Los Angeles Times: Bass' Homeless Plan Depends On Having Enough Motel Beds
Seated on the hard sidewalk along Cahuenga Boulevard, Rue Ryan arranged a batch of red roses she had plucked from the trash into a memorial for her “street mom,” Hyper, who died two years ago. The work was an escape from the activity around her, as friends and fellow encampment residents hurriedly prepared to move into nearby hotel rooms, choosing what to keep or toss. (Oreskes, 12/22)

inewsource: San Diego Police Keep Arresting Unhoused People As Cases Go Nowhere
San Diego police continue citing and arresting unsheltered homeless people for blocking sidewalks and sleeping where they shouldn’t, but these cases continue to go nowhere. This summer, inewsource published a series of investigations that found a dramatic spike in arrests, revealed police and city officials violating court orders, and highlighted a disconnect between the mayor and city attorney about how best to handle people living on the sidewalk.(Dulaney and Harper, 12/21)

Bay Area News Group: Bay Area Mourns Hundreds Who Died Without Homes This Year
Activists in San Francisco read nearly 300 names during a candlelight vigil outside City Hall earlier this month, honoring those who died this year and were either homeless or living in the beleaguered single-room-occupancy hotels San Francisco uses as homeless housing. (Kendall, 12/21)

Times Of San Diego: County Jail Inmate Administers Anti-Overdose Drug To Fellow Inmate
An inmate at the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa used the anti-overdose medication Naloxone to help a fellow inmate, the sheriff’s department reported Wednesday. An alarm alerted deputies that someone had accessed a Naloxone box within the housing unit, just after 2:30 p.m. last Thursday, according to the Sheriff’s Media Relations office. Deputies found a male inmate unresponsive, although another inmate had given him two doses of Naloxone, the sheriff’s department said. (Ireland, 12/21)

Los Angeles Times: The Untold Worker Exploitation In California’s Weed Industry 
Sareth Sin, 67, died upright, seated in a plastic chair, on Christmas Day. He was asphyxiated by fumes from the generator he ran to chase the desert chill out of a cannabis greenhouse on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County. Leuane Chounlabout, 79, was found lifeless, lying on his back surrounded by a tangle of electrical cords connecting heat lamps to a greenhouse generator outside Palmdale. He had arrived two days earlier to help harvest. (St. John and Gerber, 12/22)

The Mercury News: San Jose Cannabis Dispensary To Pay $50,000 For Pesticide-Related Violations
A San Jose cannabis dispensary will pay $50,000 to settle claims it broke laws related to the safe application of pesticides, prosecutors said. The case centered on Relentless Enterprises Inc., a licensed cannabis dispensary doing business as Theraleaf. According to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, the company used a pesticide that was not approved for cannabis while cultivating cannabis at its San Jose facility between May and July 2020. (Green, 12/21)

CNN: Biden Administration Offers To Release Tamiflu From Strategic National Stockpile 
With an early and severe flu season straining resources, the Biden administration says it will release the prescription antiviral Tamiflu from the Strategic National Stockpile to states and territories that request it. The US Department of Health and Human services said Wednesday this should help ease access to the medication – one of several types of medicines patients have sometimes struggled to find amid a surge of respiratory viruses, including flu, RSV, Covid-19 and others. (Goodman, 12/21)

AP: As Flu Rages, US Releases Medicine From National Stockpile
The administration is not releasing how many doses will be made available. Antiviral medications were released from the stockpile more than a decade ago during the H1N1, also known as swine flu, pandemic. Last week, the federal agency also announced it would allow states to dip into statewide stockpiles for Tamiflu, making millions of treatment courses available. Tamiflu can be prescribed to treat flu in people over the age of 2 weeks old. (Seitz, 12/22)

CNBC: FDA Urges Parents Not To Stockpile Children's Flu Medications
The surge in flu cases and Covid-19 infections this month, along with elevated levels of childhood respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, infections has caused elevated demand for children’s over-the-counter cold and flu medications. The commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration said his agency is working with producers to improve supply but the current demand is unprecedented. (Coombs, 12/21)

