Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Is Paxlovid, the Covid Pill, Reaching Those Who Most Need It? The Government Won’t Say
Many public health workers are unable to see how many doses of Pfizer’s antiviral treatment are shipped to their communities and cannot tell whether vulnerable residents are filling prescriptions as often as their wealthier neighbors. (Hannah Recht, )
California Will Woo Businesses From Anti-Abortion States: Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a plan Wednesday to lure businesses to California from states that ban abortion and also proposed setting aside $40 million to help cover uninsured residents and women from other states who come to California seeking an abortion. “California will not stand idly by as extremists roll back our basic constitutional rights,” Newsom said. Read more from the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. Keep scrolling for more abortion coverage.
Court Strikes Down California's Ban On Semiautomatic Rifles For Under-21s: A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that California’s ban on the sale of semiautomatic rifles to adults younger than 21 was unconstitutional. The ban was part of an array of restrictions passed in response to a rise in gun violence, such as the mass shooting in Sacramento last month that killed six. Gun control advocates such as state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) blasted the ruling as giving teens a "constitutional right to own mass killing machines.” Read more from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
In related mental health news –
Students from across California share experiences with campus gun violence
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today's national health news, read KHN's Morning Briefing.
More News From Across The State
Abortion and Reproductive Health
Modesto Bee:
CA Gov. Gavin Newsom Wants To Fund Abortions For Uninsured
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is expanding his push to increase abortion care access — this time, by helping to fund the procedure for low- and middle-income people who don’t have health insurance. Newsom on Wednesday released a preview of a new $57 million abortion care package he plans to include in the revised budget he’ll announce on Friday. (Holden, 5/11)
Politico:
Newsom Budget Will Bolster California's Abortion-Sanctuary Status
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California to spend an extra $57 million to prepare for an expected influx of patients from states hostile to abortion, according to new details released by his administration Wednesday. This brings to $125 million the additional funding the governor wants to dedicate in the coming fiscal year on abortion services. The Democratic governor will also announce an incentive program for companies to relocate to California from states with abortion bans, Newsom administration officials said. (Colliver, 5/11)
AP:
California Governor Backs Plan To Pay For Some Abortions
California taxpayers would help pay for abortions for women who can’t afford them under a new spending proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday to prepare for a potential surge of people from other states seeking reproductive care if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. California already pays for some abortions through its Medicaid program, the taxpayer-funded health insurance plan for the poor and the disabled. (Beam, 5/12)
NBC News:
The First Women Who'd Be Personally Affected If Roe Is Overturned Are Already Pregnant
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the decision would most immediately and directly affect more than 300,000 women who are pregnant now or will be before July in the 13 states with so-called trigger laws. That's the number of people who — according to an NBC News analysis of 2017 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights — would see their states’ abortion policies change while they’re still at points in pregnancy when they might have otherwise been eligible for abortions. The laws that determine their options, in other words, would transform almost overnight. (Bendix, 5/11)
ABC News:
Major US Abortion Pill Producer Says It Has Ample Supply If Demand Soars
A major producer of the abortion pill in the U.S. says it has ample supply if demand suddenly soars in the wake of a Supreme Court decision and that it's working with federal regulators to make the drug available in pharmacies by the end of the year. "We are prepared for any surge," said the spokesperson for Danco Laboratories, which manufactures the brand-name drug Mifeprex."Our supply is stable and plentiful." (Flaherty, 5/11)
KQED:
What Would Overturning Roe Mean For Birth Control?
Overturning Roe v. Wade could have implications for more than access to abortion; medical and legal experts say it could open the door to restrictions on other types of reproductive health care. "To say that we are incredibly concerned would, I think, actually be putting it mildly," said Dr. Kavita Arora, chair of the ethics committee at the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists. (McCammon, 5/11)
The New York Times:
What to Know Before Getting an IUD
Ten percent of women in the United States between the ages of 15 and 49 currently use some form of long-acting reversible contraception, a category that includes intrauterine devices, or IUDs. Research has found the vast majority of people with IUDs are satisfied with their contraceptive method, but some women find the insertion process much more painful than they expected. (Pearson, 5/10)
Los Angeles Times:
Abortion Rights Bill Falls Short In Senate
Senate Democrats on Wednesday failed to advance a bill to establish a federal right to abortion, but they still hoped the effort would draw a sharp political contrast with Republicans who largely support the Supreme Court’s expected ruling to undo the Roe vs. Wade decision. Democrats knew their effort would fail. The vote was 49 to 51, with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) joining all Republicans in opposition. The procedural measure needed 60 votes to overcome the filibuster threshold. (Haberkorn, 5/11)
USA Today:
Senate Fails To Pass Vote That Would Make Abortion Legal Nationally
Democrats were unable to overcome a filibuster on the Women's Health Protection Act of 2022. The effort failed 49-51. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined every Republican in opposition, meaning the measure would have failed even if it had mustered the 60 votes needed to send the measure to the floor for an up-or-down vote. "It is not Roe v. Wade codification, it is an expansion," Manchin said before the vote. "We should not be dividing this country further than we're already divided." The bill was not expected to pass, but Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., framed the vote as a way to put every member of the Senate on the record about their stance on abortion in the wake of the leaked decision. (Wells and King, 5/11)
NPR:
Women's Health Protection Act To Codify Abortion Protections Fails In The Senate
In a rare occurrence, Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the vote, which was 49-51.
