov. 6. Click here to watch Carey on Newsy Click here to hear Carey on Connecticut Public Radio On Thursday, KHN correspondent Rachana Pradhan discussed with Newsy the challenges President-elect Joe Biden faces in trying to seat Food and Drug Administ...

At the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Northern California, the stories got weird almost immediately upon students’ return for the fall semester. Some said they were being followed around campus by people wearing green vests telling them where they could and could not be, go, stop, chat or conduct even a socially distanced gathering. Others said they were threatened with the loss of their campus housing if they didn’t follow the rules. “They were breaking up picnics. They were breaking up yoga groups,” said one graduate student, who asked not to be identified so as to avoid social media blowback. “Sometimes they’d ask you whether you actually lived in the dorm you were about to go into.” Across the country in Boston, students at the Harvard Business School gathered for the new semester after being gently advised by the school’s top administrators, via email, that they were part of “a delicate experiment.” The students were given the ground rules for the term, then received up...

Whether it’s strange rashes on the toes or blood clots in the brain, the widespread ravages of COVID-19 have increasingly led researchers to focus on how the novel coronavirus sabotages blood vessels. As scientists have come to know the disease better, they have homed in on the vascular system — the body’s network of arteries, veins and capillaries, stretching more than 60,000 miles — to understand this wide-ranging disease and to find treatments that can stymie its most pernicious effects. Some of the earliest insights into how COVID-19 can act like a vascular disease came from studying the aftermath of the most serious infections. Those reveal that the virus warps a critical piece of our vascular infrastructure: the single layer of cells lining the inside of every blood vessel, known as the endothelial cells or simply the endothelium . Dr. William Li , a vascular biologist, compares this lining to a freshly resurfaced ice rink before a hockey game on which the players and pucks g...

Se espera que la farmacéutica Pfizer solicite permiso federal para lanzar su vacuna para COVID-19 a fines de noviembre. Una medida que promete acorralar la pandemia, pero que no ofrece mucho tiempo para asegurarse de que los consumidores estén bien informados. Esta vacuna, y probablemente las otras, requerirá de dos dosis para funcionar, inyecciones que deben administrarse con semanas de diferencia, según muestran los protocolos de la compañía. Los científicos anticipan que las vacunas causarán efectos secundarios parecidos a los de la gripe, que incluyen dolor en los brazos, dolores musculares y fiebre, que podrían durar días e impedir trabajar o estudiar. E incluso si una vacuna demuestra una efectividad del 90%, la tasa que Pfizer promociona para su producto, uno de cada 10 receptores seguiría siendo vulnerable. Eso significa que, al menos a corto plazo, a medida que aumenta la inmunidad a nivel de la población, las personas no pueden dejar de usar máscaras y respetar el distanc...

Drugmaker Pfizer is expected to seek federal permission to release its COVID-19 vaccine by the end of November, a move that holds promise for quelling the pandemic, but also sets up a tight time frame for making sure consumers understand what it will mean to actually get the shots. This story also ran on NBC News . It can be republished for free. This vaccine, and likely most others, will require two doses to work, injections that must be given weeks apart, company protocols show. Scientists anticipate the shots will cause enervating flu-like side effects — including sore arms, muscle aches and fever — that could last days and temporarily sideline some people from work or school. And even if a vaccine proves 90% effective, the rate Pfizer touted for its product, 1 in 10 recipients would still be vulnerable. That means, at least in the short term, as population-level immunity grows, people can’t stop social distancing and throw away their masks. Left out so far in the push to devel...

Michelina Moen lost her job and health insurance in April. Only weeks earlier she had begun to feel ill and not her usual energetic self — in what she describes as a textbook case of “really bad timing.” The Orlando, Florida, resident sought treatment in May. After a series of tests, doctors told Moen she had a rare kidney condition that would require months of treatment. “Losing the coverage ended up being worse than losing the job,” said Moen, 36, a dancer who had worked for both Walt Disney World and Universal Studios. “It was very stressful.” Moen rushed to find replacement coverage. With help from a social service agency, she enrolled in a plan through healthcare.gov, the federal Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace. Because she and her husband, Brett, were not working — he had been laid off by Disney, too — they qualified for federal subsidies, so the coverage cost her just $35 a month. Most of her medical expenses, which involve traveling frequently to Jacksonville for s...

This story also ran on CNN . It can be republished for free. Nursing homes are still taking days to get back COVID-19 test results as many shun the Trump administration’s central strategy to limit the spread of the virus among old and sick Americans. In late summer, federal officials began distributing to nursing homes millions of point-of-care antigen tests, which can be given on-site and report the presence or absence of the virus within minutes. By January, the Department of Health and Human Services is slated to send roughly 23 million rapid tests. But as of Oct. 25, 38% of the nation’s roughly 15,000 nursing homes have yet to use a point-of-care test, a KHN analysis of nursing home records shows. The numbers suggest a basic disagreement among the Trump administration, state health officials and nursing home administrators over the best way to test this population and how to strike the right balance between speed and accuracy. Many nursing homes still primarily send samples ou...

When KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal heard a sample of the voices that correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble brought back from her reporting trip to rural Kansas, Rosenthal said she knew the story needed to be told through audio. That’s the genesis for “No Mercy,” season one of the podcast “ Where It Hurts .” The series documents the fallout after Mery Hospital closed in Fort Scott, Kansas. Rosenthal and Tribble were featured on the latest episode of Crooked Media’s “America Dissected: Coronavirus.” “When a rural hospital shuts down, it’s much more than health care that’s lost. It was really pulling the fabric of this town apart economically and socially,” Rosenthal said. Fort Scott is a town of about 8,000, and more than 200 people — from janitorial staff to physicians — lost their jobs when the hospital closed. “The trickle-down effect of a major anchor institution in a rural community closing is not just from the hospital jobs but from all the jobs supporting the hospital,”...

For decades, people struggling with illnesses of all kinds have sought help in online support groups. This year, such groups have been in high demand for COVID-19 patients, who often must recover in isolation. But the fear and uncertainty regarding the coronavirus have made online groups targets for the spread of false information. And to help fellow patients, some of these groups are making it a mission to stamp out misinformation. Shortly after Matthew Long-Middleton got sick on March 12, he joined a COVID-19 support group run by an organization called Body Politic on the messaging platform Slack. “I had no idea where this road leads, and so I was looking for support and other theories and some places where people were going through a similar thing, including the uncertainty,” said Long-Middleton, 36, an avid cyclist who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His illness started with chest discomfort, then muscle weakness, high fever, loss of appetite and digestive problems. In addition ...