NBC News: Children’s Medication Shortages Strain Parents And Pharmacies
Hugh Chancy, the president of the National Community Pharmacists Association, which represents over 19,000 independent pharmacies, said member pharmacies are under tremendous pressure. Some, including one of his own five pharmacies in Georgia, also function as compounding facilities, where licensed pharmacists can create drugs to meet the needs of individual patients. (Samee Ali, 21/21)

Side Effects Public Media: If The Antibiotics Shortage Worsens, Children With Sickle Cell Risk Preventable Deaths
Mary Warlo has been extremely worried lately. Her baby Calieb, who is six months old, has sickle cell disease. In early December he went for a few days without liquid penicillin, a medication that he – and thousands of other children in the U.S. – rely on to prevent potentially life threatening infections. Warlo couldn’t easily find a pharmacy in Indianapolis that had the medicine in stock. She and her husband frantically drove around for hours, stopping at five different pharmacies before they were able to get their prescription filled. (Yousry, 12/21)

San Francisco Chronicle: Contra Costa County Says Call Ambulance 911 Only For True Emergency
Contra Costa County is telling residents to refrain from calling 911 unless they have a real emergency, as health care providers and emergency ambulance services “are especially impacted because of COVID, flu and other respiratory viruses.” (Beamish, 12/21)

Sacramento Bee: California COVID-19 Sick Pay Expires Soon. Here’s What You Should Know Before It Does
Qualifying California employees have until Dec. 31 to claim up to 80 hours of paid sick leave if they missed worked for COVID-related reasons this year. (Pinedo, 12/21)

Bay Area Reporter: COVID Pandemic Highlighted Importance Of Advanced Care Planning 
Three years ago Palm Springs resident Richard Bass went to visit a friend who was in the hospital after experiencing a fainting spell at home. The elderly gentleman lived alone and shared his concern about what would happen if he experienced a debilitating health issue and was unable to call for help. "I said to him I am worried about living alone as well," recalled Bass, 83, a retired educator who relocated from Los Angeles to the Coachella Valley in 2005. "During this conversation of both of us having the need for someone to check in on us, we came up with the idea of why don't we contact each other every day." (Bajko, 12/21)

Stat: Hospitals Should Stop Routine Covid Screenings For All: Report
An influential board of infectious disease physicians recommended Wednesday that hospitals and other health care facilities stop routinely screening asymptomatic patients for Covid-19, saying the potential risks of screenings now outweigh the benefits. (Mast, 12/21)

California Healthline: ‘Caged … For No Fault Of Your Own’: Detainees Dread Covid While Awaiting Immigration Hearings
Covid remains a threat for the roughly 30,000 people in the country’s network of immigration facilities. But ICE continues to flout its own pandemic protocols, an extension of the facilities’ poor history of medical care. (Rayasam, 12/22)

The Guardian: Covid: Ongoing Loss Of Smell May Be Caused By Nasal Cell Destruction 
Millions of people who lost their sense of smell after contracting Covid may have an ongoing, abnormal immune response that destroys cells in the nose, researchers say. Doctors analyzed nasal tissue from Covid patients and found that those with long-term problems with their sense of smell had inflammation-driving immune cells inside the delicate nasal lining, which were potentially wiping out vital sensory nerve cells. (Sample, 12/21)

The Washington Post: Fewer Than Half Of Nursing Home Residents Have Received Bivalent Covid Boosters 
Fewer than half of all nursing home residents in the United States have received the latest coronavirus vaccine booster shot — and rates among nursing home staff are even worse — raising concerns that vulnerable elderly people face a spike in preventable covid-19 deaths this winter. ... As of Dec. 4, only 47 percent of residents in nursing homes have received the latest booster; the rate for nursing home staff was 22 percent. (Rowland, 12/21)

