Even as many states put a moratorium on elective surgeries in a desperate effort to preserve dwindling stocks of protective gear, hospitals in other pockets of the country continue to perform a range of elective procedures. Some staff members and ethicists are voicing concerns.
The states are allowing new enrollments this month to help ease consumers’ concerns about the cost of health care so that the sick will not be deterred from seeking medical attention and inadvertently spread the virus.
A law signed by Trump on Wednesday will provide financial help for self-employed workers, who generally don’t have paid leave. Some states also have family and medical leave programs that can be helpful.
Older adults are at serious risk during this pandemic and have been advised to avoid contact with others. Yet many still need essential services, and programs are scrambling to adapt.
There’s an array of recommendations about how to adjust our lives to reduce the spread of the novel virus. All are motivated by the same guiding principle: The better the public does in these efforts, the better off everyone will be.
Nationwide, testing for coronavirus is ramping up. But the supply of specialty swabs needed to collect potential coronavirus specimens can’t keep up with demand, creating a bottleneck in testing capabilities. So two top manufacturers are working with U.S. and Italian governments to increase production.
Just 5 miles from Mar-a-Lago, the POTUS’ outpost, Florida residents find that the president’s pledge to make testing accessible hasn’t materialized.
Closing K-12 schools is part of a broad strategy to limit public interactions and slow the spread of COVID-19 cases. But the decision is far from easy, with conflicting science about how effective such closures are weighed against the massive disruption to families’ lives.
In an interview, Dennis Carroll, who until last fall headed up the emerging threats unit at USAID, spoke about the threat of more germs, like the novel coronavirus, appearing and whether the world is prepared for this pandemic.
Drs. Keith Jerome and Alex Greninger fast-tracked a test for the deadly new coronavirus weeks before it began spreading in the U.S. Their work has been key to detecting community transmission and ramping up the nation’s testing capacity.
