Category: From California Healthline.org

La Pequeña Habana es un barrio de Miami que, hasta la pandemia, era conocido por su activa vida en las calles, a lo largo de la Calle Ocho, en donde hay locales de música en vivo, ventanitas que sirven café cubano y un parque histórico donde los hombres se reúnen a jugar dominó.

Pero durante la pandemia, un grupo llamado Healthy Little Havana se está concentrando en esta área con una tarea muy específica: persuadir a los residentes para que se hagan una prueba de coronavirus.

La organización sin fines de lucro tiene mucha experiencia en divulgación. Ayudó con el censo de 2020 y, a causa de la pandemia, hizo la mayor parte de ese trabajo por teléfono. Pero Líderes comunitarios dicen que este nuevo desafío necesita un enfoque cara a cara.

Los trabajadores del grupo han salido casi a diario por las tranquilas calles residenciales, para persuadir a la mayor cantidad posible de personas de que se hagan la prueba de covid-19. En una tarde reciente, un grupo de tres —Elvis Mendes, María Elena González y Alejandro Díaz— tocó todas las puertas de un edificio de dos pisos.

Mucha gente aquí trabaja en la industria de servicios, en comercios minoristas o en la construcción; la mayoría de ellos no están en casa cuando los visitantes llegan.

Lisette Mejía respondió, con un bebé en brazos y flanqueada por dos niños pequeños.

“No todo el mundo tiene acceso fácil a Internet o a la posibilidad de buscar citas”, respondió Mejía a la de por qué no se había hecho una prueba. Agregó que tampoco ha tenido ningún síntoma.

El equipo de Healthy Little Havana le dio algunas mascarillas de algodón y le informó sobre las pruebas planificadas para ese fin de semana en una escuela primaria que se encuentra a poca distancia caminando. Le explicaron que las personas pueden no tener síntomas pero aún tener el virus.

Las pruebas siguen siendo demasiado difíciles

La organización sin fines de lucro es una de varias que reciben fondos de la Health Foundation of South Florida. La fundación está gastando $1.5 millones en estos esfuerzos de divulgación, en parte para ayudar a que las pruebas de coronavirus sean lo más accesibles y convenientes posible.

Varias razones sociales y económicas hacen que sea difícil para algunos residentes de Miami hacerse la prueba o recibir tratamiento, o aislarse si están enfermos de covid. Un gran problema es que muchas personas dicen que no pueden permitirse quedarse en casa cuando están enfermas.

“Tienen que pagar la renta, los gastos escolares, la comida”, dijo Mendes.

Esta parte de Miami es el hogar de muchos cubanos exiliados, así como de personas de toda América Latina. Algunos carecen de seguro médico, otros son inmigrantes indocumentados.

Mendes y su equipo intentan hacer correr la voz entre los residentes sobre programas como Ready Responders, un grupo de paramédicos que ahora tiene fondos de la fundación para realizar pruebas gratuitas de coronavirus en el hogar en áreas como ésta, independientemente del estatus migratorio de la persona.

“Nuestra misión es que todas estas personas se hagan la prueba, independientemente de si tienen un síntoma o no, para que podamos disminuir el nivel de personas que contraen covid-19”, dijo Mendes. Según los Centros para el Control y Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC), las personas infectadas pero presintomáticas o asintomáticas representan más del 50% de las transmisiones.

Las subvenciones relacionadas con el coronavirus de la Health Foundation of South Florida han oscilado entre $35,000 y $160,000; otros beneficiarios incluyen el capítulo del sur de Florida de la Asociación Médica Nacional, el Centro Campesino y el YMCA del sur de Florida.

La fundación se está enfocando en vecindarios de bajos ingresos donde algunos residentes podrían no tener acceso a un automóvil o no poder pagar una prueba de coronavirus en una farmacia.

Su enfoque incluye áreas residenciales cerca de los sitios de trabajo agrícola. En el condado de Miami-Dade, está trabajando directamente con las autoridades para aumentar las pruebas. En el vecino condado de Broward, está colaborando con las autoridades de vivienda pública para llevar más pruebas a las viviendas.

Calmar los miedos, ofrecer opciones en español

Lleva mucho tiempo ir de puerta en puerta, pero vale la pena: los residentes responden cuando los equipos hablan su idioma y establecen una conexión personal.

Gloria Carvajal, residente de la Pequeña Habana, dijo al grupo de extensión que se sentía ansiosa por saber si la prueba de PCR es dolorosa.

“¿Qué hay de ese aguja?”, preguntó Carvajal, riendo nerviosamente.

González intervino para asegurarle que no es tan mala: “He tomado el test muchas veces, porque obviamente estamos en público y tenemos que hacernos la prueba”.

Otro esfuerzo de alcance está ocurriendo en Faith Community Baptist Church en Miami. La iglesia organizó un día de pruebas gratuitas en octubre, con la ayuda de la fundación.