Reuters: U.S. FDA Approves Roche's COVID-19 Antibody
Roche Holding AG said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved its monoclonal antibody for treating COVID-19 in hospitalized adult patients. The intravenous anti-inflammatory drug, Actemra, is a monoclonal antibody that reduces inflammation and was approved in 2010 to treat rheumatoid arthritis. It is the first FDA-approved monoclonal antibody to treat COVID-19, Roche said. (12/21)

Becker's Hospital Review: Researchers Find Possible Genetic Cause For MIS-C
A new study suggests there may be an underlying genetic cause for why some children develop a rare but serious inflammatory condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, after a COVID-19 infection. More than 9,000 MIS-C cases, including 74 deaths, have been reported to the CDC since the agency started tracking them in May 2020. A study published Dec. 20 in Science identified genetic mutations to the proteins OAS and RNase L that increased the inflammatory response in some immune cells. The mutations were found in five unrelated children with MIS-C. (Carbajal, 12/21)

Roll Call: Schumer: Senate Closing In On Omnibus Amendments Deal 
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer took to the floor at 2 a.m. Thursday to say an agreement was near to speed up passage of the massive fiscal 2023 omnibus spending bill, after senators spent the day Wednesday wrangling behind the scenes. The chief dispute was over pandemic-era asylum restrictions that the Biden administration wants to lift, a move that Republicans and some Democrats say would exacerbate chaos at the border. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has an amendment to bar the administration from ending the so-called Title 42 policy; Republicans want a simple majority threshold for adoption, while Democrats want to raise the bar to 60 votes. "It is my expectation we will be able to lock in an agreement on the omnibus tomorrow morning," Schumer said. "We are very close, but we're not there yet." (Quigley and Weiss, 12/22)

The Hill: Mike Lee, Title 42 Drama Holds Up Omnibus Passage 
An effort led by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to maintain Title 42 is threatening efforts to pass a sweeping government funding bill before a shutdown deadline later this week. Congressional negotiators on both sides say the biggest holdup is ongoing negotiations to decide what the voting threshold would be to pass the amendment. (Folley, Bernal and Weaver, 12/21)

Stat: Can Medicare's Hospital At Home Program Prove Its Worth?
A Medicare program that allowed approved health systems to bill for hospital care delivered in people’s homes during the pandemic is on the cusp of a two-year extension, giving a boost to home care models many see as the future. (Aguilar, 12/21)

Los Angeles Times: Declining U.S. Life Expectancy Fell Further In 2021 Due To COVID And Drug Overdoses
If the length of our lives is a good measure of our well-being, the United States is in some trouble. The average life expectancy for an American born in 2021 was just shy of 76 years and 5 months — more than half a year shorter than it was in 2020, according to a new government report. It was the lowest such figure since 1996 and follows roughly a decade of stagnation in adding years to our lifespans. (Healy, 12/21)

NPR: American Life Expectancy Is Now At Its Lowest In Nearly Two Decades
The average life expectancy for Americans shortened by over seven months last year, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That decrease follows an already big decline of 1.8 years in 2020. As a result, the expected life span of someone born in the U.S. is now 76.4 years — the shortest it has been in nearly two decades. (Noguchi, 12/22)

USA Today: US Life Expectancy Continues To Fall, Erasing 25 Years Of Health Gains
What's killing Americans? Causes of death remained largely the same between 2020 and 2021, led by heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, all three of which occurred more often last year. Eight of the top 10 causes of death saw statistically significant increases in 2021 over 2020, including unintentional injury and stroke. Only Alzheimer's disease and chronic lower respiratory diseases declined among the leading causes of death.(Weintraub, 12/22)

Politico: Covid-19 And Overdose Deaths Drive U.S. Life Expectancy To A 25-Year Low 
The Covid-19 pandemic has had “a domino effect,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, by “exacerbating the already very severe problem that we have in overdose deaths. ”The two crises, the Covid-19 pandemic and rising drug addiction and overdoses, are “a wake-up call” for government, added Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It clearly is what’s cutting into the health of our communities, unlike almost anything we’ve seen before.” (Mahr, 12/22)