Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is the special guest for this bonus episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” podcast. He and host Julie Rovner discuss a breadth of topics the secretary oversees, including covid-19, prescription drug prices, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
Thousands of schools have spent millions of federal covid relief dollars snapping up air cleaning technology that claims to inactivate covid-19. But the devices fall into a regulatory gap.
Mesa County is a breeding ground for the covid-19 delta variant, but few would guess with tens of thousands of people flocking to the state’s largest country music festival.
Hesitancy about the vaccines among prison staffers has led to a striking disparity: Inmates are better protected than corrections officials.
Vermont and Massachusetts lead the nation, with more than 70% of adults having had at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine. Southern states like Tennessee lag far behind.
As vaccination rates rise across the state, the overall numbers of covid cases and deaths have plunged. But health officials are still reporting nearly 1,000 new cases and more than two dozen deaths a day. So, where does covid continue to simmer in California? And why?
The data is reassuring to people who got this shot.
Black and Hispanic students have lost up to 12 months of learning, which could lead to lower incomes and shorter, sicker lives.
California’s vaccination rates have stagnated, particularly in Black and Latino inner-city neighborhoods and in rural towns. County health officials, who say trust is their most important commodity, need more money for one-on-one interactions with holdouts, but the state has instead largely funneled money to advertising firms and tech companies.
If international scientific sleuths are hoping to see a lab log or find a whistleblower, that sort of information won’t be revealed. In China today, it is dangerous to say what you know if it challenges the official government narrative.