“Nos conoces. Sabes quiénes somos”, dijo el pastor Richard Dunn II. “Sabes que no permitiremos que nadie haga nada para lastimarte”.

Dunn habló recientemente en la cercana Liberty City, un barrio históricamente negro, en un servicio conmemorativo al aire libre para los residentes de raza negra que han muerto a causa de covid. Para transmitir la magnitud de las pérdidas de la comunidad, se colocaron cientos de lápidas de plástico blanco detrás del podio. Llenaron un campo entero en el parque.

“Miles y miles han muerto, y por eso le estamos diciendo al Señor aquí hoy que no vamos a permitir que sus muertes sean en vano”, dijo Dunn.

Dunn también está ayudando con un esfuerzo para generar confianza en las vacunas covid entre los residentes de raza negra, al participar en reuniones en línea durante las cuales los miembros de la iglesia pueden escuchar directamente a los expertos médicos de su propia raza. El mensaje de las reuniones es que las vacunas son seguras y vitales.

“Se han cobrado más de 300,000 vidas en los Estados Unidos de América”, dijo Dunn al final de la reunión. “Y creo que no hacer nada sería más una tragedia que al menos intentar hacer algo para prevenirlo y detener la propagación del coronavirus”.

Las iglesias desempeñarán un papel importante en los esfuerzos de divulgación en curso, y Dunn está comprometido a hacer su parte. Sabe que el covid es una enfermedad grave y extremadamente contagiosa; el verano pasado, él mismo lo contrajo.

Esta historia es parte de una alianza de noticias que incluye a WLRN, NPR y Kaiser Health News.

Esta historia fue producida por KHN, que publica California Healthline, un servicio editorialmente independiente de la California Health Care Foundation.

 

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Con la llegada del invierno y el brote de coronavirus en pleno apogeo en el país, la industria de los restaurantes, que espera pérdidas de $235 mil millones en 2020, se aferra a las opciones al aire libre incluso durante los gélidos meses de invierno.

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Carpas, toldos, invernaderos, hasta iglús y todo tipo de estructuras parcialmente abiertas han aparecido en restaurantes de todo el país.

Los propietarios recurren a estas opciones como un salvavidas para ayudar a llenar algunas mesas, y tener al menos la posibilidad de ofrecer una experiencia gastronómica más segura.

“Estamos tratando de hacer todo lo posible para ampliar la temporada de comidas al aire libre durante el mayor tiempo posible”, dijo Mike Whatley, de la Asociación Nacional de Restaurantes.

Tiempos nefastos han obligado a la industria a encontrar formas de sobrevivir. Whatley dijo que más de 100,000 restaurantes están “completamente cerrados”.

“Va a ser un invierno duro”, dijo Whatley. “A medida que aumenta el frío, veremos más restaurantes cerrando”.

En los últimos meses, muchas ciudades y estados han impuesto una serie de restricciones a las comidas en interiores, dado el alto riesgo de propagar el virus en entornos abarrotados.

Muchos limitaron el espacio interior. Otros cerraron por completo las comidas en interiores, como Illinois y Michigan. Otros han ido aún más lejos: Los Ángeles y Baltimore han prohibido las comidas en interiores y al aire libre. Solo se permite comida para llevar.

Aquellos que pueden atender a los clientes al aire libre, en patios o aceras, están ideando adaptaciones creativas que pueden hacer posible cenar en los gélidos días del invierno.

El estado de Washington cerró los espacos interiores a mediados de noviembre y ha mantenido esa prohibición a medida que los casos de coronavirus continúan aumentando.

El lujoso restaurante Canlis, en Seattle, ha construido un elaborado pasaje en el estacionamiento.

Incluye una chimenea al aire libre y pasillos con paneles de madera que serpentean entre pequeños pinos y tiendas circulares. El conjunto de tiendas es el esfuerzo de la familia Canlis para mantener viva la buena mesa durante la pandemia, en el invierno típicamente largo y húmedo de Seattle.

Los huéspedes que llegan son recibidos con un termómetro de frente para tomar su temperatura y una taza de sidra caliente.

Las nuevas reglas para las estructuras de comedor al aire libre en Washington requieren que Canlis considere cuestiones como por ejemplo cómo ventilar las tiendas correctamente y desinfectar los muebles costosos.

Las estructuras se limpian después de cada cena; los camareros entran y salen rápidamente, con máscaras N95.

Tim Baker, dueño del restaurante San Fermo en Seattle, sostiene un cañón de aire caliente que utiliza entre comensales. Dice que la máquina ventila, calienta el ambiente y ayuda a dispersar cualquier remanente de partículas infecciosas. (Will Stone)

Estos espacios, ¿qué tan seguros son?

Otra versión más moderna de las cenas al aire libre incluye iglús transparentes y otras estructuras en forma de domo que se han vuelto populares entre los propietarios de restaurantes de todo el país.

