Minorities hit hardest when COVID-19 spreads at nursing homes

Researchers say that minority residents of nursing homes and assisted living communities have been hit harder by COVID-19. Photo by zeevveez/Flickr

Minority residents of U.S. nursing homes and assisted living communities have been especially hard hit in the coronavirus pandemic, two University of Rochester studies show.

The first found that nursing homes with higher percentages of racial and ethnic minority residents reported two to four times more new COVID-19 cases and deaths compared to others for the week of May 25.

The number of confirmed new COVID-19 cases each week averaged 1.5 in facilities with the highest proportion of minority residents, compared with 0.4 cases per facility among those with a low proportion.

The findings are based on data reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services by nearly 15,600 nursing homes. They suggest that persistent inequalities in facilities with limited resources and poor quality of care are being "exacerbated by the pandemic," study leader Yue Li, professor of public health sciences, said in a university news release.

RELATED Black, minority populations hit harder by COVID-19

As of July 30, 362,000 people in U.S. nursing homes were infected with the virus -- about 8% of all cases nationwide. At least 62,000 nursing home residents died of COVID-19, representing 41% of coronavirus deaths nationally.

The second study found that COVID-19 deaths in assisted living communities in seven states were four times higher than in the counties where they're located. The findings are based on data from Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, the Carolinas, New York and Ohio that publicly reported COVID-19 data from nursing homes and residential care settings through May 29.

In those states, the percentage of COVID-19 deaths ranged from 3.32% in North Carolina to 9.26% in Connecticut, while the percentage of COVID-19 deaths in assisted living communities in those states ranged from 12.89% to 31.59% -- although fewer than 10% of assisted living communities reported being affected by the pandemic.

RELATED COVID-19 hospitalization rate for minorities far beyond share of population

Assisted living communities with higher proportions of Black and Hispanic residents had more COVID-19 cases, but not more deaths.

"As in the nursing home study, we also see that assisted living communities with more minority residents have more cases, and we confirm that communities with a higher proportion of residents with dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and obesity, experienced more COVID-19 cases," said study leader Helena Temkin-Greener, professor of public health sciences.

Unlike nursing homes, assisted living communities are regulated by states, not the federal government, and there are "varying degrees of rigor" in their oversight, she said in the release.

RELATED Study: 70% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Detroit are African American

The study noted several factors make assisted living communities "ill-prepared" to deal with a pandemic. They're often short of money, care for increasingly sicker residents, have limited oversight and have staff and personal protective equipment shortages.

The workers providing daily care are often personal care aides rather than certified nursing assistants or registered nurses, and they receive little if any training in the use of PPE, the researchers said.

The findings were published Sept. 21 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on nursing homes and COVID-19.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

IG: Census Bureau did not order to shorten 2020 census


Census Bureau did not order the census' schedule to collect data to be shortened, a new report from the Commerce Department's inspector general said. 

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The Commerce Department's internal watchdog said in a report that the decision to shorten the census' schedule for collecting data was made by officials outside of the Census Bureau, leading some officials to speculate that the decision was made by the White House.

In a report published Tuesday, the Inspector General of the Commerce Department said it found that officials outside of the Census Bureau made the decision for it end door-to-door counting of the decennial effort a month early and that no senior officials, including the director, knows who issued the order.

The report said the lack of information has some Census Bureau officials speculating the decision either came from the Commerce Department or from the White House.

"Some Bureau officials speculated the decision came from the Department, while others thought the decision likely came from the White House," the report said. "However, Bureau officials confirmed that the decision was not the Bureau's."

The report also found that the accelerated schedule increases the risks of obtaining a complete and accurate 2020 census, which will be used to allocate state seats in the House of Representatives and government funding.

The report was issued after the inspector general's office received several congressional inquiries expressing concern about the Aug. 3 announcement by Steven Dillingham, the director of the Census Bureau, that field data collection would end by Sept. 30 instead of Oct. 31.

The Census Bureau kicked off its door-knocking effort on Jan. 21, the same day the United States reported its first case of COVID-19, which would force the bureau in April to suspend field data collection and to push its deadline from the end of July to the end of October.

According to the Census Bureau's website, nearly 96% of housing units have been counted nationwide with 10 states reporting below 95%, including Alabama at 89%, with a week until the door efforts are to end.