Within minutes of the vote, President Joe Biden released a statement that "this failure to act comes at a time when women's constitutional rights are under unprecedented attack – and it runs counter to the will of the majority of American people." "We will continue to defend women's constitutional rights to make private reproductive choices as recognized in Roe v. Wade nearly half a century ago, and my Administration will continue to explore the measures and tools at our disposal to do just that," Biden said, without providing details. (Shivaram, 5/11)
The New York Times:
Republicans Who Support Abortion Rights Have Come Up With Their Own Bill
The two Senate Republicans who support abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have raised objections to the Democrats’ bill that is the subject of Wednesday’s vote, and they are promoting alternative legislation. ... Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski introduced their own bill, which they describe as codifying Roe v. Wade, in February. Called the Reproductive Choice Act, it is only three pages long and was written without the consultation of reproductive rights groups, according to representatives from those organizations. (Karni, 5/11)
Politico:
Alito’s Draft Opinion Overturning Roe Is Still The Only One Circulated Inside Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is set to gather Thursday for the first time since the disclosure that it voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and there’s no sign that the court is changing course from issuing that ruling by the end of June. Justice Samuel Alito’s sweeping and blunt draft majority opinion from February overturning Roe remains the court’s only circulated draft in the pending Mississippi abortion case, POLITICO has learned, and none of the conservative justices who initially sided with Alito have to date switched their votes. No dissenting draft opinions have circulated from any justice, including the three liberals. (Gerstein, Ward and Lizza, 5/11)
CNN:
Justices Will Meet For First Time Since Leak Of Draft Opinion On Roe Shook The Foundations Of The Court
The Supreme Court is set to meet behind closed doors on Thursday for the first time since the astonishing leak of a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.The justices plan to discuss pending petitions and outstanding cases -- but they're also likely to grapple with the aftermath of that remarkable breach of the court's confidential operations. While the draft opinion calling for the reversal of a near-50-year-old landmark precedent stunned the country, the leak itself stunned the court. (de Vogue, 5/12)
The New York Times:
Fact-Checking Samuel Alito’s Opinion Overturning Roe V. Wade
In the nearly 100-page decision, Justice Alito made or quoted assertions about fetal development, abortion procedures and international laws that have been disputed or are open to interpretation. Here is a fact check. (Qiu, 5/11)
Los Angeles Times:
California Again Faces Rising Anxiety About Coronavirus Spread As Summer Approaches
California is approaching another summer amid growing anxiety over COVID-19 as outbreaks increase and officials try to determine when this new wave will crest. Although case rates are climbing, experts note they are doing so at a more modest pace than the first omicron surge, which began spiking in December. California’s numbers of COVID-19 hospitalizations are also lower than some states on the East Coast. (Lin II, 5/11)
San Francisco Chronicle:
When Will The Bay Area’s COVID Surge Peak? Here’s Why The BA.2 Curve Will Be Harder To Predict
For much of the pandemic, the trajectories of the Bay Area’s COVID-19 surges have been just behind those of other major areas like New York and the United Kingdom — helping medical experts predict when cases would reach a height before coming back down. But this time around, in the midst of a swell of cases fueled by the BA.2 omicron subvariant and its sublineages that has yet to peak, health officials say the curve’s rise and fall are harder to predict. (Echeverria, 5/11)
Sacramento Bee:
Sacramento, Yolo Counties See Rise In COVID Transmission
Sacramento and Yolo counties recently returned to high community transmission rates for COVID-19, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading local health officials to reiterate calls for residents to mask up indoors and stay “up-to-date” on vaccines and boosters. Both counties – along with Los Angeles, San Diego and several others across California including the entire Bay Area – were in the “high” transmission level as of the CDC’s latest data update Tuesday. The classification now includes just over 40% of all counties nationwide. (McGough, 5/11)
AP:
Biden Marks 1M US COVID Deaths, To Co-Host 2nd Global Summit
President Joe Biden will appeal for a renewed international commitment to attacking COVID-19 as he convenes the second global COVID-19 summit at a time when faltering resolve at home jeopardizes that global response. Eight months after he used the first such summit to announce an ambitious pledge to donate 1.2 billion vaccine doses to the world, the urgency of the U.S. and other nations to respond has waned. (Miller and Cheng, 5/12)
