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New data shows that the number of abortions fell by more than 10,000.
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Dana and John Pope had never heard of kratom before their 23-year-old son, Ethan, was found dead on the kitchen floor in his apartment last December with his puppy by his side.
Extracted from the leaves of a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia, kratom is used to make capsules, powders and liquids and is marketed as an aid for pain, anxiety and drug dependence. In Georgia and some other states, it’s often sold at gas stations and smoke shops.
A Georgia Bureau of Investigation autopsy found Ethan Pope died from mitragynine intoxication and had no alcohol or illegal drugs in his system. Mitragynine is a psychoactive compound in kratom, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Dana and John Pope have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against about a dozen people, companies and organizations connected to the manufacturing, marketing and sale of kratom.
They don’t know how long their son had been using kratom, but he must have been experiencing adverse effects, Dana Pope said at a news conference Thursday. In his apartment, they found a to-do list with one task that stuck out: Stop taking kratom.
The lawsuit was originally filed in May and an expanded version was filed earlier this week. The lawyers who filed the suit said they want to send a message that kratom is unsafe for human consumption.
“The kratom industry claims that it is a natural, completely safe substance that can lead to greater health and well-being,” lawyer Matt Wetherington said. “However, even if that were true, the kratom that is sold in the United States is ultra-concentrated and is more similar to heroin or other opioids.”
Proponents of kratom say it’s a safe, natural herbal supplement that can help manage pain and ease the effects of opioid withdrawal.
Ethan Pope bought bottles of O.P.M.S. Liquid Kratom in the days before his death. Liquid kratom shots are especially dangerous, “because they are intended to provide consumers with higher concentrations of mitragynine, substantially increasing the risk of overdose and death,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that producers of kratom illegally import it by misclassifying it as an agricultural product and have begun producing, marketing and selling concentrated forms of kratom.
Kratom acts as a stimulant in low doses and a sedative at high doses. It can be addictive and can cause hallucinations, delusions and confusion, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The FDA has not approved any uses for kratom and “continues to warn consumers not to use any products labeled as containing kratom.” It issued an import alert in 2014 allowing the seizure of kratom as an unapproved drug.
“There are no FDA-approved uses for kratom, and the agency has received concerning reports about the safety of kratom,” the agency says on its website.
U.S. health officials said in a report released in 2019 that kratom was a cause in 91 overdose deaths in 27 states. While most of those who died had also taken heroin, fentanyl or other drugs, kratom was the only substance detected in seven of the deaths.
Another 2019 study found that calls to U.S. poison control centers about kratom skyrocketed more than 50-fold, from 13 calls in 2011 to 682 calls in 2017.
The defendants in the lawsuit were negligent in their “duty to prevent foreseeable injuries arising from the use of their products,” the lawsuit says. That duty includes making truthful statements about the risks and side effects of kratom and ensuring that the product is consistent in its purity and potency, it states.
Ethan Pope used the kratom products for their intended purpose and the defendants “did not provide adequate warnings and instructions that an ordinary consumer would expect, and the inadequate warnings made the kratom products more dangerous than an ordinary consumer would expect,” the lawsuit says.
Optimized Plant Mediated Solutions, or O.P.M.S., which the lawsuit says manufactured the kratom that Ethan Pope used, is named as a defendant. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment submitted Thursday via a form on its website.
The lawsuit also alleges that the American Kratom Association, a trade organization, invites consumers to rely on “false, misleading, and materially incomplete medical claims” regarding kratom. It has pushed legislation in numerous states that it says is meant to protect consumers but that actually facilitates the selling of an unpredictable and dangerous drug, said Drew Ashby, a lawyer for the Popes.
“It is unfortunate and disappointing that Georgia is one of the few states in the country that allows this to be sold legally with actual legislation,” Ashby said, referencing a 2019 law that restricted the sale of kratom to people over 18 and implemented labeling requirements that the lawsuit says are not followed.
Daniel Delnero, a lawyer for the association denied the claims against it.
“The American Kratom Association is a consumer advocacy group dedicated to education and responsible use of Kratom. It was improperly added to this lawsuit, and we will vigorously defend the spurious claims against it,” he said in an emailed statement.
The lawsuit asks for damages and seeks a jury trial.
The White House’s top COVID-19 official says he still expects the protection against the Omicron BA.5 variant offered by the new COVID vaccine boosters will be better than their predecessors, despite two studies that appear to question that assumption. In an interview with CBS News, Dr. Ashish Jha also said he does not think another imminent change to the COVID boosters will be needed.
Jha’s comments come after researchers found, in two smaller groups of volunteers, data suggesting that the updated boosters provide only similar but not superior antibody boosts against BA.5, compared to the original vaccine formula.
“I do think that the protection against infection is going to be better than if you were getting the original prototype booster,” Jha told CBS News.
Jha said he was not surprised about the new study results and praised the two scientists — Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School and David Ho of Columbia University — who led each of the research teams behind the preliminary findings.
However, he predicted that the “well-controlled trials” with “larger samples” now underway from vaccine makers could yield more favorable results about the boosters’ performance.
The studies did turn up higher antibody responses after the updated booster, Jha said, even if they were too small to be statistically significant.
“I expect we’re going to see at least that size benefit, probably bigger, in the Pfizer and Moderna studies,” Jha said.
Jha’s comments are in line with expectations previously voiced by federal health officials from across the Biden administration, who have argued for months that the updated boosters being rolled out this fall would outperform the original formulations.
The new boosters are known as “bivalent” because they include both a component targeting the original “prototype” strain and another aimed at the BA.4 and BA.5 variants.
Early data from animals tested with the new shots had been promising. Previous versions targeting other strains trialed on humans also suggested a bivalent formulation would also offer at least an “incremental” improvement, health authorities concluded.