Following reports over the summer that the Trump administration was seeking to fast-track the census' counting, the House committee on oversight and reform held an emergency hearing during which Dillingham refused to comment as to why Trump would want to compress the schedule.

On Sept. 10, a federal court blocked President Donald Trump's order preventing undocumented immigrants from being included in the census and last week, a federal judge blocked the government from slowing down the census' operations through to Thursday, continuing an injunction placed in early September.

On Tuesday, the National Urban League filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration's plan to shorten the census.

In the lawsuit, civil rights groups, civic organizations and local governments accused the administration of using the census to skew seats in the House of Representatives.

"Both the text of the Rush Plan announcement and the timing of the decision suggest that the federal government's motivation for the Rush Plan is to facilitate another illegal act: suppressing the political power of communities of color by excluding undocumented people from the final apportionment count," the lawsuits states. "To increase the chance that the President can fully effectuate the apportionment exclusion order, he must receive the population totals while he is still in office."

BOO!
CDC advises against traditional Halloween trick-or-treating

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending against trick-or-treating this year. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

REMEMBER IT'S THE DAY OF THE DEAD THE CANDY WAS TO BE AN OFFERING TO THE ANCESTORS THE MIMING OR COSTUME WEARING WAS TO SCARE AWAY EVIL SPIRITS

DRESS UP DANCE AROUND A CANDLE AND OFFERINGS IN YOUR BAKYARD 

OH AND PLAY THE PHILLIP GLASS SOUNDTRACK TO JEAN COCTEAUS BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

 VERY ERRIE.

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising against traditional trick-or-treating this year.

The CDC recommended people avoid having children go door to door for treats, calling it a higher risk activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency is also discouraging "trunk-or-treat" events, where treats are handed out from trunks of cars lined up in large parking lots; crowded costume parties held indoors; and visiting indoor haunted houses, where people may crowd together and scream.

Regarding Halloween masks, the CDC said not to use a costume mask in place of a cloth mask unless it is made of two or more layers of breathable fabric that covers the mouth and nose without leaving gaps around the face. And it said not to wear a costume mask over a cloth mask because that could make it hard to breathe. As an alternative, the CDC recommended using a Halloween-themed cloth mask.

The agency also identified some low-risk Halloween fun: carving or decorating pumpkins with members of the household and displaying them; and a scavenger hunt-style trick-or-treat search within the household or around the home, rather than going from house to house.

Read More

Watch: Ohio dad invents 'candy chute' for 'touch-free' trick-or-treating

Officials ban trick-or-treating, other Halloween events in LA area

Pumpkin farmers report bumper crops for pandemic-weary customers

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Jean Marais / Beauty and the Beast / 1946 directed by Jean Cocteau

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Dimensions: 3998 x 5134 px | 33.8 x 43.5 cm | 13.3 x 17.1 inches | 300dpi

Study: Encouraging people to stay home works better than lockdown mandates

Encouraging people to stay home voluntarily may be more effective at containing COVID-19 spread, a new study has found. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Encouraging voluntary social distancing may be more effective at containing the spread of COVID-19 than government "stay-at-home" mandates, according to an analysis of cellphone data published Tuesday by the journal PLOS ONE.

Since the start of the U.S. outbreak, Americans have been practicing social distancing voluntarily or because of governmental restrictions, or some combination of the two, according to researchers at Louisiana State University.

Maintaining physical distance from others can limit the spread of COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Understanding the interplay of these two factors could help inform optimal strategies for encouraging social distancing and, ultimately, reduce disease spread, LSU researchers said.

RELATED Dr. Fauci: 'Divisive' society hindering efforts to control COVID-19

"The relation between cellphone data and the disease is not straightforward, largely due to disease measurement issues that arise from the way individual jurisdictions track and report cases," study co-author Rajesh Narayanan told UPI.

In general, the findings "reveal that social distancing in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic was initially voluntary rather than a response to governmental jurisdictional restrictions," said Narayanan, chair of the Department of Finance at LSU.

For this study, the researchers analyzed population location data across the country obtained via GPS pings from cellphones. The data was collected, and provided, anonymously, by the company SafeGraph.

RELATED CDC reverses new guidelines again on indoor COVID-19 spread

It developed a computational model of social distancing behavior across the United States using the cellphone data to indicate the amount of time spent at home -- a "proxy" for social distancing -- in counties throughout the country.