Tim Baker, dueño del restaurante italiano San Fermo en Seattle, tuvo que encargar sus iglús a Lituania y montarlos con la ayuda de su hijo.

La política de su restaurante es que solo se permiten dos personas en un iglú a la vez, para reducir el riesgo de que estén cerca comensales de diferentes hogares.

“Estás completamente encerrado en tu propio espacio con alguien de tu propia casa. Estos domos te protegen de todas las personas que pasan por la acera y el mozo no entra contigo”, dijo.

Baker contó que consultó con expertos en flujo de aire y decidió usar un cañón de aire caliente industrial después que cada grupo de comensales sale del iglú, y antes de que entre el siguiente grupo, para despejar el aire dentro de la estructura de cualquier partícula infecciosa persistente.

“Se dispara este cañón y empuja el aire de manera realmente agresiva, dispersando rápidamente las partículas”, dijo Baker.

Los iglús de su restaurante se han convertido en una gran atracción.

“Estoy orgulloso de cualquier cosa que podamos hacer para entusiasmar a la gente en este momento, porque lo necesitamos”, dijo. “Todos estamos siendo aplastados emocionalmente por la pandemia”.

No todas las estructuras al aire libre se construyen por igual, dijo Richard Corsi, experto en calidad del aire y decano de ingeniería e informática de la Universidad Estatal de Portland en Oregon.

“Hay un amplio espectro”, dijo Corsi. “Lo más seguro de lo que estamos hablando es sin paredes, un techo. Y luego lo peor es completamente cerrado, que es esencialmente una carpa interior, especialmente si no tiene una ventilación realmente buena y un buen distanciamiento físico”.

De hecho, dijo Corsi, algunas estructuras de comedor al aire libre que están cerradas y tienen muchas mesas juntas terminan siendo más peligrosas que estar en el interior, porque la ventilación es peor.

Comer al aire libre, sin nada, es mucho más seguro porque hay “velocidades del aire más altas, más dispersión y más mezcla que en el interior”, dijo Corsi, lo que significa que las gotas respiratorias que albergan el virus no se acumulan y son menos concentrado cuando las personas están cerca unas de otras.

“Si tienen calentadores, entonces tendrás una ventilación bastante buena”, dijo Corsi. “El aire se elevará cuando se caliente y luego entrará aire frío”.

Dijo que los domos privados pueden ser bastante seguros si se ventilan y limpian adecuadamente entre comensales. Eso también supone que todos los que comen dentro de la estructura viven juntos, por lo que ya han estado expuestos a los gérmenes de los demás.

Pero Corsi dijo que todavía no saldrá a comer a una de las muchas nuevas creaciones para cenas al aire libre, “aunque sé que tienen un riesgo mucho menor de propagar el covid-19 que la mayoría de las alternativas en interiores”.

Esta historia es parte de una alianza de noticias de salud entre NPR y Kaiser Health News.

Esta historia fue producida por KHN, que publica California Healthline, un servicio editorialmente independiente de la California Health Care Foundation.

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Joe Biden on Wednesday took the oath to become the 46th president of the United States, vowing to bring the nation together in the midst of an ongoing pandemic that has claimed more than 400,000 lives, enormous economic dislocation and civil unrest so serious that the U.S. Capitol steps where he took his oath were surrounded not by cheering crowds, but by tens of thousands of armed police and National Guard troops.

In his inaugural address, given outside despite concerns for his physical security, Biden emphasized unity, the driving theme of his campaign. “My whole soul is in this, bringing America together, uniting our nation,” he said. “And I ask every American to join me in this cause.”

On health care, Biden made it clear that combating the covid-19 pandemic will be his top priority. “We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation,” he said. “We will get through this together.”

Last week, Biden unveiled a covid plan that includes using the Defense Production Act to speed the manufacture of syringes and other supplies needed to administer vaccines; creating federal vaccination centers and mobilizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Guard and others to administer the vaccines, and launching a communications campaign to convince reluctant members of the public that the vaccine is safe. Details on his vaccination plan followed his unveiling the day before of a $1.9 trillion covid emergency relief package.

Biden got a separate boost earlier in the day with the swearing in of two new Democratic senators from Georgia, fresh off their victories in a Jan. 5 runoff election. The additions of Sen. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, plus a tie-breaking vote from new Vice President Kamala Harris, gives Democrats 51 votes in the Senate and effective control of both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2010.

With such narrow majorities in the House and Senate, it seems unlikely Biden will be able to make good on some of his more sweeping health-related campaign promises, including creating a “public option” to help expand insurance coverage and lowering the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60.

But even the barest of control will make it substantially easier for Biden to get his appointees confirmed in the Senate, and the possibility is open to use a fast-track process called budget reconciliation to make health-related budget changes, perhaps including modifications of the Affordable Care Act that might make coverage less expensive for some families.

Beyond covid, health is likely to take a back seat in the early going of the administration as officials deal with more pressing problems like the economy, immigration and climate change.