And with new strains on the rise in the U.S. and around the world, officials hoped the new vaccines would do better at fending off a feared winter surge of the virus.
“The one I am paying most close attention to in the United States is BQ.1.1, which is a BA.5 derivative, and based on all of the things that we understand about immunology, your protection against BQ.1.1 is going to be significantly better after a BA.5 bivalent [booster],” said Jha.
But this week, two studies seemed to upend those expectations.
“There was no significant difference in neutralization of any SARS-CoV-2 variant tested between individuals who received a fourth monovalent vaccine and those who received a fourth dose of a bivalent vaccine,” concluded one study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, posted by the team led by Ho.
Scientists drew blood from people roughly a month after they had gotten the new shot and tested their antibody responses against
“pseudoviruses” — essentially mock-ups of different variants, including BA.5.
Barouch’s team performed a similar experiment against BA.5. They turned up only “a modest and nonsignificant” improvement from the updated boosters in their study, which has also yet to be peer-reviewed.
“If that very small difference holds up in a much larger study, then a much larger study might actually say that’s a statistically significant difference. The question is, is it clinically relevant? And I don’t believe that that level of difference is clinically relevant,” Barouch said in an interview.
Barouch said a phenomenon called immune imprinting may turn out to be the culprit for the disappointing immune response to the updated booster.
Immune imprinting, also known as “original antigenic sin,” refers to the theory that the initial exposure people had to an earlier strain of the virus — either from infection or vaccination — may hinder the ability of the body to produce antibodies to new strains.
Both the vaccine companies and health officials had previously downplayed the hurdle this phenomenon might pose to the new shots.
Barouch acknowledged there was a possibility that responses against BA.5 could improve after more weeks following the updated booster, but cautioned that we have seen antibodies decline in the months after previous mRNA COVID shots.
His team also measured another part of the immune response from T cells. Those were “not substantially” boosted by additional shots from either the bivalent or original formulations.
“We all talk about antibodies, the focus has been on antibodies, but there’s two sides to the immune system: antibodies and T cells. And we believe that both are important for protection against severe disease,” said Barouch.
The new studies come as the Biden administration is preparing for key decisions about the country’s COVID-19 vaccine supply.
Millions of doses of the original monovalent vaccine, which is still being used for primary series shots, are due to expire over the coming months. Boosters also still need to be greenlighted for the youngest age group: children down to 6 months old.
The federal government’s supply of the updated boosters is on pace to run out next year as a result of a stalled COVID funding request on Capitol Hill, which will prompt a shift to the private market.
FDA and CDC officials have said that they expect to decide over the winter whether and how to update the vaccine regimen for the future.
Those decisions will rest, in part, on how the updated shots perform.
“We will have our BA.4/5 data by year end and ours will be statistically powered,” Moderna spokesperson Chris Ridley said in an email.
Ridley also pointed to results from a previous bivalent formulation by Moderna targeted at the BA.1 variant, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine a few weeks ago.
Pfizer and their German partner BioNTech announced finding “positive early data” from their updated shots earlier this month. Pfizer spokesperson Steve Danehy said they expect to “have additional data in coming weeks” on the shots.
“We’re going to want to make policy decisions based on more definitive, larger studies, which are coming soon,” Jha said.
An 80-year-old doctor is set to run his 45th Marine Corps Marathon, only missing the race twice since first competing in 1977. Dr. Glenn Geelhoed has run more than 170 marathons on all seven continents, but his true passion is saving lives through his nonprofit, Mission to Heal.
Mission to Heal brings medical supplies and training to the most remote corners of the world.
“We have done what we can to help not just to heal the folk that we see immediately by cutting and sewing, but by teaching those skills such that it continues beyond us,” Geelhoed told CBS News.
He said that his medical missions are inspired by his runs.
“The marathon is a good metaphor because it takes discipline, it takes effort, and it takes a commitment,” he said. “That’s what health care is.”
Asked how much longer he plans on running these punishing races, Geelhoed told CBS News, “Until the next one. And the next one and the one after that.”
The side effect, a buildup of fluid in the brain, led to the death of one of the children and presents a grave setback for a class of personalized medicine.
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Unilever is recalling dry shampoo aerosol products sold nationwide because they may contain elevated levels of benzene, a human carcinogen. The recall is the latest of half a dozen so far this year, with the cancer-causing chemical showing up in products including deodorant, hand sanitizer and sunscreen.
People should take the benzene-related recalls seriously, as they involve a far more dangerous contaminant than most, according to David Light, CEO of Valisure, an independent lab in New Haven, Connecticut, that alerted the Food and Drug Administration to its findings of benzene in sunscreen sprays last year.
“Benzene is such a bad molecule — it’s at the very top of the FDA’s list of 70-some solvents not to use,” Light told CBS MoneyWatch, adding that unlike with some chemicals, “there’s no argument about whether or not it causes cancer in human beings.”
That’s not to say anyone who has used one of the recalled products will get cancer, emphasized Light, a biotech entrepreneur and scientist. Still, “Benzene should not be confused with a lot of other areas of concern. This is a very problematic compound, and it shouldn’t be ignored,” he said.
“Even small amounts constitute big action,” added Light, citing the global recall that ensued after benzene was found in bottles of Perrier mineral water more than three decades ago.
Aerosol-type products are more at risk of containing benzene than the general sphere of consumer products, as are petroleum-derived products such as gels, lotions, creams and sunscreens, said Light.
The chemical is not an ingredient in any of the recalled products, but likely came as the result of other petroleum products such as butane, which if not refined properly can end up containing other components like benzene, Light explained.
“Unfortunately the more we looked, the more we found,” he said of Valisure’s tests, which late last year petitioned the FDA for product recalls after it detected benzene in 54% of the 108 batches from 30 brands of body spray products.
