Articles Tagged With: CDC
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TB Rates Are Rising Again
In 2020, the TB rate dropped to 2.2, possibly because COVID-19 demanded public health resources that might have been used to detect it, and travel and immigration declined. After a small rebound in 2021, TB levels climbed to 2.5 cases per 1,000 people in 2022. There were more than 8,000 cases, and the CDC said TB was returning to pre-pandemic levels.
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Pasadena Health Officer Mandates Booster for HCWs
The chief public health officer in Pasadena, CA, has issued an order for all healthcare workers in the city to receive the bivalent booster containing both the original strain of COVID-19 and two subvariants of omicron.
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Once Eradicated in the United States, Measles Comes Back
Undiagnosed hospital measles introductions are notoriously labor-intensive, making it necessary to track potential exposures to patients and healthcare workers and determine immune status as necessary.
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CDC: Candida auris Spreading at ‘Alarming’ Rate
The agency reported the number of clinical cases has risen each year since 2016, with the worst spike occurring during the 2020-2021 period.
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Long COVID Hits Healthcare Workers
A Government Accountability Office report estimates long COVID has “potentially affected up to 23 million Americans, pushing an estimated 1 million people out of work.” This population is a moving target — at any given time, some may be clearing it while others are just starting to succumb to its spiderweb of symptoms. Some have experienced long COVID since the beginning of the pandemic, and their return to baseline health is in question.
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CDC: Vaccine Safety ‘Signal’ of Stroke Risk in the Elderly
A vaccine safety surveillance system has detected a “signal” of a possible higher risk of ischemic stroke following vaccination in those age 65 years and older with the bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
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Worker Shortage, Pandemic Make Drug Diversion Easier
Drug diversion can happen quickly as healthcare workers move from one facility to another, enabled by lax reporting systems and hospital disincentives to alert patients and raise liability issues. Diverters may slip through cracks in oversight by medical and nursing boards as they move to other facilities and are lost to follow-up.
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Multistate Drug Diverter’s Plea Denied, Faces 29 More Years
When it comes to discussion and analysis of drug diversion, David Kwiatkowski is the elephant in the room. More aptly, he is in a Florida federal prison cell. A hepatis C virus carrier, Kwiatkowski was sentenced to 39 years in prison in 2013 for infecting a string of victims with HCV as he diverted drugs from multiple hospitals in eight states. Tracking back through this trail of tears, federal officials with the Department of Health and Human Services tallied 45 HCV-infected patients, two of whom died.
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FDA Streamlining COVID-19 Shot to a Single Formula
Conceding the various vaccine doses and multiple boosters have caused considerable confusion, and some degree of pandemic apathy, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee unanimously voted to simplify and “harmonize” the process by switching to a single vaccine formula to be administered annually for most people.
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Home-Based STI Kits Can Help with Anal Cancer Screening
Anal cancer incidence has increased in recent years, and there are no consensus screening guidelines. Researchers found the use of home-based anal self-sampling kits improved screening.