Reuters:
A Million Lives Lost
The pandemic tore apart families and divided an already politically polarized nation. COVID-19 laid bare the economic inequities between white-collar workers who could work safely from home and essential workers in grocery stores, fire stations and hospitals who had to go out and risk exposure to help others each day. Reuters photographers witnessed the devotion of doctors and nurses as they tackled a virus none of them had ever seen before. They stood beside the beds of patients sickened by the virus and unable to breathe. A year into the pandemic, they captured the joy and hope vaccines offered and the grief and despair as mostly unvaccinated Americans continued to die by the thousands each day. Here are some of the key moments during the pandemic. (Perkins, 5/11)
Politico:
How We Got To 1 Million Covid Deaths – In Four Charts
Patricia Dowd, 57, died of Covid-19 on Feb. 6, 2020.She is believed to be the first pandemic death. In the 27 months since, nearly 1 million people in the U.S. have succumbed to the coronavirus, a figure so large that it engulfs individual stories like Dowd’s into a national maw of grief with which the country is struggling to reckon. It’s as if the entire population of Delaware, Montana or Rhode Island, or all of Austin, vanished in just two years’ time. (Goldberg and Choi, 5/11)
CalMatters:
COVID Vaccination Rates Still Lag Among Medi-Cal Members
To boost COVID-19 vaccination rates among California’s low-income residents, last year the state launched a $350 million incentive program. But since then, the gap between those Medi-Cal members and the general population has actually grown wider. While 84% of all Californians 5 years and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, only about 57% of those in Medi-Cal, the health insurance program for low-income residents, have done so as of April, according to the latest vaccination update from the California Department of Health Care Services. (Ibarra, 5/11)
Axios:
Biden Administration And GOP Clash Over Vaccine Strategy
Congressional Republicans' concerns about wasting COVID vaccines are colliding with the Biden administration's commitment to making the shots as widely accessible as possible, adding another wrinkle to the stalled COVID funding negotiations. Some Republicans are growing skeptical of the currently available vaccines' ability to contain the Omicron variant, and don't want to allocate money for more doses without a firmer plan in place for the fall. (Owens, 5/12)
The New York Times:
Moderna Vaccine Provokes Strong Immune Response In Children 6 To 11
Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine elicits a strong immune response in children aged 6 to 11, researchers reported on Wednesday — another signpost in what has become a long and tortuous road to protecting young children against the virus, even as cases again inch upward. On Monday, Moderna requested authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for the vaccine’s use in this age group. But authorization, if granted, is unlikely to bump up the low immunization rates among young children by much. (Mandavilli, 5/11)
CIDRAP:
Mix-And-Match MRNA COVID Vaccines May Offer More Omicron Protection
Researchers in Singapore discovered that a Moderna COVID booster following a two-dose Pfizer vaccine series induced a stronger neutralizing antibody response against the Omicron variant in adults compared with an all-Pfizer series, according to a study today in Clinical Infectious Diseases. (5/11)
AP:
US Overdose Deaths Hit Record 107,000 Last Year, CDC Says
More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, setting another tragic record in the nation’s escalating overdose epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Wednesday. The provisional 2021 total translates to roughly one U.S. overdose death every 5 minutes. It marked a 15% increase from the previous record, set the year before. The CDC reviews death certificates and then makes an estimate to account for delayed and incomplete reporting. (Stobbe, 5/11)
Politico:
U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Surpass 107,000 Last Year, Another Record
The rapid spike in overdose fatalities — deaths are up nearly 50 percent in two years — presents a grave challenge to the Biden administration as it seeks to manage the twin crises of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and worsening opioid epidemic. Drug policy experts argue the administration needs to apply the same urgency to stopping opioid deaths that it’s brought to its Covid-19 response. “We need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time,” said Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general and a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Opioid Crisis Task Force. “Covid is not going to go away.” (Mahr, 5/11)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Civilian Review Board Recommends Jail Inmates Be Given Access To Naloxone
The Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department give people incarcerated in its jails access to naloxone, a life-saving medication that can reverse an opiate overdose. Currently, jail deputies carry doses of naloxone, which is administered via nasal spray, and have used it dozens, if not hundreds, of times. But correctional health care experts recommend inmates have easy access to it in living units so that a person who has overdosed receives naloxone as soon as possible. (Davis, 5/11)
San Gabriel Valley Tribune:
L.A. County Doctors To Vote On Strike Authorization
More than 1,300 resident physicians and fellows at three of L.A. County’s largest hospitals will begin gathering votes Monday, May 16 to authorize an unfair labor practice strike, claiming they work long hours and often earn below minimum wage. The workers, represented by the Committee of Interns/Service Employees International Union, made the announcement Wednesday, claiming the county has failed to make movement on key union proposals affecting the physicians and their families or has simply rejected them outright. (Smith, 5/11)
The Bakersfield Californian:
Dignity Health, Marley's Mutts Partner Up To Expand Pet Therapy Program
While the positive effects of therapy dogs have been studied for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an increased awareness for their ability to help in the health care industry. An American Medical Association study found that of nearly 21,000 physicians surveyed nationally during the first year of the pandemic, 43 percent reported suffering from work overload and about 49 percent had experienced “burnout.” A study published on the National Library of Medicine website noted in August 2021, more than a third of about 19,000 nurses surveyed reported emotional exhaustion from the toll faced at work. (Smith, 5/11)
The Washington Post:
Medical Scans Are Latest Casualty Of China Supply Chain Breakdowns
Doctors in the United States are prioritizing only the most critical patients and hospitals are rationing supplies of a crucial drug after a covid lockdown in China temporarily closed a GE Healthcare factory that is a vital source for a key ingredient in medical imaging. The shutdown of the facility in Shanghai in April halted production of contrast media, an iodine solution that medical staff inject into blood vessels to allow a device such as a CT scanner or fluoroscope to see inside the body. Contrast media, also known as dye, is used virtually every hour in hospitals across the country to help measure arterial blockages around the heart, guide placement of stents in catheter labs, diagnose and treat strokes, and more. Oncologists use contrast to monitor cancerous tumors. (Rowland, 5/11)
Bay Area News Group:
Contra Costa County Funds More Medi-Cal For Undocumented
In an effort to get at least 1,000 more undocumented immigrants and uninsured residents covered by health care, Contra Costa County has doubled the budget of a program funded by federal COVID-relief money. The program currently covers 2,697 residents, and the $5.4 million infusion of CARES Act funds the Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday will significantly boost enrollment. (Mukherjee, 5/11)
The New York Times:
Common Medications Can Prolong Back Pain When Overused, Study Says
The very treatments often used to soothe pain in the lower back, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is the most common type of pain, might cause it to last longer, according to a new study. Persistent use of pain-relieving steroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, like ibuprofen, can actually turn a wrenched back into a chronic condition, the study found. (Kolata, 5/11)
Orange County Register:
Homelessness: OC Counts Fewer On Streets, In Shelters Than In 2019
The number of people in Orange County living on the streets or staying in shelters has dropped by more than 16% versus three years ago, according to data from a homeless count the county held in late February. Between the 2019 count and this year’s tally, Orange County and some of its cities have made what Board of Supervisors Chairman Doug Chaffee called “substantial investments in addressing homelessness” – including adding emergency shelters, job assistance, care for physical and mental health issues and permanent housing – and those efforts are starting to bear fruit, officials said Wednesday. (Robinson, 5/11)
inewsource:
San Diego County COVID-19 Hotel Guest Struggles With Housing
Linda McDowell had goosebumps after touring a downtown apartment just blocks from San Diego Bay. It was spacious enough for her 6-year-old pitbull named Stella, and with a park down the street, it seemed perfect. She almost couldn’t believe it would be the first place to call her own since before the pandemic. On the way to the bank for money to hold the apartment, Linda sang aloud, “I’m gettin’ an apartment,” incorporating her own twist on the Sam Cooke classic, “We’re havin’ a party. Dancin’ to the music.” For more than a year, Linda and Stella have been living at a San Diego County-run hotel in Old Town, which has been used to temporarily house people with pre-existing health conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. She is one of dozens of others who still remain at the hotel as the troubled program is at risk of ending a month sooner than expected. (Meyers and Dulaney, 5/12)