The latest recall includes dry shampoo aerosol products made before October 2021 from brands Dove, Nexxus, Suave, TIGI (Rockaholic and Bed Head), and TRESemmé, the company said in a notice published last week by the FDA. (See here for a complete list of recalled products and UPC codes.)
An internal probe by Unilever identified the propellant as the source, and the company worked with its propellant suppliers to address the issue, it stated.
People who purchased the affected aerosol dry shampoo products should stop using them and visit UnileverRecall.com for reimbursement instructions.
The recall is the second this year for Unilever involving a product possibly containing benzene. The conglomerate sells roughly 400 products around the globe, from Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
Exposure to benzene can result in cancers including leukemia and blood cancer of the blood marrow, as well as life-threatening blood disorders. Daily exposure to benzene in the recalled products at the levels detected in testing “would not be expected to cause adverse health consequences,” Unilever said.
One of the most commonly made chemicals in the U.S., benzene is present in gasoline and cigarette smoke, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People are most typically exposed by breathing the chemical in the air, but they can also absorb it into their bodies by touching petroleum products, or by eating or drinking contaminated food or beverages.
Unilever in late March recalled two Suave 24-hour protection aerosol antiperspirants after an internal review found slightly elevated levels of benzene in some samples.
Four other companies have recalled products this year after finding benzene in samples, and more than half a dozen recalls came for the same reason last year.
In December, for instance, Procter & Gamble recalled aerosol dry shampoo and conditioner spray products from six brands sold nationwide after finding benzene in some of them.
But benzene is not the only cancer-causing chemical raising concern for users and makers of personal-care products.
A lawsuit filed Friday against L’Oreal alleges that chemicals in the French company’s hair straighteners caused a woman’s uterine cancer. The suit over “phthalates and other endocrine disrupting chemicals” came days after a study linking the use of such products to uterine cancer.
L’Oreal did not respond to a request for comment.
The Biden administration is racing to expand the number of U.S. labs that are able to test for the virus behind a swelling Ebola outbreak in Uganda, as health officials prepare for what they say remains an unlikely but real possibility that the virus could enter the country.
Most of the tests that were rolled out around the U.S. during a previous Ebola scare in 2014, which involved a strain known as Zaire Ebolavirus, were never authorized by the Food and Drug Administration to be used for diagnosing the Sudan strain, which is behind the current surge in Uganda.
“CDC has been very active on the domestic preparedness front and addressing exactly this issue of the lab testing has been a huge priority,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Mary Choi told a session at the ID Week conference last week.
A few weeks ago, only eight members of the publicly-funded Laboratory Response Network had the ability to test for the virus, Choi said.
That number has now risen to 22 labs across the network, a CDC spokesperson said Tuesday.
More than a hundred cases of the often deadly virus have been confirmed or suspected in Uganda, according to a tally by the CDC. Cases have been spotted in the nation’s capital city Kampala, which raises concerns about wider spread. More than two dozen deaths have been reported since the outbreak began in September.
After an incubation period of up to three weeks, early Ebola symptoms — like fever and fatigue — can be difficult to distinguish from other infections. The disease then escalates to more dangerous symptoms, including severe diarrhea, bleeding and vomiting. Between 41% and 100% of reported cases in previous outbreaks of Sudan Ebolavirus have died, the World Health Organization estimates.
There is a vaccine that targets Zaire Ebolavirus, but it is not expected to work against the current strain. Some promising new vaccine candidates are expected to be deployed soon in Uganda in hopes of curbing the outbreak.
Travelers entering the U.S. after having spent time in outbreak-affected areas in Uganda are being screened by authorities at five airports around the country for symptoms, under a program to funnel travelers that was restarted a month ago.
They are then followed up by local health officials for at least three weeks after arriving at their destination, under guidance published earlier this month by the CDC.
Unlike Zaire Ebolavirus, there are no rapid test kits available to spot infections by Sudan Ebolavirus. Doctors must draw blood samples from patients suspected to have the virus, which are sent off to labs that can test for the strain.
Those test tubes can then be run through systems like the so-called “Warrior Panel” developed by the firm BioFire Defense.
“There is a lot of cross collaboration between agencies and CDC to make this happen,” Choi said, pointing to efforts like sending loaner BioFire systems to testing facilities and having weekly calls to help them ramp up.
Earlier this month, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response announced it would fund accelerating clearance of BioFire’s test by the FDA, which could allow more labs to use the system.
“A select number of labs dispersed throughout the US are able to test, but we aren’t able to say the exact number. CDC is also working to bring on additional labs,” Chris Mangal, director of preparedness and response for the Association of Public Health Labs, said in a statement.
The screening test itself takes around “an hour or so to run,” Mangal said. That does not account for the time it takes to process and confirm the samples by the CDC.
“At this point the most important thing is that we have a test and several labs around the nation that are able to test,” Mangal said.
The federal push to scale up U.S. testing capacity for Sudan Ebolavirus comes as authorities have been bracing for the “low” risk that an infected traveler could bring it into the country from Uganda.
“While they are working as quickly as they can to increase the number of laboratories that are able to test, as of today, that number is still very limited,” the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Vicki Herrera said at a town hall on October 21.
Herrera was speaking at a webinar hosted by the federally-funded National Emerging Special Pathogens Training & Education Center for frontline health care workers preparing to field potential Ebola patients.
“The best thing that you can do is to contact your local public health departments and they can help you determine what testing is available and where,” said Herrera.
The U.S. has awarded federal dollars to support a network of “regional treatment centers” prepared to isolate and treat patients with “special pathogens” like Ebola.
On Monday, the Biden administration announced it had awarded an additional $21 million to the hospitals and was adding a handful of new facilities to the nation’s “National Special Pathogen System.”
