Public Health

In the past 24 hours, President-elect Joe Biden has delivered two speeches focused on the nation’s covid response. Thursday night, he laid out a $1.9 trillion-dollar plan to address what he’s calling the “twin crises” of the covid-19 pandemic and the economy. Biden proposed, among other things, that Congress allocate funds for implementing a national […]

The effort to vaccinate some of the country’s most vulnerable residents against covid-19 has been slowed by a federal program that sends retail pharmacists into nursing homes — accompanied by layers of bureaucracy and logistical snafus. As of Thursday, more than 4.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna covid vaccines had been allocated to […]

On Sundays, Bishop Bruce Davis preached love. Through his Pentecostal ministry, he organized youth parades and gave computers, bicycles and food to families in need. During the week, Bruce practiced what he preached, caring for prisoners at a Georgia hospital. On March 27 he began coughing, and on April 1 he was hospitalized. He’d tested […]

As an emergency physician, Dr. Eugenia South was in the first group of people to receive a covid vaccine. She received her second dose last week  — even before President-elect Joe Biden. Yet South said she’s in no rush to throw away her face mask. “I honestly don’t think I’ll ever go without a mask […]

Dr. Monte Junker, an Oregon dentist, is waiting for his turn to get vaccinated for covid even though he considers himself a front-line health worker. “If they offered it to me today, I would be there,” he said. In December, just before the first vaccines were cleared for emergency use, the Centers for Disease Control […]

For Heather Suri, a registered nurse in Virginia, the race to vaccinate Americans against covid has thrown up some unprecedented obstacles. The vaccines themselves are delicate and require a fair bit of focus over time. Consider Moderna’s instructions for preparing its doses: Thaw the vials for 2.5 hours in a refrigerator set between 36 and […]

As a health care journalist in Los Angeles reporting on the pandemic, I knew exactly what I needed to do once I landed in the hospital with covid pneumonia: write my goodbye emails. I’d seen coverage of some final covid messages during this terrible year. They were usually directed to spouses, but my No. 1 […]

In December, all states began vaccinating only health care workers and residents and staffers of nursing homes in the “phase 1A” priority group. But, since the new year began, some states have also started giving shots to — or booking appointments for — other categories of seniors and essential workers. As states widen eligibility requirements […]

Last week, after finishing inoculations of some front-line hospital staff, Jupiter Medical Center was left with 40 doses of precious covid vaccine. So, officials offered shots to the South Florida hospital’s board of directors and their spouses over age 65. But that decision sparked outrage among workers left unvaccinated, including those at one of the […]