Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Lawmaker Takes on Insurance Companies and Gets Personal About His Health
State Sen. Scott Wiener opens up about a weeklong stint in the hospital last year and what it’s like to live with Crohn’s disease. The San Francisco Democrat is pushing a bill that would require insurance companies to cover certain medications while patients appeal denials. (Samantha Young, )
Monkeypox Outbreak Grows In Sacramento: Officials have detected a fifth likely case of monkeypox in Sacramento County, just one day after announcing a fourth case. Meanwhile, research shows that monkeypox can also spread through the air, but the CDC has waffled on its recommendation to wear a mask. Read more from The Sacramento Bee, The New York Times, and Reuters. Keep scrolling for more on global monkeypox cases.
Heat Wave Will Scorch Parts Of California: The National Weather Service has announced an excessive heat warning for the High Desert starting Thursday and lasting through Sunday. And motorists traveling along Interstate 8 between eastern San Diego County and western Arizona are being warned of “dangerously hot” conditions. Read more from the Victorville Daily Press and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
In related news –
LA Names Its First-Ever ‘Chief Heat Officer’: Los Angeles last week appointed Marta Segura as its first-ever Chief Heat Officer, joining other major American cities like Phoenix and Miami with an officer who will "oversee the city's response to extreme heat events.” Read more from CBS and ABC7.
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
AP:
Man Charged In LA Hospital Stabbing Of Doctor, Nurses
Prosecutors on Tuesday charged a man with attempted murder after they say he stabbed a doctor and two nurses inside a Southern California hospital emergency ward last week. Ashkan Amirsoleymani, 35, remained inside a storage room at the Encino Hospital Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley for hours on Friday before police arrested him, authorities said. His arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday. (Dazio, 6/7)
CalMatters:
Inmate Suicide Highlights Prison System's Challenges With Mentally Ill
On the last day of Adam Collier’s life, he had breakfast in his cell in Kern Valley State Prison. He wrote two letters, one to his mother, the other to the guard who would later find his body. During the previous four years in prison, Collier had been hospitalized for mental health crises 14 times. His many letters to family and friends wobbled between lucidity and gibberish. His medical records proffered graphic descriptions of self-harm. Collier had originally landed in prison for exposing himself to women in public while high on meth. (Lyons and Wiener, 6/7)
inewsource:
Veterans Village Of San Diego Confronting Drug Abuse In Rehab Center
A renowned drug and alcohol treatment program, heralded as a national model for addressing veteran homelessness, is now confronted with widespread drug use and unsafe living conditions that are harming vulnerable residents who come to the campus seeking help with their addiction. Following several overdoses, San Diego County probation officials took the unusual step last month of pulling clients out of the treatment center and cutting off referrals. The Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating a suspected fentanyl overdose death on the campus. And people who work with other institutions, including the San Diego VA and the county’s Veterans Treatment Court, have expressed concerns about the quality of care provided at the rehab program. (Castellano, 6/8)
NBC News:
Family Sues Meta, Blames Instagram For Daughter’s Eating Disorder And Self-Harm
A preteen girl’s “addictive” use of Instagram resulted in an eating disorder, self-harm and thoughts of suicide over several years, according to a lawsuit against the platform’s parent company, Meta. The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California late Monday, heavily cites the Facebook Papers, a trove of internal Meta research documents leaked last fall that revealed that the tech giant knew Instagram was worsening body-image and other mental-health issues among teenage girls in particular. (Cook, 6/7)
Water Restrictions and Drought
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Orders SF, Others To Stop Pumping Water During Drought
In one of the most far-reaching efforts to protect California’s water supplies this year, state regulators on Tuesday ordered thousands of farmers, irrigation districts and municipal water agencies, including the city of San Francisco, to stop making draws from rivers and creeks. The move, which comes amid a third year of the California drought, forces water users, from individual landowners to utilities serving tens of thousands of people, to turn to alternative sources of water, if they have it. Some growers and small water providers without a backup supply may be forced to go without water entirely. (Alexander, 6/7)
CalMatters:
State Orders Sweeping Ban On Pumping Delta River Water
In sweeping water curtailments stretching from Fresno to the Oregon state line, cities and growers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed have been ordered to stop pumping from rivers and streams. The cutbacks, announced today by the State Water Resources Control Board, will affect 4,252 water rights in the Delta watershed, including 400 or more held by 212 public water systems, beginning Wednesday. But they’re concentrated around the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, where state officials expect “significant, very deep cuts.” (Becker, 6/7)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Water Use Soars Despite Gavin Newsom's Call For Conservation
The reality of drought isn’t sinking in for most Californians — or maybe people just don’t care. Cities and towns across the state have not only recently failed to meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request to cut water use by 15%, compared with a year ago, but urban water use has increased over the last year, up 17.6% in April, according to new state data released Tuesday. (Alexander, 6/7)
The Hill:
