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As patients fell ill with COVID inside hospitals, government oversight fell short
One by one, the nurses taking care of actress Judi Evans at Riverside Community Hospital kept calling out sick. Patients were coughing as staffers wheeled the maskless soap opera star around the California hospital while treating her for injuries from a horseback fall in May 2020, Evans said. She remembered they took her to a […]
They went into the hospital for one thing, but some caught COVID there and never left
They went into hospitals with heart attacks, kidney failure or in a psychiatric crisis. They left with COVID-19 — if they left at all. More than 10,000 patients were diagnosed with COVID in a U.S. hospital last year after they were admitted for something else, according to federal and state records analyzed exclusively for KHN. […]
Boeing tested air purifiers like those used in schools. It decided not to use them.
Aerospace giant Boeing tested two kinds of ionization technologies — like those widely adopted in schools hoping to combat COVID— to determine how well each killed germs on surfaces and decided that neither was effective enough to install on its commercial planes. Boeing noted in its conclusion that “air ionization has not shown significant disinfection […]
After working for Trump, two top COVID advisors go to work for fan companies
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has joined Big Ass Fans, lending his scientific credibility to a company division that says its ion-generating technology kills the coronavirus. The company charges $9,450 for a fan with technology that academic air quality experts question. As strategic health and safety adviser, […]
Did CDC mask advice drive up death toll for health workers?
Since the start of the pandemic, the most terrifying task in health care was thought to be when a doctor put a breathing tube down the trachea of a critically ill covid patient. Those performing such “aerosol-generating” procedures, often in an intensive-care unit, got the best protective gear even if there wasn’t enough to go […]
Health Workers and Hospitals Grapple With Millions of Counterfeit N95 Masks
Thousands of counterfeit 3M respirators have slipped past U.S. investigators in recent months, making it to the cheeks and chins of health care workers and perplexing experts who say their quality is not vastly inferior to the real thing. N95 masks are prized for their ability to filter out 95% of the minuscule particles that […]
New COVID cases plunge as much as 25 percent in some states as behavior changes
A dozen states are reporting drops of 25% or more in new covid-19 cases and more than 1,200 counties have seen the same, federal data released Wednesday shows. Experts say the plunge may relate to growing fear of the virus after it reached record-high levels, as well as soaring hopes of getting vaccinated soon. Nationally, […]