However, the responsibility for initially handling Ebola patients — at the airports or around the country — would likely fall first to a local hospital outside of this network.
For example, in New Jersey, officials in Essex County said that University Hospital in Newark will be tasked with responding to potential cases, if they are identified at nearby Newark Liberty International Airport.
James Moss, state hospital coordinator for the Virginia Department of Health, said in an email that hospitals in the counties around the state’s Dulles International Airport were rotating duties for handling potential cases from the CDC’s quarantine station at the airport.
“I will say that, in terms of Uganda and the risk right now, it is different than in West Africa,” Choi said, comparing it to the region where the 2014 outbreak was centered. “In West Africa, it was three large countries. The outbreak affected travel hubs. It had affected the capital. And we had a lot of travelers coming because you have three countries, right? So you had potentially a lot of travelers coming through.”
The U.S. is currently averaging about 140 passengers a day funneled to the five airports for evaluation, the CDC spokesperson said.
“That’s pretty low compared to what it was in West Africa. But despite that, I do think that CDC and other agencies have been very forward leaning on that,” added Choi.
The U.S. could very well face what some doctors have dubbed a “tripledemic” this winter, with cases of COVID-19, the flu and a virus called respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) surging at the same time.
The simultaneous increase in cases of three distinct viruses comes as more professionals are leaving the health care field for work that either pays better or is less physically and emotionally draining, which could further threaten the nation’s strained health care system.
“I’m concerned that hospitals, health care providers are going to be overwhelmed,” said CBS News medical contributor and Kaiser Health News editor-at-large Dr. Celine Gounder. “We’re looking at very high rates of both flu and RSV, so probably something around like 35,000 hospitalizations per week just from those two conditions.”
Of course, COVID-19 is still around, too. “Are we going to be prepared, are we going to have the beds? I’m really concerned about that,” Gounder said.
There is now a vaccine available for RSV, a common respiratory virus that causes cold-like symptoms but which can be serious in infants and older adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lately, a spike in RSV cases among very young children has overwhelmed pediatric hospitals. Little kids are especially susceptible to developing severe symptoms because their immune systems are undeveloped and their airways are smaller than those of adults, making it harder to breathe when inflamed.
The health care system is also grappling with a reduced labor force following an exodus of health care workers from the field during the pandemic, largely due to burnout. That means that even more work falls on the laps of the nurses, doctors and administrative and support staff who remain in the industry.
Some 330,000 medical professionals dropped out of the labor force in 2021 according to health care commercial intelligence company Definitive Healthcare.
“It’s an even more difficult situation, [with] even more understaffing, so then even more people get burned out and leave,” Gounder said.
Some of the physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other providers left their jobs to retire early, while others decided to seek out administrative work and stop seeing patients.
“So it’s all different kinds of ways of reducing that burnout of having a better work-life balance which, frankly, over the last couple of years, it’s been really hard on people,” Gounder said.
Gounder said she’s already seeing the impact of limited staff on patients seeking care at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
“Patients are sitting in the emergency room for a day or two waiting for a bed, because it’s not just about having the physical bed —you need to have the doctors, the nurses, the other staff to man that bed,” she said.
“The whole system is really clogged up right now,” she added.
Workers across diverse fields left jobs in search of better wages and working conditions during the so-called “Great Resignation.”
There’s no clear-cut solution or obvious way to lure more professionals back to the medical field, and though higher wages wouldn’t hurt, better pay alone won’t fix the issue, according to Gounder.
“I think people are valuing their time in a whole different way now and I do think it would require really rethinking the business model of health care, really changing how we structure health care, how we deliver it, who provides it,” she said. “I’m somewhat skeptical that we’re going to make those changes.”
More than a dozen aerosol dry shampoo products from brands like Dove and Suave may have elevated levels of benzene, a carcinogen, the company said.
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Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the flu season is off to an early start, with a rash of flu-like cases reported in Texas, parts of the Southeast, New York City and Washington, D.C. One San Diego high school seemingly has a flu outbreak, causing 1,400 students to be absent.
The outbreak at Patrick Henry High School started Monday, doubled on Wednesday, and now, more than half the student body is out sick.
“There was a homecoming dance and game on the weekend prior to this Monday,” Dr. Howard Taras, a physician for the San Diego Unified School District, told CBS News. “You’d think that it would take several days for them to become infectious to others, but it didn’t.”
The CDC said prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 36 million cases of the flu in the U.S. With masking and social distancing, U.S. cases plummeted to just thousands — the lowest ever recorded.
But now, most mandates are gone.
“The last two years, people haven’t been exposed too much influenza, so their immunity to it may be down,” said CBS News chief medical correspondent Jonathan LaPook.
The CDC said it’s safe to get the flu shot and COVID-19 booster together so that you can be prepared for what’s predicted to be a severe flu season.
Cash rich start-ups are filing scores of patent claims on hallucinogens like magic mushrooms. Researchers and patient advocates worry high prices will make the therapies unaffordable.
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Mammograms can sometimes fail to detect tumors in women who have a higher breast density. As a result, the FDA said it’s planning new regulations for informing women about their tissue type and screening options.
Dr. Sarah Friedewald, the chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medicine, explains that denser breasts have less fat and more tissue. It can be more difficult to spot tumors in dense tissue in mammograms, since both show up as white in the images.
“About 40[%] to 50% of the women in the country actually have dense breast tissue. It just makes it a little bit harder for us to find cancer on the mammogram,” Friedewald said.
For one of Friedewald’s patients, she said that they needed additional scans, an ultrasound and an MRI to detect a large cancerous tumor due to her breast density.
In the U.S., 38 states now require patients to be notified about their breast density.
