In LA County, ‘Fentanyl Is Killing Everyone And Anyone’: The number of deaths linked to fentanyl in L.A. County rose from 109 in 2016 to 1,504 in 2021, amounting to a 1,280% increase, the Public Health Department found. Read more from the Los Angeles Times. Keep scrolling for more on the opioid crisis.
Tobacco Companies Try To Halt Ban On Flavored Products: R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies filed a request Tuesday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to impose an emergency order to stop California from enforcing a ban on flavored tobacco products that was overwhelmingly approved by voters earlier this month. Read more from AP.
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
San Bernardino Sun:
L.A. County Officials Come Together To Tackle Fentanyl Epidemic
Los Angeles County law enforcement, public health and education officials on Tuesday, Nov. 29, announced the formation of a working group to combat the escalating fentanyl epidemic by raising awareness of the drug’s deadliness and the use of naloxone to reverse its effects. (Nelson, 11/29)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
San Diego Mayor Issues Executive Order Prioritizing Fight Against Fentanyl
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria signed an executive order Tuesday directing staff to prioritize the city’s response to the region’s fentanyl crisis, a drug that claimed more than 800 lives across the county last year. (Winkley, 11/29)
Times Of San Diego:
Mayor Gloria Signs Order Cracking Down On Fentanyl Sales And Trafficking
Mayor Todd Gloria Tuesday signed an executive order to address the illicit fentanyl crisis in the city by strengthening and prioritizing law enforcement for crimes related to the sale of the drug. Fentanyl overdoses claimed the lives of more than 800 San Diegans last year, 113 of them homeless, according to the mayor’s office and SDPD. Five years ago, two people experiencing homelessness died from fentanyl overdoses. (Sklar, 11/30)
CNBC:
Drug Overdose Deaths Among Seniors Have More Than Tripled In 2 Decades
Deaths from drug and alcohol use are rising among America’s seniors. Drug overdose deaths more than tripled among people age 65 and older during the past two decades while deaths from alcohol abuse increased more than 18% from 2019 to 2020, according to data published Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics. (Kimball, 11/30)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
DEA Says Six Out Of 10 Fake Prescription Pills Analyzed Contain Potentially Deadly Dose Of Fentanyl
More than half of the fake pills analyzed in Drug Enforcement Administration laboratories this year were found to be laced with a potentially fatal dose of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid fueling an unprecedented number of fatal overdoses in the country. (Kucher, 11/27)
The Desert Sun:
Betty Ford Center To Screen Film On Impacts Of Opioid Crisis On Women
Opioid addiction can affect anyone, and overdose deaths from prescription opioids and fentanyl have steadily increased since 1999 — doubling from 2010 to 2018, according to an article from The FASEB Journal. (Sasic, 11/29)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Twitter Stops COVID Info Moderation, Health Experts Are Concerned
Twitter’s halt to enforcing its policy against COVID-19 falsehoods has alarmed Bay Area public health experts who worry the platform can again become a super-spreader of doubt about the efficacy of vaccines and other lifesaving measures amid an ongoing pandemic. “I am absolutely terrified and despondent,” said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert with UCSF. “Permitting misinformation is not just about freedom of speech. There is a direct pathway between misinformation and death if science-based interventions like vaccines are not embraced.” (Vaziri and Hwang, 11/29)
AP:
Twitter Ends Enforcement Of COVID Misinformation Policy
By Tuesday, some Twitter accounts were testing the new boundaries and celebrating the platform’s hands-off approach, which comes after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk. “This policy was used to silence people across the world who questioned the media narrative surrounding the virus and treatment options,” tweeted Dr. Simone Gold, a physician and leading purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation. “A win for free speech and medical freedom!” (Klepper, 11/29)
Los Angeles Daily News:
COVID-19 Hospitalizations Climb Back Over 1,000 In LA County As Winter Surge Builds
Coronavirus hospitalizations are rising once again across Los Angeles County — topping 1,000 on Tuesday, Nov. 29, — portending that a third winter surge is building as November gives way to yuletide. (Harter, Hutchings and Scauzillo, 11/29)
Times Of San Diego:
New COVID-19 Cases In County Exceed 3,000, Hospitalizations Rise To 286
