Covid-19

When Symptoms Linger for Weeks, Is It Long Covid?

Patients with symptoms that last three to 12 weeks after an acute covid infection should adopt a “watchful waiting” approach to recovery, an expert says. Keep in contact with a primary care doctor and take it easy.

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Finally, a Fix for the ‘Family Glitch’

President Joe Biden welcomed former President Barack Obama back to the White House this week to announce a new policy for the Affordable Care Act that would make subsidies available to more families with unaffordable employer coverage. Meanwhile, Congress struggled to find a compromise for continued federal funding of covid-19 vaccines, testing, and treatments. Tami Luhby of CNN, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more.

A Shortfall of ECMO Treatment Cost Lives During the Delta Surge

About 50% of the covid-19 patients who got the last-ditch life support treatment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center died. Researchers wanted to know what happened to the many patients they had to turn away because ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machines and the specialized staffers needed were in short supply. The grim answer: 90% of those turned away perished.

The End of the Covid Emergency Could Mean a Huge Loss of Health Insurance

It is a perilous time to throw low- and middle-income Americans off the insurance cliff: A new omicron subvariant is spreading, and a program that provided coronavirus testing and covid-19 treatment at no cost to the uninsured has expired.

Losing Sleep Over the Pandemic? Work Flexibility May Be a Boon for Night Owls’ Health

Many sleep scientists maintain that people who prefer to stay up late could improve their mental and physical health by synchronizing their natural sleep cycles with workday demands. The flexible work schedules that came with covid’s work-from-home trend, according to one new study, backs up this idea.