If you’re planning to get a mammogram, it’s important to ask doctors about your tissue type. If additional tests are needed, make sure to get a medical order and check if your insurance company requires pre-approval and covers the cost.
More tests can cost anywhere between a few hundred to thousands of dollars.
Eve Feinberg, 48, gets screened for breast cancer every year due to her aunts being diagnosed at a young age. She said she pays around $2,000 out of pocket each year for an MRI after insurance coverage.
She insists, though, that it’s worth it.
“Just to know that if something is detected, it will be detected at an early stage,” Feinberg said.
The Hale Family Building, the largest expansion in Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH; Boston) history, addresses critical capacity needs and enhances the delivery of critical pediatric care in the city.
Services include core clinical support, the Boston Children’s Benderson Family Heart Center, a perioperative platform with an operating suite including MROR (magnetic resonance operating room) and interventional radiology central sterile processing, a neonatal ICU, and a complex surgery bed unit.
Located in a dense urban environment, vertical indoor and outdoor gardens are woven into the building to provide respite from the highly clinical environment. Further enhancing the pediatric care environment, “ground-to-sky” themed interactive art installations are integrated throughout the clinical spaces. These design elements together create a “healing oasis” within the BCH campus.
The interconnected indoor and outdoor green spaces create a vertical green necklace—a unique patient experience based on BCH’s Green Space Master Plan. The vision for the 28,000 square feet of new green spaces promotes the concept of hope, freedom, play, and contemplation.
Programmatically, interdisciplinary quaternary care is advanced by consolidating the heart center program within the building, creating an integrative pediatric cardiac/vascular interventional floor, and private neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patient rooms for pediatric ICU flex capability.
Inpatient rooms feature a designated family zone and provide adequate space to accommodate both visitors and caregivers. Each inpatient unit includes two family lounges, one located at the entrance to the unit and the other adjacent to the indoor gardens. The lounges are designed as multifunctional spaces with a variety of seating arrangements and areas for relaxation, work, dining, and TV viewing.
A laundry room is located adjacent to the family lounge, and a multipurpose activity playroom is located within each unit for patients and siblings.
A project of this scale required careful planning inclusive of all parties. Over 400 clinicians, support staff, family members, and patients across 30 user groups were involved in the programming and design through cardboard city mock-ups to simulate clinical rooms’ function and interactive 3-D virtual walkthroughs.
Project details for Hale Family Building:
Location: Boston
Completion date: June 2022
Owner: Boston Children’s Hospital
Total building area: 595,000 sq. ft.
Total construction cost: Confidential
Cost/sq. ft.: Confidential
Architecture firm: Shepley Bulfinch
Interior design: Shepley Bulfinch
General contractor: Suffolk Construction
Engineering: BR+A (electric and HVAC), McNamara Salvia Structural Engineers (structural), RW Sullivan (plumbing and fire protection), Haley & Aldrich (environmental and geotech); CavTocci (acoustical); LAM Partners (lighting); Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. (envelope consultant); Gates (pharmacy); Mikyoung Kim (landscape); VHB, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, (civil); Jensen Hughes (code)
Builder: Suffolk Construction
Residents of and visitors to Tower Hamlets can enjoy enhanced 4G mobile signal thanks to bus shelters with built-in small cell connectivity. Connectivity infrastructure-as-a-service provider Freshwave and Clear Channel UK collaborated to devise a solution that would allow the technology to be seamlessly integrated into bus shelters in the London borough.
As a result, small cell technology – from any infrastructure-as-a-service provider – can be installed anywhere there’s a Clear Channel shelter and a requirement to increase network capacity in the area. Following the success of this new approach, the 5G-ready technology will now be added to further bus shelters in the borough in the coming months.
Simon Frumkin
Out of Home media and infrastructure company Clear Channel UK manages the bus shelters which the small cells have been installed in on behalf of mobile network operator Virgin Media O2. Customer data usage is increasing by around a third annually and with 5G also meaning networks need to be densified, new ways of providing connectivity must be found.
Busy areas such as high streets, where bus shelters are already providing an essential public service, place greater demand on networks as more people are trying to use the mobile signal from the same macrocell. Outdoor small cells immediately increase access to top speeds and capacity in the area around them, making it easier for people to connect.
Using existing street assets, as opposed to building new assets, not only makes it faster and easier for the mobile operators to enhance their networks, it also reduces the amount of clutter on the streets.
This ability for Clear Channel’s bus shelters to host mobile technology provides a whole new set of options and locations for network operators. Bus shelters provide a robust structure and excellent capacity to carry the technology. And with the need for connectivity infrastructure only increasing, bus shelters are an exciting new option for operators as they seek to bolster their networks.
Simon Frumkin, CEO at Freshwave, said: “I’m proud of our constant engineering and design innovations, as well as the way we collaborate in new ways with industry partners and local authorities. Smart cities and towns need new approaches to digital connectivity. And the more existing street assets that can be used to bring this to our towns, the better it is for both the mobile network operators and the customers and communities they serve. This is why we’re already working on a multi-operator, multi-technology design for bus shelter use too.”
Will Ramage, Co-Managing Director at Clear Channel UK, said: “We’re glad Freshwave are the first organisation to have seized this opportunity with us, and it’s been great working with the team for this pilot. Helping to provide mobile connectivity plays a big part in our Platform for Good commitment to the public, and we’re excited to support this technology in lots of other communities around the UK.”
Pete Hollebon, Radio Network Engineering – Outdoor Small Cell and Microcell Delivery Lead at Virgin Media O2, said: “Collaboration with partners such as Freshwave and Clear Channel is crucial to delivering the best possible network experience for our customers. This industry-first achievement provides us with new options when it comes to our continual network improvements and we’re looking forward to adding the technology to further sites.”
