Do-It-Yourself Contact Tracing Is a ‘Last Resort’ in Communities Besieged by Covid
The contact tracers of Washtenaw County in Michigan have been deluged with work and, to cope, the overburdened health department has a new tactic: It is asking residents who test positive for covid-19 to do their own contact tracing. Washtenaw is a county of nearly 350,000 residents who live in and around the city of […]
Listen: How Operation Warp Speed Became a Slow Walk
KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal appeared on Diane Rehm’s “On My Mind” podcast on NPR to discuss the bottlenecks that have prevented doses of precious covid-19 vaccine from making it from drugmakers’ factories into patients’ arms. It didn’t have to be this way, she explains.
In Los Angeles and Beyond, Oxygen Is the Latest Covid Bottleneck
As Los Angeles hospitals give record numbers of covid patients oxygen, the systems and equipment needed to deliver the life-sustaining gas are faltering. It’s gotten so bad that Los Angeles County officials are warning paramedics to conserve it. Some hospitals are having to delay releasing patients as they don’t have enough oxygen equipment to send […]
San Francisco Wrestles With Drug Approach as Death and Chaos Engulf Tenderloin
SAN FRANCISCO — In early 2019, Tom Wolf posted a thank-you on Twitter to the cop who had arrested him the previous spring, when he was homeless and strung out in a doorway with 103 tiny bindles of heroin and cocaine in a plastic baggie at his feet. “You saved my life,” wrote Wolf, who […]
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Georgia Turns the Senate Blue
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on PRX. Surprise Democratic victories in Georgia’s two runoff elections this week will give Democrats control of the Senate, which means they will be in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House for the first time since 2010. Although the narrow majorities in the […]
Illinois Is First in the Nation to Extend Health Coverage to Undocumented Seniors
As a nurse manager for one of Chicago’s busiest safety-net hospitals, Raquel Prendkowski has witnessed covid-19’s devastating toll on many of the city’s most vulnerable residents — including people who lack health insurance because of their immigration status. Some come in so sick they go right to intensive care. Some don’t survive. “We’re in a […]
Black Women Find Healing (But Sometimes Racism, Too) in the Outdoors
It would be the last hike of the season, Jessica Newton had excitedly posted on her social media platforms. With mild weather forecast and Colorado’s breathtaking fall foliage as a backdrop, she was convinced an excursion at Beaver Ranch Park would be the quintessential way to close out months of warm-weather hikes with her “sister […]
‘An Arm and a Leg’: A Look Back at 2020 — What We Learned and Where We’re Headed
Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen. This episode turns the tables: Host Dan Weissmann gets interviewed about what he learned in 2020 and what’s ahead for the show — with T.K. Dutes, a radio host and podcast-maker who is also a former nurse, so she knows a thing or two about the health […]
Covid ‘Decimated Our Staff’ as the Pandemic Ravages Health Workers of Color
Last spring, New Jersey emergency room nurse Maritza Beniquez saw “wave after wave” of sick patients, each wearing a look of fear that grew increasingly familiar as the weeks wore on. Soon, it was her colleagues at Newark’s University Hospital — the nurses, techs and doctors with whom she had been working side by side […]
Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race?
As I prepared to get my shot in mid-December as part of a covid vaccine trial run by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, I considered the escape routes. Bailing out of the trial was a very real consideration since two other vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, had been deemed safe and effective for emergency approval. Leaving the […]