On March 14, the day President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in response to the pandemic, approximately 25% of Americans were voluntarily staying home based on recommendations from state and national public health officials, the assessment of GPS location data revealed.

But the number of Americans who adhered to state stay-at-home orders increased nine-fold from the end of January, when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the United States, through the end of March as states implemented stay-at-home orders.

RELATED European nations experience second wave of coronavirus cases

From early April through mid-June, though, when some states began to relax these measures, the percentage of Americans staying home declined by about 50%.

This relaxation of "stay-at-home" orders in some parts of the United States coincided with a rise of COVID-19 cases, with increases as much as 10-fold in some regions.

Overall, many COVID-19 "hotspots" in the spring were located in counties with low social distancing, the researchers said.

In addition, at least initially, people in counties with higher population densities -- where there is greater risk for disease spread -- were more likely than their counterparts in more rural areas to voluntarily practice social distancing and keep case counts low, according to the researchers.

"As the pandemic evolved in the U.S. [and mandated distancing was implemented], the variation in social distancing behavior increased ... producing hotspots with low social distancing and cold spots with high social distancing," Narayanan told UPI.

"The implication is that encouraging voluntary distancing could potentially be an effective and lower-cost alternative to governmental restrictions," he said.

"Such encouragement could boost acceptance of restrictions and thus increased compliance with distancing rules, resulting in an even greater degree of distancing."

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Study predicts increase in mosquito-borne diseases as planet warms

A car spraying for mosquitoes drives through the media village at dusk in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 29, 2016, during the 2016 Summer Olympics. One of the fears of the games was mosquito-bourne diseases such as zika and dengue fever. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

OH GREAT THEY ARE POISIONING PEOPLE IN THIS PHOTO BUT THE KARMA IS THE IRRESPONSIBLE IDIOT SPRAYING IS NOT WEARING ANY PPE.

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- According to a new model, urbanization and rising global temperatures will expand the range of the mosquito species, Aedes aegypti, responsible for spreading a number of debilitating diseases, including yellow fever, Zika, chikungunya and dengue fever.

In a new paper, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, scientists suggest infectious disease experts and public health policy makers must be ready to adapt as malaria becomes less prevalent and new threats emerge.

"Climate change is going to rearrange the landscape of infectious disease," lead study author Erin Mordecai said in a news release.

"Chikungunya and dengue outbreaks like we've recently seen in East Africa are only becoming more likely across much of the continent. We need to be ready for this emerging threat," said Mordecai, a biologist at Stanford University.

RELATED Florida Keys to release 750M genetically modified mosquitoes

Studies suggest malaria, which is transmitted by the nighttime-biting Anopheles gambiae mosquito spreads most quickly when temperatures average 25 degrees Celsius, or 78 degrees Fahrenheit.

In 2018, malaria killed more than 400,000 peoples in Subsaharan Africa, sickening millions more. Public health officials have spearheaded a variety of efforts to curb the spread of the disease, but control efforts like insecticide-laced bed nets are unlikely to deter the daytime-biting Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Unlike the species of mosquito that transmits malaria, which breeds in natural water structures, the Aedes aegypti mosquito likes to breed in human-made containers, such as discarded tires and buckets. The species responsible for Zika, chikungunya and other harmful diseases also likes warmer weather.

RELATED Elderly patient dies of West Nile virus in Southern California

As urban centers grow across Africa, the Aedes aegypti mosquito will be welcomed by a plethora of breeding habitat and pronounced heat island effects.

For the new study, scientists modeled the effects of urbanization and climate change on the ranges of Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

While most places will experience a decrease in the threat of malaria and an increase in the threat of other mosquito-borne diseases, a few places, including cities near Lake Victoria, in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, will experience a increase in the prevalence of both malaria and dengue fever.

RELATED Ten West Nile cases confirmed in Miami; mosquitoes test positive in Texas, Illinois

Researchers hope their modeling efforts will help public health officials prepare for shifts in the threat of mosquito-borne diseases.

"It's vital to focus on controlling mosquitoes that spread diseases like dengue because there are no medical treatments for these diseases," said study senior author Desiree LaBeaud.