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Flu cases are higher than usual for this time of year and are expected to soar in the coming weeks. A third virus, R.S.V., is straining pediatric hospitals in some states.
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Kendall Chamberlin, the town’s water superintendent for over 30 years, said he had been lowering fluoride levels well below state guidelines for more than a decade.
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A radiologist with an uncanny visual sense, she revolutionized the diagnosis of fetal abnormalities like Down syndrome.
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Illinois and Maryland have recorded their first deaths in the monkeypox outbreak, local health officials announced Friday, a day after officials in New York and Nevada said that they had also identified their first deaths in residents who had tested positive for the virus.
Six deaths have now been officially tallied so far by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up from two last week, out of more than 27,800 infections around the country.
The first confirmed death this year was in California and a second was reported last month in Ohio. Officials have not yet confirmed whether a death in Texas reported in August was due to monkeypox.
Chicago’s health department said Friday that two residents had died with “multiple other health conditions, including weakened immune systems.” The people were diagnosed with the virus “more than six weeks ago, and both had been hospitalized.”
Also on Friday, Maryland’s health department said in a release that monkeypox “was a contributing factor” in a death reported there. That person was also “immunocompromised, resulting in a more severe case.”
On Thursday, a spokesperson for New York state’s health department had said two residents of New York City “recently passed away” after testing positive. Both were facing “underlying conditions that placed them at high risk of severe outcomes from monkeypox infection.”
In Nevada, authorities also announced Thursday that a man in the Las Vegas area had died after being diagnosed with monkeypox.
“The patient was a male over the age of 50 with underlying medical conditions whose death was attributed to other causes,” the Southern Nevada Health Department said in a release.
All four jurisdictions who have reported new monkeypox deaths over the past few days have declined to offer additional details about the deaths, citing privacy concerns.
Federal officials had said earlier this week that several deaths linked to the virus were being investigated around the country.
A previously reported death of a Texas patient believed to have monkeypox remains unconfirmed, aa spokesperson for the Houston area’s Harris Health System said on Wednesday, pending results from the CDC.
The new deaths come months after a surge of new monkeypox cases had crested nationwide. The pace of new infections has largely plummeted around the country.
New York City, once an early hotspot of infections, is averaging only a handful of new infections per day on average. San Francisco announced Thursday the city was planning to soon end its emergency declaration for the outbreak.
Overall, cases are still overwhelmingly being reported among men who have sex with men. However, some demographics have shifted since early in the outbreak: Federal data suggest a majority of new cases are now in non-White patients.
Federal health officials have also warned that the agency had seen a growing number of severe infections and hospitalizations as the virus had spread into more vulnerable groups, including homeless communities.
“There have been cases identified, several hundred actually, including severe cases. Anecdotally, those seem to be in people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. And we are working to try to understand the exposures that have occurred,” the CDC’s Agam Rao said Wednesday at the ID Week conference.
Rao said the agency had also fielded a growing number of requests from doctors treating severe monkeypox infections in people with underlying conditions, like advanced untreated HIV.
“When people are severely immunocompromised, then they don’t have the ability to clear the virus on their own,”
Rao said some severe cases had received treatment with tecovirimat, an experimental antiviral drug being used to treat severe monkeypox cases.
“That slows down the replication. But the immune system still needs to be the one to clear the actual virus,” said Rao.
Officials in Maryland announced Friday they had confirmed the state’s first monkeypox death, a day after officials in New York and Nevada said that they had identified their first deaths in residents who had tested positive for the virus.
Only four deaths have been officially tallied so far by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of 27,835 infections around the country. The first confirmed death was in California and a second was later reported in Ohio. Officials have not yet confirmed whether a death in Texas was due to monkeypox.
In a release, Maryland’s health department said monkeypox “was a contributing factor” in the death. The person was “immunocompromised, resulting in a more severe case.”
CBS News first reported news that Maryland was investigating a monkeypox death, after officials in New York and Nevada also announced they had identified fatalities linked to the virus.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for New York state’s health department had said two residents of New York City “recently passed away” after testing positive. Both were facing “underlying conditions that placed them at high risk of severe outcomes from monkeypox infection.”
“We are deeply saddened by the two reported deaths and our hearts go out to the individuals’ loved ones and community. Every effort will be made to prevent additional suffering from this virus through continued community engagement, information-sharing and vaccination,” New York City’s health department said in a statement.
In Nevada, authorities also announced Thursday that a man in the Las Vegas area had died after being diagnosed with monkeypox.
“The patient was a male over the age of 50 with underlying medical conditions whose death was attributed to other causes,” the Southern Nevada Health Department said in a release.
All three jurisdictions declined to provide additional information about the deaths, citing patient confidentiality.
Two additional deaths were tallied just days apart on the CDC’s nationwide dashboard this past week, although it is unclear which states the new fatalities are attributed to.
The CDC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Officials said earlier this week that several other deaths linked to the virus are also being investigated around the country.
A previously reported death of a Texas patient believed to have monkeypox remains unconfirmed, according to a spokesperson for the Houston area’s Harris Health System, pending results from the CDC.
The new deaths come as the pace of new infections has largely plummeted around the country.
New York City, once an early hotspot of infections, is averaging only a handful of new infections per day on average. San Francisco announced Thursday the city was planning to soon end its emergency declaration for the outbreak.
Overall, cases are still overwhelmingly being reported among men who have sex with men. However, some demographics have shifted since early in the outbreak: Federal data suggest a majority of new cases are now in non-White patients.
Federal health officials have also warned that the agency had seen a growing number of severe infections and hospitalizations as the virus had spread into more vulnerable groups, including homeless communities.
“There have been cases identified, several hundred actually, including severe cases. Anecdotally, those seem to be in people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. And we are working to try to understand the exposures that have occurred,” the CDC’s Agam Rao said Wednesday at the ID Week conference.