Biden health aides are expected to begin to unwind many of the changes made by Trump that do not require legislation, such as restoring anti-discrimination protections for transgender people and reversing the Trump administration’s decision to allow some states to implement work requirements for adults covered by Medicaid. But even that could take weeks or months.

This story also ran on PolitiFact. It can be republished for free.

It’s in the nature of presidential candidates and new presidents to promise big things. Just months after his 1961 inauguration, President John F. Kennedy vowed to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. That pledge was kept, but many others haven’t been, such as candidate Bill Clinton’s promise to provide universal health care and presidential hopeful George H.W. Bush’s guarantee of no new taxes.

Now, during a once-in-a-century pandemic, incoming President Joe Biden has promised to provide 100 million covid-19 vaccinations in his first 100 days in office.

“This team will help get … at least 100 million covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people in the first 100 days,” Biden said during a Dec. 8 news conference introducing key members of his health team.

When first asked about his pledge, the Biden team said the president-elect meant 50 million people would get their two-dose regimen. The incoming administration has since updated this plan, saying it will release vaccine doses as soon as they’re available instead of holding back some of that supply for second doses.

Either way, Biden may run into difficulty meeting that 100 million mark.

“I think it’s an attainable goal. I think it’s going to be extremely challenging,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

While a pace of 1 million doses a day is “somewhat of an increase over what we’re already doing,” a much higher rate of vaccinations will be necessary to stem the pandemic, said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.) “The Biden administration has plans to rationalize vaccine distribution, but increasing the supply quickly” could be a difficult task.

Under the Trump administration, vaccine deployment has been much slower than Biden’s plan. The rollout began more than a month ago, on Dec. 14. Since then, 12 million shots have been given and 31 million doses have been shipped out, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine tracker.

This sluggishness has been attributed to a lack of communication between the federal government and state and local health departments, not enough funding for large-scale vaccination efforts, and confusing federal guidance on distribution of the vaccines.

The same problems could plague the Biden administration, said experts.

States still aren’t sure how much vaccine they’ll get and whether there will be a sufficient supply, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents state public health agencies.

“We have been given little information about the amount of vaccine the states will receive in the near future and are of the impression that there may not be 1 million doses available per day in the first 100 days of the Biden administration,” said Plescia. “Or at least not in the early stages of the 100 days.”

Another challenge has been a lack of funding. Public health departments have had to start vaccination campaigns while also operating testing centers and conducting contact tracing efforts with budgets that have been critically underfunded for years.

“States have to pay for creating the systems, identifying the personnel, training, staffing, tracking people, information campaigns — all the things that go into getting a shot in someone’s arm,” said Jennifer Kates, director of global health & HIV policy at KFF. “They’re having to create an unprecedented mass vaccination program on a shaky foundation.”

The latest covid stimulus bill, signed into law in December, allocates almost $9 billion in funding to the CDC for vaccination efforts. About $4.5 billion is supposed to go to states, territories and tribal organizations, and $3 billion of that is slated to arrive soon.

But it’s not clear that level of funding can sustain mass vaccination campaigns as more groups become eligible for the vaccine.

Biden released a $1.9 trillion plan last week to address covid and the struggling economy. It includes $160 billion to create national vaccination and testing programs, but also earmarks funds for $1,400 stimulus payments to individuals, state and local government aid, extension of unemployment insurance, and financial assistance for schools to reopen safely.

Though it took Congress almost eight months to pass the last covid relief bill after Republican objections to the cost, Biden seems optimistic he’ll get some Republicans on board for his plan. But it’s not yet clear that will work.

There’s also the question of whether outgoing President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial will get in the way of Biden’s legislative priorities.

In addition, states have complained about a lack of guidance and confusing instructions on which groups should be given priority status for vaccination, an issue the Biden administration will need to address.

On Dec. 3, the CDC recommended health care personnel, residents of long-term care facilities, those 75 and older, and front-line essential workers should be immunized first. But on Jan. 12, the CDC shifted course and recommended that everyone over age 65 should be immunized. In a speech Biden gave last week detailing his vaccination plan, he said he would stick to the CDC’s recommendation to prioritize those over 65.

Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar also said Jan. 12 that states that moved their vaccine supply fastest would be prioritized in getting more shipments. It’s not known yet whether the Biden administration’s CDC will stick to this guidance. Critics have said it could make vaccine distribution less equitable.

In general, taking over with a strong vision and clear communication will be key to ramping up vaccine distribution, said Hannan.

“Everyone needs to understand what the goal is and how it’s going to work,” she said.

A challenge for Biden will be tamping expectations that the vaccine is all that is needed to end the pandemic. Across the country, covid cases are higher than ever, and in many locations officials cannot control the spread.

Public health experts said Biden must amp up efforts to increase testing across the country, as he has suggested he will do by promising to establish a national pandemic testing board.