"On top of that, a shift from malaria to dengue may overwhelm health systems because diseases introduced to new populations often lead to large outbreaks," said LeBeaud, a professor of pediatrics at the Stanford Medical School.
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Search and rescue dogs fared well after work at 9/11 sites

A rescue dog is transported out of the debris of the World Trade Center on Sept. 15, 2001, in New York. Researchers say dogs that worked at the Sept. 11 attack sites have fared as well as dogs that didn't work there. Photo by Preston Keres/U.S. Navy | License Photo


Search and rescue dogs used during the 9/11 attacks lived as long as dogs not at the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, a new study finds.

"I was at Ground Zero and I would hear people make comments like, 'Did you hear that half of the dogs that responded to the bombing in Oklahoma City died of X, Y, or Z?' Or they'd say dogs responding to 9/11 had died," said Dr. Cynthia Otto, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Working Dog Center, in Philadelphia. "It was really disconcerting."

Otto and her School of Veterinary Medicine colleagues' findings are reassuring.

Dogs that participated in search-and-rescue efforts after 9/11 lived as long as search-and-rescue dogs not at the scene -- a median of about 12.8 years, meaning half died sooner, half did not. They also outlived the life spans of their breed. There was no difference in the dogs' cause of death.

"Honestly, this was not what we expected it's surprising and wonderful," said Otto, a veterinarian.

The researchers expected to see respiratory problems in the exposed dogs, but they did not. The most common cause of death was age-related conditions, such as arthritis and cancer.

For the study, Otto collected data on 95 dogs that had worked at the World Trade Center, the nearby Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, N.Y., or Pentagon disaster sites in Washington, D.C. They compared these dogs with 55 search-and-rescue dogs that were not deployed on 9/11.

"We anticipated that the dogs would be the 'canary in the coal mine' for the human first responders since dogs age faster than humans and didn't have any of the protective equipment during the response," Otto said in a university news release. "But we didn't see a lot that was concerning."

Generally, these dogs are stronger and healthier than pets, which might partly explain why the dogs fared well, she said.

The findings were published Sept. 21 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

More information

For more on responder health after 9/11, visit the New York State Department of Health.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


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Botswana government says toxic algae bloom caused mass elephant deaths

Botswana's government determined that a toxic algae bloom is responsible for the deaths of more than 350 elephants earlier this year. Photo by Gernot Hensel/EPA-EFE

Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Botswana's government determined that toxic algae was responsible for the deaths of more than 350 elephants in the African country earlier this year.

Cyril Taolo, acting director of Botswana Wildlife and National Parks, said Monday that the elephants in the Seronga area in southern Africa died from a neurological disorder after drinking water tainted by a toxic algae bloom.

Taolo added, however, that no other species seemed to be affected by the contaminated water and that scavengers such as hyenas and vultures who were seen feeding on the carcasses of the affected elephants did not show signs of illness.

Laboratory analysis of the elephant carcasses found that the likely cause of death was a cyanobacteria that can cause paralysis and respiratory failure.

Local reports found that about 70% of elephants died near water holes that contained algal blooms.

Niall McCann of British charity National Park Rescue, who discovered 169 dead elephants during a 3-hour flight over the Okavango Delta in early May, said the government's determination "rules out some of the more sinister things" including human intervention such as poaching.

He also said the work to determine exactly what caused the deaths was not quite done.

"Just because cyanobacteria were found in the water that does not prove that the elephants died from exposure to those toxins. Without good samples from dead elephants, all hypotheses are just that: hypotheses," McCann said.

McCann further warned that natural elephant die-offs will be exacerbated by climate change with increasing temperatures acting as a "threat amplifier."

 

On This Day: US Congress requires communists to register

In 1950, the U.S. Congress adopted the Internal Security Act, which provided for the registration of communists. Leaders of the Communist Party vowed never to register, and it was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev shouts "This is my America" at a New York cabbie from his window at the Russian U.N. delegation's headquarters during the 1960 United Nations General Assembly. On September 23, 1959, Khrushchev visited the corn fields of Iowa to find out what made the American farmer tick and urged that the earth "be furrowed by plows, not rockets and tanks." File Photo by Gary Haynes/UPI

In 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the corn fields of Iowa to find out what made the American farmer tick and urged that the earth "be furrowed by plows, not rockets and tanks."