Rao said the agency had also fielded a growing number of requests from doctors treating severe monkeypox infections in people with underlying conditions, like advanced untreated HIV.
“When people are severely immunocompromised, then they don’t have the ability to clear the virus on their own,”
Rao said some severe cases had received treatment with tecovirimat, an experimental antiviral drug being used to treat severe monkeypox cases.
“That slows down the replication. But the immune system still needs to be the one to clear the actual virus,” said Rao.
Officials in New York and Nevada said Thursday that they had identified their first deaths in people who had tested positive for monkeypox, as officials in Maryland confirmed they are waiting for “final documentation” of the state’s potential first monkeypox death.
Only four deaths have been officially tallied so far by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of 27,635 infections around the country. The first confirmed death was in California and a second was later reported in Ohio. Officials have not yet confirmed a death in Texas was connected to monkeypox.
Two residents “recently passed away” in New York City who had tested positive for the virus, according to Jeffrey Hammond, a spokesperson for New York’s health department. Both were facing “underlying conditions that placed them at high risk of severe outcomes from monkeypox infection.”
The exact causes of death remain under investigation. The state health department is in talks with the city health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the fatalities, Hammond said.
“We are deeply saddened by the two reported deaths and our hearts go out to the individuals’ loved ones and community. Every effort will be made to prevent additional suffering from this virus through continued community engagement, information-sharing and vaccination,” the city’s health department said in a statement.
New York City’s health department declined to provide additional information about the deaths, citing patient confidentiality.
In Nevada, authorities also announced Thursday that a man in the Las Vegas area had died after being diagnosed with monkeypox.
“The patient was a male over the age of 50 with underlying medical conditions whose death was attributed to other causes,” the Southern Nevada Health Department said in a release.
In Maryland, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday that they were also “awaiting final documentation” of a potential death of a Maryland resident from monkeypox.
Two additional deaths were tallied just days apart on the CDC’s nationwide dashboard this past week, although it is unclear which states the new fatalities are attributed to.
The CDC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Officials said several other deaths linked to the virus are also being investigated around the country.
A previously reported death of a Texas patient believed to have monkeypox remains unconfirmed, according to a spokesperson for the Houston area’s Harris Health System, pending results from the CDC.
The new deaths come as the pace of new infections has largely plummeted around the country. New York City, once an early hotspot of infections, is averaging only a handful of new infections per day on average.
Overall, cases are still overwhelmingly being reported among men who have sex with men. However, some demographics have shifted since early in the outbreak: Federal data suggest a majority of new cases are now in non-White patients.
Federal health officials have also warned that the agency had seen a growing number of severe infections and hospitalizations as the virus had spread into more vulnerable groups, including homeless communities.
“There have been cases identified, several hundred actually, including severe cases. Anecdotally, those seem to be in people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. And we are working to try to understand the exposures that have occurred,” the CDC’s Agam Rao said Wednesday at the ID Week conference.
Rao said the agency had also fielded a growing number of requests from doctors treating severe monkeypox infections in people with underlying conditions, like advanced untreated HIV.
“When people are severely immunocompromised, then they don’t have the ability to clear the virus on their own,”
Rao said some severe cases had received treatment with tecovirimat, an experimental antiviral drug being used to treat severe monkeypox cases.
“That slows down the replication. But the immune system still needs to be the one to clear the actual virus,” said Rao.
COVID vaccines should be part of the federal government’s list of routinely recommended vaccinations, a panel of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts said Thursday.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted unanimously to back the move, amid a two-day long meeting.
The move, part of a series of proposed changes to documents which are revised early every year, would amount to little more than summarizing recommendations already decided by the agency’s advisers, the CDC said.
“It’s important to note that there are no changes in COVID-19 vaccine policy, and today’s action simply helps streamline clinical guidance for healthcare providers by including all currently licensed, authorized and routinely recommended vaccines in one document,” the CDC said in a statement published on Thursday.
It also has responded to misleading claims aired by Fox News host Tucker Carlson and others, which falsely accused the CDC of moving to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations to enroll in public schools.
In the hotly contested Senate contest in Nevada, Republican candidate Adam Laxalt on Thursday called on his opponent – incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto – to “say whether she stands by the actions taken by the CDC on forced vaccinations of children in Nevada or not.”
“Indeed, there are vaccines that are on the schedule right now that are not required for school attendance in many jurisdictions, such as seasonal influenza. Local control matters, and we honor that,” Dr. Nirav Shah, Maine’s top health official and a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said during the meeting ahead of the vote.
While local authorities often look to the federal health agencies for guidance on the nation’s widely varying school immunization requirements, administration officials have repeatedly reiterated that they have no jurisdiction to impose such mandates in the classroom.
“The decision around school entrance for vaccines rests where it did before, which is at the state level, the county level, and at the municipal level, if it exists at all,” Shah said.
Shah and other members of the panel acknowledged the slew of online comments they had received ahead of the meeting over the topic, some pleading with them not to require COVID vaccinations in schools.
After Thursday’s vote, the agency then will seek sign-off from a range of professional groups including the American Academy of Family Physicians and American Pharmacists Association.
The new schedules for children, adolescents and adults will then be published in February 2023 by the CDC.
Outside of COVID-19 changes, other proposed changes presented to the group included incorporating the new pediatric recommendations voted on in June for pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and clarifying that Dengue vaccine should not be administered to children who are only visiting parts of the world where the disease is endemic.
“This represents sort of a summary of existing recommendations. But I will acknowledge, I appreciate that there is a symbolism in adding COVID-19 to the childhood immunization schedule. And that symbolism is that we view this as routine, and that we view this as COVID is here to stay,” said Dr. Matthew Daley, a member of the panel.
