All posts tagged "Departmentofhealthandhumanservices"

PHILADELPHIA — New data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the national suicide rate last year decreased for the first time since 1999. While the suicide rate for 2019 declined by 2.1% — a total of 833 fewer deaths — from the previous year, experts said this progress could be derailed by the coronavirus pandemic. The effects of COVID-19 on suicide won’t be measurable for some time, but rates are expected to have increased during 2020 as mental health worsened. “We don’t know why it happened,” said Dan Romer, research director at the Annenberg Public Policy Cen......

The number of air travelers in the United States soared to a pandemic high on Sunday despite the ongoing surge of COVID-19 cases. A whopping 1,284,599 travelers were recorded at checkpoints by the Travel Security Administration on Sunday, marking the largest single-day total since mid-March, when the number of fliers greatly declined due to the coronavirus outbreak. Sunday’s large number of airport visitors came two days after Christmas. Ahead of the holidays, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that traveling “can increase the chance of getting and spreading the virus that c......

DETROIT — Nia Fitzpatrick’s son normally uses his school-issued laptop to attend virtual kindergarten. Earlier this month, she borrowed it for another reason: to log into Zoom eviction court. A nursing home assistant out of work because she contracted COVID-19, Fitzpatrick was trying to check in for court because she was behind on the rent and desperate to keep her Detroit home. Today, the escalating pandemic is delaying her court case, giving Fitzpatrick a reprieve. But the stress of not knowing where her family could be sleeping in the coming months is overwhelming. “It’s wintertime,” said F......

Julie Ray lives in a mobile home in Pearl River, La., with her two teenage daughters, Jerilynn and Jasmine. Her mother, Barbara, used to live there too, but she had a stroke before the pandemic hit and had to move to a nursing home. In May, she died there, from COVID-19. Julie Ray lost her job at a local grocery store in March. Now she can’t pay her $700 a month rent and is in danger of eviction. She was approved for state-sponsored rental assistance, but had trouble getting her landlord to fill out the paperwork, she said in a phone interview, so that never happened. Then, Ray, 42, got an evi......

One of the U.S. top health officials said a third COVID-19 vaccine could be approved for emergency use sometime next month. Admiral Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that data about a new vaccine, from Johnson & Johnson and Janssen, was expected soon. The U.S. has already approved vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna which are being administered, despite some complications with distribution. Giroir added that he was confident that anyone who wanted to receive the vaccine would be able to do so by June. However, Gir......

Health officials are racing to contact those who traveled aboard a United Airlines plane after a passenger exhibiting coronavirus symptoms experienced a “medical emergency” during a flight from Orlando, Florida, to Los Angeles earlier this week and subsequently died. United Airlines flight 591 was forced to divert to New Orleans on Monday when a man aboard the aircraft became suddenly ill, according to USA Today. He was dropped off at an area hospital, where he later died, before the plane continued on to California. United is working with the government to notify passengers who may have been ......