 

Rescuers find hundreds of whales stranded off Tasmania

Some 450 pilot whales have been stranded along the western coast of Tasmania. Photo courtesy of Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment

Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Tasmanian wildlife authorities said 200 additional pilot whales were discovered Wednesday along the island state's west coast, increasing the size of the mass stranding event to more than 450 as rescuers rush to save those still alive.

Some 270 pilot whales stranded on two sand bars and a stretch of beach in Strahan were reported Tuesday, but an aerial reconnaissance operation on Wednesday morning discovered 200 more at Macquarie Harbor, about 3 to 5 miles away from the first site, said officials with the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment

Nic Deka, the incident controller and Parks and Wildlife Service's regional manager, said that they believe most of the 200 whales are dead but a team has been dispatched to assess the situation.

"From the air, most of the additional whales detected appear to be dead, but as we speak a boat has headed over there this morning to do an assessment from the water," he said in a media conference.

Deka said the whales discovered Wednesday are part of the mass stranding event from the day prior but went undetected as they were hidden in a part of the harbor where the water is dark and the whales may have been stranded, pulled back to sea and then washed back into the bay by the current.

The new discovery has prompted them to do a more extensive search, but the plan remains the same: to save those whales that are still alive, he said.

"Our focus is on those animals that are still alive, and still under the conditions to be gotten off the bar and out to deep water," he said. "So we'll continue on with that approach and hopefully, by the end of today, the count of whales successfully rescued will have increased."

The number of whales still alive is "significant," he said without clarifying, adding that rescuers were attending to them.

On Tuesday night, Deka said in a press release that about a third of the 270 whales discovered that day had perished but about 25 that were still alive had been taken out of the channel and were back in the ocean.

However, a few of those that had been rescued had become re-stranded by Wednesday morning.

RELATED Watch: Dolphin rescued from pond 9 miles inland after hurricane

"That was a disappointment at the end of yesterday to find a small number of those whales had re-stranded," he said. "But the good news is the majority of the whales were rescued were still out in deep water, and swimming."

The cause of the stranding is unknown and it is considered a natural phenomenon with all the whales likely to be apart of a single stranding event, said Kris Carlyon, a wildlife biologist with the department, adding that it is the largest such event in Australia's island state of Tasmania's history.

"Globally, there has been some much bigger events than this -- twice the size and over, for example, in New Zealand," he said. "In Tasmania, this is the biggest that we have recorded."

Carlyon said there is nothing they can do to prevent such events from re-occurring and the reason to attempt to intervene is because they can.

"I think we have a really good chance of getting more off the sandbar and out through the gates," he said. "We are still very hopeful."

Airbus unveils plans for zero-emission, hydrogen-fueled airliners


A “blended-wing body” design would seat as many as 200 passengers and allow various ways to store hydrogen fuel tanks. Illustration courtesy Airbus


Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Airplane-maker Airbus unveiled concepts on Monday for what it said are the world's first hydrogen-powered, zero-emissions commercial aircraft, which could enter service within 15 years.

The concepts, code-named "ZEROe," show airliners that seat between 100 and 200 passengers -- two of which would use modified gas turbine combustion engines that run on hydrogen instead of jet fuel.

The French company said it aims to operate the planes by 2035.

"This is a historic moment for the commercial aviation sector as a whole and we intend to play a leading role in the most important transition this industry has ever seen," Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said in a statement.

"The concepts we unveil today offer the world a glimpse of our ambition to drive a bold vision for the future of zero-emission flight. I strongly believe that the use of hydrogen -- both in synthetic fuels and as a primary power source for commercial aircraft -- has the potential to significantly reduce aviation's climate impact."

In one concept, a turbofan jet airliner seating as many as 200 passengers would tap liquid hydrogen stored in tanks located behind the rear pressure bulkhead to produce a range of at least 2,000 nautical miles. Another concept is similar, but with a turboprop design capable of flying at least 1,000 miles.

A third concept is a "blended-wing body" design that abandons the thin fuselage of current planes and provides "multiple options" for hydrogen storage and cabin layout.

Commercial aviation is responsible for about 2.4% of global carbon emissions and totaled more than 900 million metric tons in 2018, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. That level represented a 32% increase in emissions over the previous five years.

Airbus' ambition to introduce hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft within 15 years depends on "decisive action from the entire aviation ecosystem," including government and industry leaders, it said.

The company called for the build-out of "significant hydrogen transport and refueling infrastructure" at airports and government support for research and technology.