With so much focus on vaccine distribution, it’s important that this part of the equation not be lost. Right now, “it’s completely all over the map,” said KFF’s Kates, adding that the federal government will need a “good sense” of who is and is not being tested in different areas in order to “fix” public health capacity.

Today marks the launch of The Biden Promise Tracker, which monitors the 100 most important campaign promises of President Joseph R. Biden. Biden listed the coronavirus and a variety of other health-related issues among his top priorities. You can see the entire list – including improving the economy, responding to calls for racial justice and combating climate change – here. As part of KHN’s partnership with PolitiFact, we will follow the health-related issues and then rate them on whether the promise was achieved: Promise Kept, Promise Broken, Compromise, Stalled, In the Works or Not Yet Rated. We rate the promise not on the president’s intentions or effort, but on verifiable outcomes. PolitiFact previously tracked the promises of President Donald Trump and President Barack Obama. 

By the time he tested positive for covid-19 on Jan. 12, Gary Herritz was feeling pretty sick. He suspects he was infected a week earlier, during a medical appointment in which he saw health workers who were wearing masks beneath their noses or who had removed them entirely.

His scratchy throat had turned to a dry cough, headache, joint pain and fever — all warning signs to Herritz, who underwent liver transplant surgery in 2012, followed by a rejection scare in 2018. He knew his compromised immune system left him especially vulnerable to a potentially deadly case of covid.

“The thing with transplant patients is we can crash in a heartbeat,” said Herritz, 39. “The outcome for transplant patients [with covid] is not good.”

On Twitter, Herritz had read about monoclonal antibody therapy, the treatment famously given to President Donald Trump and other high-profile politicians and authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use in high-risk covid patients. But as his symptoms worsened, Herritz found himself very much on his own as he scrambled for access.

His primary care doctor wasn’t sure he qualified for treatment. His transplant team in Wisconsin, where he’d had the liver surgery, wasn’t calling back. No one was sure exactly where he should go to get it. From bed in Pascagoula, Mississippi, he spent two days punching in phone numbers, reaching out to health officials in four states, before he finally landed an appointment to receive a treatment aimed at keeping patients like him out of the hospital — and, perhaps, the morgue.

“I am not rich, I am not special, I am not a political figure,” Herritz, a former community service officer, wrote on Twitter. “I just called until someone would listen.”

Months after Trump emphatically credited an experimental antibody therapy for his quick recovery from covid and even as drugmakers ramp up supplies, only a trickle of the product has found its way into regular people. While hundreds of thousands of vials sit unused, sick patients who, research indicates, could benefit from early treatment — available for free — have largely been fending for themselves.

Federal officials have allocated more than 785,000 doses of two antibody treatments authorized for emergency use during the pandemic, and more than 550,000 doses have been delivered to sites across the nation. The federal government has contracted for nearly 2.5 million doses of the products from drugmakers Eli Lilly and Co. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals at a cost of more than $4.4 billion.

So far, however, only about 30% of the available doses have been administered to patients, federal Department of Health and Human Services officials said.

Scores of high-risk covid patients who are eligible remain unaware or have not been offered the option. Research has shown the therapy is most effective if given early in the illness, within 10 days of a positive covid test. But many would-be recipients have missed this crucial window because of a patchwork system in the U.S. that can delay testing and diagnosis.

“The bottleneck here in the funnel is administration, not availability of the product,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, a veteran FDA official in charge of therapeutics for the federal Operation Warp Speed effort.

Among the daunting hurdles: Until this week, there has been no nationwide system to tell people where they could obtain the drugs, which are delivered through IV infusions that require hours to administer and monitor. Finding space to keep covid-infected patients separate from others has been difficult in some health centers slammed by the pandemic.

“The health care system is crashing,” Woodcock told reporters. “What we’ve heard around the country is the No. 1 barrier is staffing.”

At the same time, many hospitals have refused to offer the therapy because doctors were unimpressed with the research federal officials used to justify its use.

Monoclonal antibodies are lab-produced molecules that act as substitutes for the body’s own antibodies that fight infection. The covid treatments are designed to block the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes infection from attaching to and entering human cells. Such treatments are usually prohibitively expensive, but for the time being the federal government is footing the bulk of the bill, though patients likely will be charged administrative fees.

Nationwide, nearly 4,000 sites offer the infusion therapies. But for patients and families of people most at risk — those 65 and older or with underlying health conditions — finding the sites and gaining access has been almost impossible, said Brian Nyquist, chief executive officer of the National Infusion Center Association, which is tracking supplies of the antibody products. Like Herritz, many seeking information about monoclonals find themselves on a lone crusade.

“If they’re not hammering the phones and advocating for access for their loved ones, others often won’t,” he said. “Tenacity is critical.”

Regeneron officials said they’re fielding calls about covid treatments daily to the company’s medical information line. More than 3,500 people have flooded Eli Lilly’s covid hotline with questions about access.

