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 […]
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.
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 — 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