The number of people hospitalized with a coronavirus infection in San Diego County has risen to 286, according to the latest state data released Tuesday. State officials hadn’t updated their hospitalization numbers since Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday, when there were 213 COVID-positive patients in county hospitals. Tuesday’s data also showed that 27 COVID patients are being treated in intensive care, an increase from 24 as of Thursday. (Ireland, 11/30)
Los Angeles Times:
Babies' COVID Hospitalizations As High As Seniors' Amid Omicron
Infants younger than 6 months had the same rate of hospitalization as seniors age 65 to 74 during this summer’s Omicron wave, according to a new report. The findings, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show that COVID-19 can still cause severe and fatal outcomes in children too young to be vaccinated. (Lin II and Money, 11/30)
Voice Of San Diego:
Covid Year Two: Death Gap Narrowed Between Racial Groups — Class Less So
The path Covid-19 tore through San Diego was as tragic as it was misshapen, but the lines it carved were not random. By and large, the death toll bypassed the scenic coastal roads, steered away from gated communities and veered south at the Coronado Bridge. (Huntsberry and Marx, 11/29)
CIDRAP:
New Data: Screening For COVID At Hospital Entry Of Limited Benefit
Screening nearly 1 million patients, visitors, and healthcare workers at the entrance of a large hospital for COVID-19 symptoms, exposures, or travel was of limited benefit at considerable cost, finds a Yale study published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Of 951,033 screenings performed, 0.07% were failures. (Van Beusekom, 11/29)
Reuters:
CDC Awards Over $3 Bln To Strengthen U.S. Public Health Infrastructure
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Tuesday it is awarding more than $3 billion to help strengthen public health workforce and infrastructure across the United States after the COVID-19 pandemic put severe stress on them. The public health agency's funding includes $3 billion from the American Rescue Plan announced by President Joe Biden's administration last year, and would cover all state, local and territorial health departments across the country. (11/29)
AP:
Naturopath Who Sold Fake Vaccine Cards Gets Nearly 3 Years
A naturopathic doctor who sold fake COVID-19 immunization treatments and fraudulent vaccination cards during the height of the coronavirus pandemic was sentenced in California on Tuesday to nearly three years in prison, federal prosecutors said. Juli A. Mazi pleaded guilty last April in federal court in San Francisco to one count of wire fraud and one count of false statements related to health care matters. (11/30)
Orange County Register:
OC Extends Health Emergency As Respiratory Illnesses Sicken More Children
With pediatric beds at hospitals still overfull due to a surge in respiratory infections, Orange County will be under a local health emergency for another 30 days. The OC Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to extend the local state of emergency and health emergency that were first declared Oct. 31. Emergency declarations help the county get access to medications used to treat respiratory illnesses, and they allow general hospitals to seek waivers so they can treat pediatric patients if needed, county officials said. (Robinson, 11/29)
Voice of OC:
Orange County Children’s Hospital Beds Keep Filling Up, County Extends Emergency
“Our emergency departments are full,” Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, the county health officer, told county supervisors on Tuesday. “They are exhausted and overwhelmed.” (Custodio and Gerda, 11/29)
Bay Area News Group:
Concord: San Miguel Villa Nursing Facility To Pay $2.3 Million
A Concord-based corporation that oversaw a 190-bed nursing home in that city agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle federal allegations of “grossly substandard” care, authorities said Tuesday. (Hurd, 11/29)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Concord Nursing Home Agrees To Pay $2.3M Over Claims It Abused And Neglected Patients
A large nursing home in Concord will pay $2.3 million to the state and federal governments to settle claims that it billed them for poor and neglectful care of patients, who were given excessive amounts of psychiatric medication and also suffered physical injuries from falls and clashes at the facility, federal officials announced Tuesday. (Egelko, 11/29)
Los Angeles Times:
Some Hospitals Didn't Put Charity Care Rules On Sites When Required
To help patients who are financially strapped, California lawmakers decided to stiffen state requirements for hospitals to offer free or discounted care. AB 1020, which went into effect in January, makes more people eligible for discounted care, increasing the income levels under which hospitals are supposed to offer it to uninsured patients or those facing high costs. And it also added a simple requirement: Hospitals must prominently post their financial assistance policies on their websites. (Reyes, 11/29)
CalMatters:
Adverse Childhood Experiences: No Patient Follow-Up