As of this week, all states are required to list on a federal locator map sites that have received the monoclonal antibody products, HHS officials said. The updated map shows wide distribution, but a listing doesn’t guarantee availability or access; patients still need to check. It’s best to confer with a primary care provider before reaching out to the centers. For best results, treatment should occur as soon as possible after a positive covid test.

Some health systems have refused to offer the monoclonal antibody therapies because of doubts about the data used to authorize them. Early studies suggested that Lilly’s therapy, bamlanivimab, reduced the need for hospitalization or emergency treatment in outpatient covid cases by about 70%, while Regeneron’s antibody cocktail of casirivimab plus imdevimab reduced the need by about 50%.

But those studies were small, just a few hundred subjects, and the results were limited. “A lot of doctors, actually, they’re not impressed with the data,” said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease expert at Columbia University who co-hosts the podcast “This Week in Virology.” “There really is still that question of, ‘Does this stuff really work?’”

As more patients are treated, however, there’s growing evidence that the therapies can keep high-risk patients out of the hospital, not only easing their recovery but also decreasing the burden on health systems struggling with record numbers of patients.

Dr. Raymund Razonable, an infectious disease expert at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said he has treated more than 2,500 covid patients with monoclonal antibody therapy with promising results. “It’s looking good,” he said, declining to provide details because they’re embargoed for publication. “We are seeing reductions in hospitalizations; we’re seeing reductions in ICU care; we’re also seeing reductions in mortality.”

Banking on observations from Mayo experts and others, federal officials have been pushing for wider use of antibody therapies. HHS officials have partnered with hospitals in three hard-hit states — California, Arizona and Nevada — to set up infusion centers that are treating dozens of covid patients each day.

One of those sites went up in late December at El Centro Regional Medical Center in California’s Imperial County, an impoverished farming region on the state’s southern border that has recorded among the highest covid infection rates in the state. For months, the medical center strained to absorb the overwhelming influx of patients, but chief executive Dr. Adolphe Edward said a new walk-up infusion site has already put a dent in the covid load.

More than 130 people have been treated, all patients who were able to get the two-hour infusions and then recuperate at home. “If those folks would not have had the treatment, they would have come through the emergency department and we would have had to admit the lion’s share of them,” he said.

It’s important to make sure people in high-risk groups know to seek out the therapy and to get it early, Edward said. He and his staff have been working with area doctors’ offices and nonprofit groups and relying on word-of-mouth.

“On multiple levels, we’re saying, ‘If you’ve tested positive for the virus, come and let us see if you are eligible,’” Edward said.

Greater awareness is a goal of the HHS effort, said Dr. John Redd, chief medical officer for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response. “These antibodies are meant for everyone,” he said. “Everyone across the country should have equal access to these products.”

For now, patients like Herritz, the Mississippi liver transplant recipient, say reality is falling well short of that goal. If he hadn’t continued to call in search of a referral, he wouldn’t have been treated. And without the therapy, Herritz believes, he was just days away from hospitalization.

“I think it’s horrible that if I didn’t have Twitter, I wouldn’t know anything about this,” he said. “I think about all the people who have died not knowing this was an option for high-risk individuals.”

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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Está en la naturaleza de los candidatos presidenciales y de los flamantes presidentes: prometer grandes cosas. Apenas unos meses antes de su juramentación en 1961, el presidente John F. Kennedy prometió que iba a enviar un hombre a la luna antes de que terminara la década.

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Esa promesa se cumplió, pero muchas otras no, como la de Bill Clinton de lograr una atención médica universal o la George H.W. Bush de no generar nuevos impuestos.

Ahora, durante una pandemia que ocurre una vez en un siglo, Joe Biden ha prometido proporcionar 100 millones de dosis de vacunas contra covid-19 en sus primeros 100 días de mandato.

“Este equipo ayudará a que 100 millones de dosis lleguen a los brazos de los estadounidenses en los primeros 100 días”, dijo Biden en la conferencia de prensa del 8 de diciembre en la que presentó a su equipo de salud.

Luego de esa afirmación, la campaña de Biden aclaró que se había referido a que 50 millones de personas recibirían sus dos dosis. Más tarde aclararon que distribuirían las dosis a medida que estuvieran disponibles, en vez de retener suministros para las segundas dosis.

De cualquier manera, la meta de Biden parece difícil de alcanzar.

“Creo que es un objetivo posible. Pero también un gran desafío”, dijo Claire Hannan, directora ejecutiva de la Association of Immunization Managers.

“Mientras que el ritmo de 1 millón de dosis al día es en alguna medida un aumento con respecto a lo que estamos haciendo ahora, será necesaria una tasa mucho más alta de vacunación para frenar la pandemia”, dijo Larry Levitt, vicepresidente ejecutivo para políticas de salud de la Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

“La administración Biden planea racionalizar la distribución de vacunas, pero aumentar el suministro rápidamente podría ser una tarea difícil”, agregó.

