PETERSBURG, Fla. — Cheers erupted from travelers and some flight crew members in response to a federal judge’s action Monday, striking down a national mask mandate, while some airports and transit systems around the country announced plans to continue with the masking requirement. The major airlines and many of the busiest airports rushed to drop [...]
Browse any medical dictionary, and before hitting appendectomy and anesthesia, you'll find abortion. The first two procedures are part of standard physician education, but for many medical school students and residents who want to learn about abortions, options are scarce. And new restrictions are piling up: Within the past year, bills or laws seeking to [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — Last year was the deadliest year in U.S. history, and new data and research are offering more insights into how it got that bad. The main reason for the increase in deaths? COVID-19, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's work on death statistics. The agency [...]
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The spread of a bird flu that is deadly to poultry raises the grisly question of how farms manage to quickly kill and dispose of millions of chickens and turkeys. It's a chore that farms across the country are increasingly facing as the number of poultry killed in the past two [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, United States health officials are beginning to grapple with how to keep the vaccines updated to best protect Americans from the ever-changing coronavirus. Last Wednesday, a panel of vaccine advisers to the Food and Drug Administration spent hours debating key questions for revamping the [...]
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency this week proposed a rule to finally ban asbestos, a carcinogen that is still used in some chlorine bleach, brake pads and other products and kills thousands of Americans every year. The proposal marks a major expansion of EPA regulation under a landmark 2016 law that overhauled rules governing [...]
As the addiction and overdose crisis that has gripped the country for two decades turns even deadlier, state governments are scrambling for ways to stem the destruction wrought by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. In statehouses across the country, lawmakers have been considering and adopting laws on two fronts: reducing the risk to users and [...]
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Since the pandemic started, mental health advocates have warned of a crisis facing children that is now visibly playing out at schools across the country. Benito Luna-Herrera, a 7th grade social studies teacher in southern California, tells of middle school students whose post-pandemic depression led them to thoughts of suicide. Other [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome health-care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures. Winding down those policies could begin as early as the summer. That could force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients [...]
NEW YORK (AP) — As coronavirus infections rise in some parts of the world, experts are watching for a potential new COVID-19 surge in the United States — and wondering how long it will take to detect. Despite disease monitoring improvements over the last two years, they say, some recent developments don't bode well: —As [...]