In 2020 the state launched the adverse childhood experiences initiative, with the goal of cutting the number of those experiences in half within one generation. Today the number of doctors screening patients for adverse experiences is growing, but the state is failing to track whether patients receive the follow-up services or support they might need. State officials say they are working on identifying this information about patients from state medical databases, but it could be a few years off. (Aguilera, 11/29)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Stanford President’s Neuroscience Research Scrutinized Following Allegations Of Altered Data
The European Microbiology Organization Journal, a prominent science research publisher, said in a public post last week that it was “looking into” discrepancies in a 2008 brain research paper by Tessier-Lavigne and 10 others that were highlighted on PubPeer, a website where scientists can identify suspected violations in published research. (Pascua and Mishanec, 11/29)
San Francisco Chronicle:
As Senate Passes Same-Sex Marriage Protections, California Leaders Set Their Sights On Erasing Prop. 8
The federal government is set to ensure that same-sex and interracial marriages would be recognized by the federal government and all states in the event that the Supreme Court walks back marriage rights. The Respect for Marriage Act would protect couples in states that might otherwise decline to recognize certain marriages in the event existing protections were rolled back. But in California, progressives are already setting their sights beyond federal legislation. Their focus is squarely on erasing Prop. 8 from the state constitution. (Stein, 11/29)
Roll Call:
Senate Passes Protections For Same-Sex Marriages
The Senate passed a bill Tuesday to codify federal recognition of same-sex marriage that got bipartisan support because of added measures on religious liberty protections. The 61-36 vote sends the bill to the House, where Democratic leaders have said they intend to hold a vote on the measure during the lame-duck session. (Macagnone, 11/29)
CNN:
Senate Passes Bill To Protect Same-Sex And Interracial Marriage In Landmark Vote
The House will now need to approve the legislation before sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. The House is expected to pass the bill before the end of the year – possibly as soon as next week. “For millions of Americans, this legislation will safeguard the rights and protections to which LGBTQI+ and interracial couples and their children are entitled,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday evening after Senate passage, hailing it as a “bipartisan achievement.” (Zaslav and Barrett, 11/30)
AP:
Plea Deal In Attacks On California Planned Parenthood Clinic
A Southern California man who fired a BB gun from his car at Planned Parenthood in Pasadena on at least 11 occasions admitted he was trying to intimidate the doctors, staff and patients because the clinic provided abortions, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Richard Royden Chamberlin, 54, agreed to plead guilty in U.S. District Court to two crimes from the drive-by shootings, according to court documents. (11/30)
KPCC:
LA County Looks Into Expanding Trainee Program Amid Mental Health Worker Shortage
According to an October report, 28 percent of the positions at the L.A. County Department of Mental Health are vacant. The county is hoping that beefing up its training programs for students will bring more mental health professionals into the fray. Last month, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors ordered the department to come up with a plan to expand trainee programs for students. Currently the department works with 16 local universities to offer about 100 internships a year, and the hope is to increase that number considerably. The county is also restarting an $18,000 stipend program that was paused during the pandemic. That program hopes to grant nearly 200 recent grads those stipends in return for a promise to work in public mental health for a year. Joining us today on AirTalk to discuss the shortage of mental health workers is Debbie Innes-Gomberg, Deputy Director of the Quality, Outcomes and Training Division at the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and Jonathan Sherin, professor of psychiatry at USC and UCLA and former Director at Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. (11/29)
AP:
Vet's Lawsuit Blaming Antimalarial Drug For Psychosis Tossed
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit against the maker of an anti-malarial drug blamed for causing psychotic behavior and neurological damage to U.S. servicemembers, ruling that the case had no right to be filed in California. The proposed class-action case brought last year by an Army veteran accused Roche Laboratories Inc. and Genentech Inc. of intentionally misleading the Department of Defense and the Food and Drug Administration about the dangers of mefloquine, the generic version of the drug Lariam. (Melley, 11/30)
KVPR:
A Program Built For And By Cambodian Refugees Suffering From PTSD; Participants Say It Works