Bajo la administración Trump, el despliegue de vacunas ha sido mucho más lento que el plan de Biden. El lanzamiento comenzó el 14 de diciembre. Desde entonces, se han administrado 12 millones de dosis y se han distribuido 31 millones, según el monitoreo de vacunación de los Centros para el Control y Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC).

Esta lentitud se ha atribuido a la falta de comunicación entre el gobierno federal y los departamentos de salud estatales y locales. También a la falta de fondos para una vacunación a gran escala, y a la confusa orientación del gobierno federal sobre la distribución.

La administración Biden podría tener los mismos problemas, según expertos. Los estados aun no están seguros de cuántas vacunas recibirán y si habrá un suministro suficiente, dijo el doctor Marcus Plescia, director médico de la Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, que representa a las agencias de salud pública estatales.

“Se nos ha proporcionado poca información sobre la cantidad de vacunas que recibirán los estados en el futuro cercano y puede que no haya un millón de dosis disponibles cada día en los primeros 100 días de la administración”, dijo Plescia.

Otro problema ha sido la falta de dinero: los estados han tenido que iniciar campañas de vacunación con presupuestos esqueléticos a causa de la pandemia. “Los estados deben pagar por crear los sistemas, identificar al personal y capacitarlos, el rastreo de contactos, las campañas de información, todo lo que necesitan para terminar vacunando a una persona”, explicó Jennifer Kates, directora de política global y VIH de KFF. “Tienen que crear un programa de vacunación masiva si precedentes sobre una base inestable”, observó.

El último estímulo para covid, promulgado en diciembre, asignó $9 mil millones en fondos a los CDC para esfuerzos de vacunación. Se supone que la mitad, unos $45 mil millones se destinarán a estados, territorios y reservas indígenas.

Pero cuando la vacunación se amplíe a más grupos, no está claro si las campañas se puedan sostener con ese nivel de financiamiento.

La semana del 11 de enero, Biden lanzó un plan de $1.9 mil millones para abordar los problemas de la economía y covid. Incluye dinero para crear programas nacionales de vacunación y pruebas, pero también para asistencia financiera a individuos, ayuda a gobiernos locales,  extensión del seguro de desempleo y dinero para que las escuelas reabran de manera segura.

Aunque el Congreso tardó casi ocho meses en aprobar el último proyecto de ley de ayuda tras las objeciones republicanas, Biden parece optimista de que logrará que algunos republicanos se unan a su plan. Pero aún no está claro que funcione. También está la cuestión de si el juicio político del presidente saliente Donald Trump se interpondrá en el camino de las prioridades legislativas de Biden.

Además, los estados se han quejado de la falta de orientación e instrucciones confusas sobre a qué grupos se les debe dar prioridad para la vacunación, un tema que la administración Biden deberá abordar.

El 3 de diciembre, los CDC recomendaron que el personal de atención médica, los residentes de centros de atención a largo plazo, las personas de 75 años o más y los trabajadores esenciales de primera línea se vacunaran primero.

Pero el 12 de enero, los CDC cambiaron de rumbo y recomendaron que todas las personas mayores de 65 años debían vacunarse. Biden dijo que seguiría esta recomendación.

El secretario saliente de Salud y Servicios Humanos, Alex Azar, también dijo el 12 de enero que los estados que muevan su suministro de vacunas más rápido tendrán prioridad para recibir más envíos.

Aún no se sabe si los CDC de la administración de Biden se apegarán a esta guía. Los críticos han dicho que podría hacer que la distribución de vacunas sea menos equitativa. En general, asumir el control con una visión sólida y una comunicación clara será clave para aumentar la distribución de vacunas, dijo Hannan.

“Todos deben comprender cuál es el objetivo y cómo va a funcionar”, agregó.

Un desafío para Biden será frenar las expectativas de que la vacuna es todo lo que se necesita para poner fin a la pandemia. En todo el país, hay más casos de covid que nunca y en muchos lugares los funcionarios no pueden controlar la propagación.

Los expertos en salud pública dijeron que Biden debe intensificar los esfuerzos para aumentar las pruebas en todo el país, como ha sugerido que hará al prometer establecer una junta nacional de pruebas de pandemias.

Con el fuerte enfoque en la distribución de vacunas, es importante que esta parte de la ecuación no se pierda.

En este momento, “está en todo el mapa”, dijo Kates de KFF, y agregó que el gobierno federal necesitará tener un claro sentido de las áreas del país en donde se están haciendo las pruebas y en las que no, para “arreglar” esa capacidad de salud pública.

Esta historia fue producida por KHN, que publica California Healthline, un servicio editorialmente independiente de la California Health Care Foundation.

While millions wait for a lifesaving shot, the U.S. death count from covid-19 continues to soar upward with horrifying speed. On Tuesday, the last full day of Donald Trump’s presidency, the death toll reached 400,000 — a once-unthinkable number. More than 100,000 Americans have perished in the pandemic in just the past five weeks.