Here Are The States With Monkeypox Cases
The U.S. has not reported any deaths from the monkeypox cases, and officials are working to contain cases by identifying who was exposed to the virus and getting them a vaccine. There are currently more than 30 cases in the nation. (Lonas, 6/7)
CNN:
CDC's Travel Advisory On Monkeypox: 'Practice Enhanced Precautions'
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an "Alert -- Level 2" advisory for travelers to "practice enhanced precautions" because of the spread of monkeypox, a rare disease that's a cousin of smallpox. On its advisory, the CDC said that the "risk to the general public is low, but you should seek medical care immediately if you develop new, unexplained skin rash (lesions on any part of the body), with or without fever and chills." (Brown, 6/7)
Stat:
Lessons From AIDS Crisis Guide Response To Monkeypox Outbreak
As officials, researchers and activists scramble to control an emerging monkeypox outbreak, many are doing so with another virus constantly wedged in the back of their minds: HIV. The parallels between the two infections are limited but clear. Although the monkeypox strain now in circulation is infinitesimally milder than HIV — zero fatalities have been reported out of the more than 1,000 cases so far — it is another virus that emerged in sub-Saharan Africa and has popped up outside the continent largely in men who have sex with men. “There are, you know, echoes,” said Chris Beyrer, director of the Duke Global Health Institute. (Mast, 6/8)
Stat:
FDA Advisers Recommend Authorization Of Novavax's Covid-19 Vaccine
Experts who advise the Food and Drug Administration voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recommend the agency issue an emergency use authorization for Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine — a long-awaited win for a company that has struggled to get to this point. The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted 21 to 0 to recommend that the vaccine receive an EUA, with a single abstention. The strong vote belied the tenor of much of the day’s discussion, which started with one member of the committee, Eric Rubin, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, questioning whether additional EUAs are needed when three vaccines are already in use in the country. (Branswell, 6/7)
Politico:
FDA Advisers Vote To Recommend Novavax Covid-19 Vaccine
The committee agreed that the FDA should come to an agreement with Novavax on how the company will identify and evaluate a possible causal link between its vaccine and cases of heart inflammation. FDA reviewers said they suspect such an association based on a handful of myocarditis and pericarditis cases that arose during the clinical trial within days of immunization, though the company has argued there’s not yet enough evidence to establish a definitive link. The FDA added a warning last summer to the fact sheets for Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines about the rare risk of developing inflammatory heart conditions. (Gardner and Foley, 6/7)
Reuters:
Novavax COVID Shot, Aimed At Vaccine Skeptics, Overwhelmingly Backed By FDA Panel
The timeline for Novavax is not clear. Novavax Chief Commercial Officer John Trizzino said the agency is still reviewing documents detailing its manufacturing processes submitted last week. "We hopefully expect to have product in the U.S. in our warehouse by the end of June," he said in an interview, adding that the company plans to ship millions of doses made by its partner, the Serum Institute of India, soon after authorization. (Erman and Mishra, 6/7)
The Wall Street Journal:
BA.4, BA.5 Variants Rise Among U.S. Covid-19 Cases
Omicron Covid-19 variants BA.4 and BA.5 are on the rise in the U.S., adding two more highly contagious versions of the virus to the mix that has fueled a springtime surge in cases. The closely related subvariants represented a combined 13% of U.S. cases for the week ended June 4, according to estimates the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Tuesday. Evidence suggests the variants are yet-more contagious versions of Omicron, public-health experts said, that may be able to evade some of the immune protections people built up from infections triggered by another version of Omicron during the winter. (Kamp, 6/7)
CIDRAP:
Those Who Believe In COVID-19 Conspiracies May Be At Risk For Depression
People who believe in conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic are at an increased risk of experiencing anxiety and depression, according to new research presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry and published in Frontiers in Psychiatry. The research was based on survey results of 700 volunteers who answered a newly created COVID-19 Conspiratorial Beliefs Scale developed by researchers at several Polish universities. Participants also took the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale survey, as well as the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (covering topics such as aliens from other planets) to compare results. (6/7)
Sacramento Bee:
Grand Jury Worried By Sacramento County COVID-19 Response
Sacramento County elected leaders “missed the point” of a recent grand jury investigation that concluded the Board of Supervisors “abandoned responsibility for COVID spending” during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the grand jury wrote this week. The grand jury earlier this year released a pair of scathing reports condemning supervisors’ handling of the early months of the COVID-19 crisis and calling for new policies to increase oversight and accountability. (McGough, 6/7)
San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Will Create A Plan To Provide Shelter Or Housing To All Homeless People
San Francisco will create a plan to provide enough shelter and permanent supportive housing to meet the needs of all homeless people who currently live on the city’s streets. But it won’t be clear for at least several months how much the ambitious proposal could cost or what its implementation would actually look like. Some city leaders are skeptical that the plan will accomplish much, if anything. (Morris, 6/7)