For Cambodians who survived the trauma of the Khmer Rouge genocide, mental health treatment remains a dire need. One program in Oakland is succeeding in reaching those at risk in this refugee community. One example of that is clinic day at East Oakland’s Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, or CERI for short. Once a month, the non-profit invites two psychiatrists who serve the CERI community pro-bono. Most of the clients here are Cambodian refugees, survivors of the Pol Pot regime. (Hok, 11/30)
CNN:
Alzheimer's Disease: Experimental Drug Lecanemab Appears To Slow Progression In Clinical Trial But Raises Safety Concerns
The experimental drug lecanemab shows “potential” as an Alzheimer’s disease treatment, according to new Phase 3 trial results, but the findings raise some safety concerns because of its association with certain serious adverse events. Lecanemab has become one of the first experimental dementia drugs to appear to slow the progression of cognitive decline. (Howard, 11/30)
The Washington Post:
Promising Alzheimer’s Drug Needs To Be Studied For Safety, Researchers Say
But the detailed results also concluded that the drug, lecanemab, was associated with “adverse events” and warranted more study. Marwan Sabbagh, a neurologist at the Barrow Neurological Institute and a co-author of the study, described two patient deaths that had raised concern about the safety of the drug ahead of Tuesday’s presentation. “Causality with lecanemab is a little difficult,” he said, noting that both patients, a 65-year-old woman and an 87-year-old man, had underlying health issues. Though the rate of brain bleeding was low, he said, the risk increases with medications to prevent blood clotting. (Gilbert, 11/29)
Reuters:
Rare Success For Alzheimer's Research Unlocks Hope For Future Therapies
If approved on an accelerated basis, the companies said they would immediately apply for full U.S. regulatory approval which could help secure Medicare coverage. To date, two deaths have been reported among patients who received lecanemab in conjunction with medicine to prevent or clear blood clots, though industry analysts do not expect those developments alone to prevent approval. (Steenhuysen, 11/29)
AP:
Study: U.S. Gun Death Rates Hit Highest Levels In Decades
The U.S. gun death rate last year hit its highest mark in nearly three decades, and the rate among women has been growing faster than that of men, according to study published Tuesday. The increase among women — most dramatically, in Black women — is playing a tragic and under-recognized role in a tally that skews overwhelmingly male, the researchers said. (Stobbe, 11/29)
CNN:
America's Gun Epidemic Is Deadlier Than Ever, And There Are Vast Disparities In Who's Dying
Mental health challenges grew throughout the pandemic and violence increased, but a separate analysis from researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that guns made those things significantly more deadly. Between 2019 and 2021, all of the increase in suicides and most of the increase in homicides was due to guns. The gun suicide rate increased 10% while the non-gun suicide rate decreased by 8%, and the gun homicide rate increased 45% while the non-gun homicide rate increased only 6%.“What we’ve seen is that the economic and social stressors during Covid have exacerbated health disparities across the spectrum,” said Ari Davis, a policy adviser at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Gun Violence Solutions. (McPhillips, 11/29)
The Mercury News:
San Jose Can Resume Clearing Homeless Camp, Judge Rules
San Jose can resume clearing a prominent homeless encampment in Columbus Park, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, less than two weeks after a lawsuit abruptly halted the city’s efforts in an ongoing battle to relocate more than two dozen people with nowhere else to go. The encampment has created “dangerous nuisance conditions” at the park and surrounding areas, the city argued in court filings. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley agreed and lifted the order she issued earlier this month, which had tied the city’s hands and prevented it from removing people’s trailers and tents or forcing them to relocate. (Kendall, 11/29)
San Francisco Chronicle:
San Francisco’s New Space-Age Public Toilet Breaks Down After Three Days
Days after San Francisco officials unveiled a new and sleek public toilet at the Embarcadero Plaza on Wednesday, the futuristic commode suffered technical problems that resulted in a temporary closure, officials said. (Flores, 11/28)
San Francisco Chronicle:
S.F. Toiletgate: City Supervisor Demands Answers On ‘Really Outrageous’ $1.7 Million Public Bathroom
Of all the confusing tidbits swirling around San Francisco’s internationally infamous $1.7 million toilet, the astronomical cost to design it was one of the most perplexing. Now, Supervisor Myrna Melgar is determined to get to the bottom of just how the city calculated the $445,000 in architecture and engineering fees for a little loo in the Noe Valley Town Square. After all, it’s just one toilet in a 150-square-foot structure — not the Toilet Taj Mahal. (Knight, 11/29)