The vote comes a day after the panel also endorsed adding COVID-19 to the federally funded Vaccines for Children program, which covers routine immunizations for uninsured children.
Under the Affordable Care Act, most private health insurance plans are required to cover vaccines included on the recommended immunization schedules at no cost.
But while the cost of COVID-19 vaccines has been borne by the federal government for all Americans during the public health emergency, the Biden administration has said for months that it would need to begin preparing to transition the shots to a private market next year as funds run dry.
“This is an access issue. This is an issue to allow children that don’t have insurance to gain access to this vaccine. It’s particularly important, as we move on to commercialization of the vaccine,” the CDC’s José Romero told the committee on Wednesday.
CDC officials told the committee on Wednesday that their vote would allow the Vaccines for Children to begin contracting for doses to provide to doctors, once the supply of vials from the federal COVID-19 response runs out.
The votes also do not impact the coverage by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program of the vaccines, which remain in part under emergency use authorizations.
“It is not listing this as a routine vaccine for children to enter school. And it is not a change in our policy for these vaccines,” Romero said.
New York City has confirmed its first two deaths of residents who had tested positive for monkeypox, health officials said Thursday.
Only two other deaths have been confirmed so far by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, out of 27,635 infections around the country. The first confirmed death was in California and a second was later reported in Ohio.
Both were facing “underlying conditions that placed them at high risk of severe outcomes from monkeypox infection,” said Jeffrey Hammond, a spokesperson for New York’s state health department.
The exact causes of death remain under investigation. The state health department is in talks with the city health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the fatalities, Hammond said.
“We are deeply saddened by the two reported deaths and our hearts go out to the individuals’ loved ones and community. Every effort will be made to prevent additional suffering from this virus through continued community engagement, information-sharing and vaccination,” the city’s health department said in a statement.
New York City’s health department declined to provide additional information about the deaths, citing patient confidentiality.
The deaths, tallied just days apart on the CDC’s nationwide dashboard this past week, come as the pace of new infections has largely plummeted around the country. Once an early hotspot of infections, the city is averaging only a handful per day on average.
A previously reported death in a Texas patient believed to have monkeypox remains unconfirmed, according to a spokesperson for the Houston area’s Harris Health System.
However, federal health officials had warned that the agency had seen a growing number of severe infections and hospitalizations as the virus had spread into more vulnerable groups, including homeless populations and people with advanced untreated HIV.
Cases have largely been among men who have sex with men, although federal data suggest a majority of new cases are now in non-White patients.
“When people are severely immunocompromised, then they don’t have the ability to clear the virus on their own,” the CDC’s Agam Rao said Wednesday at the ID Week conference.
Rao said these cases had received treatment with tecovirimat, an experimental antiviral drug being used to treat severe monkeypox cases.
“That slows down the replication. But the immune system still needs to be the one to clear the actual virus,” said Rao.
The COVID-19 pandemic drove a dramatic increase in the number of women who died from pregnancy or childbirth complications in the U.S. last year, a crisis that has disproportionately impacted Black and Hispanic women, according to a government report released Wednesday.
The report laid out grim trends across the country for expectant mothers and their newborn babies.
It found that pregnancy-related deaths have spiked nearly 80% since 2018, with COVID-19 being a factor in a quarter of the 1,178 deaths reported last year. The percentage of preterm and low birthweight babies also went up last year, after holding steady for years. And more pregnant or postpartum women are reporting symptoms of depression.
“We were already in the middle of a crisis with maternal mortality in our country,” said Karen Tabb Dina, a maternal health researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “This really shows that COVID-19 has exacerbated that crisis to rates that we, as a country, are not able to handle.”
The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office, which authored the report, analyzed pregnancy-related deaths after Congress mandated that it review maternal health outcomes in the 2020 coronavirus relief bill.
The maternal death rate in the U.S. is higher than many other developed nations and had been on the rise in the years leading up to the pandemic, but COVID-19 has only worsened conditions for pregnant women.
Women who contract the virus while pregnant face elevated health risks. Staffing shortages and COVID-19 restrictions created more hurdles for expecting mothers to get in-person health care. And pandemic stress has intensified depression, a common condition during pregnancy.
Mental health issues likely contributed to the increase in pregnancy-related deaths, Tabb Dina said. Many women who experience depression and anxiety during or after their pregnancy struggle to get the care they need.
“Mental health is the greatest complication in pregnancy that we don’t understand,” she said.
The biggest spike in deaths came during July through December of last year, as the COVID-19 Delta variant infected millions, noted Carolyn Yocom, a director at the Government Accountability Office.
“It’s really clear from the data that the time in which the Delta variant spread seemed to correspond to a huge increase in deaths,” Yocom said.
The maternal death rate is particularly stark for Black women, who have long faced worse maternal outcomes than their peers.
Pregnancy-related deaths for every 100,000 births climbed from 44 in 2019 to 68.9 among Black women last year. White women had death rates of 26.1 last year, a jump from 17.9 in 2019.
Death rates among Hispanics had been on the decline, but they swelled again during the pandemic from 12.6 per 100,000 in 2019 to 27.5 last year.
Black and Hispanic people have also died at higher rates from COVID-19, in part because they have less access to medical care and often work essential jobs that exposed them to the virus.
Long before COVID-19 began spreading, the stage was set for Black, low-income and rural women to receive subpar pregnancy care — putting them at further risk for their pregnancies to go wrong, according to a separate GAO report.
Hospitals have been shedding their obstetric services in rural areas, as well as low-income and majority Black communities, that report said. More than half of rural counties didn’t have a hospital offering pregnancy care as of 2018, the review found.
“The loss of hospital-based obstetric services in rural areas is associated with increases in out-of-hospital births and pre-term births, which may contribute to poor maternal and infant outcomes,” the report found.