In the U.S., someone now dies of covid every 26 seconds. And the disease is claiming more American lives each week than any other condition, ahead of heart disease and cancer, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

“It didn’t have to be like this, and it shouldn’t still be like this,” said Kristin Urquiza, whose father, Mark, died of covid in June, as the virus was sweeping through Phoenix.

Urquiza described it as “watching a slow-moving hurricane” tear apart her childhood neighborhood, where many people have no choice but to keep going to work and risking their health.

“I talk to dozens of strangers a day who are going through what I did in June, but the magnitude and the haunting similarities between our stories six months later is really hard,” said Urquiza, who addressed the Democratic National Convention in August. She co-founded Marked By COVID, to organize grieving families and supporters. The group calls for a faster government response and a national memorial for pandemic victims.

Given its large population, the U.S. death rate from covid remains lower than the rate in many other countries. But the death toll of 400,000 now exceeds any other country’s count — close to double what Brazil has recorded, and four times the toll in the United Kingdom.

“It’s very hard to wrap your mind around a number that is so large, particularly when we’ve had 10 months of large numbers assaulting our senses and really, really horrific images coming out of our hospitals and our morgues,” said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of epidemiology at the University of California-San Francisco.

Scientists had long expected that wintertime could plunge the country into the deadliest months yet, but even Bibbins-Domingo wasn’t ready for the sheer pace of deaths, or the scale of the accumulated losses. The mortality burden has fallen heavily on her own state of California, which was averaging fewer than 100 deaths a day for long stretches of the pandemic, but has ranged up to more than 500 in recent days.

She said California followed the science with its handling of the pandemic, yet the devastation unfolding in places like Los Angeles reveals just how fragile any community can be.

“It’s important to understand virology. It’s important to understand epidemiology. But ultimately, what we’ve learned is that human behavior and psychology is a major force in this pandemic,” she said.

The U.S. in mid-January has averaged more than 3,300 deaths a day — well above the most devastating days of the early spring surge, when daily average deaths hovered around 2,000.

“At this point, looking at the numbers, for me the question is: Is there any way we can avoid half a million deaths before the end of February?” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

“I think of how much suffering as a nation we seem to be willing to accept that we have this number of people getting infected and dying every day.”

How Did U.S. Go From 300,000 Deaths to 400,000?

The path to 400,000 deaths was painfully familiar, with patterns of sickness and death repeating themselves from earlier in the pandemic.

A shocking number of people in nursing homes and assisted living facilities continue to die each week — more than 6,000 just in the first week of January.

Deaths linked to long-term care account for more than a third of all covid deaths in the U.S. since the beginning of the pandemic. In a handful of states, long-term care contributed to half the total deaths.

Certain parts of the country have a disproportionately high death rate. Alabama and Arizona, in particular, have experienced high rates, given their populations. The virus continues to kill Black and Indigenous Americans at much higher rates than whites.

The chance of dying of covid remains much higher in rural America than in the urban centers.

People over 65 make up the overwhelming majority of deaths, but Jha said more young people are dying than earlier in the pandemic, simply because the virus is so widespread.

In this newest and grimmest chapter of the pandemic, the virus has preyed upon a public weary of restrictions and rules, and eager to mix with family and friends over the holiday season.

Like many other health workers, Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos at Johns Hopkins Hospital is now witnessing the tragic consequences in his daily rounds.

“My heart breaks, because we could have prevented this,” said Galiatsatos, an assistant professor of medicine who cares for covid patients in the intensive care unit.

“A lot of what we saw during the holiday travel was the inability to reach our loved ones or family members — not like a public service announcement, but one on one, talking to them [about the exposure risks]. … I really felt like we failed.”

Galiatsatos still recalls a grandmother who was transported six hours from her home to his hospital — because there were no beds anywhere closer.

On the phone, he heard her family’s shock at her sudden passing.

“They said, ‘But she was so healthy. She cooked us all Thanksgiving dinner and we had all the family over,’” he said. “They were saying it with sincerity, but that’s probably where she got it.”

Light at the End of a Very Long Tunnel

The enormous loss of life this winter has happened, paradoxically, at a time that many hope marks the start of the final chapter of the pandemic.

A quarter of all covid deaths have happened during the five weeks since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first vaccine.

“The trickle of vaccine is so tragically scant. What we need is more of a river of it,” said Dr. Howard Markel, who directs the University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine.

Markel, who has written about the 1918-19 flu pandemic, said it’s estimated it killed upward of 700,000 Americans.

Of the covid pandemic, he said, “I hope we’re not talking … 600,000 or more.”

At this point, about 3 in 100 people have been vaccinated, placing America ahead of many other countries but behind the optimistic promises made in the early days of the rollout. Given the current pace of vaccination, experts warn, Americans cannot depend solely on the vaccine to prevent a crushing number of additional deaths in the coming months.

UCSF’s Bibbins-Domingo worries that the relief of knowing a vaccine will eventually be widely available — the light at the end of the tunnel — may actually lull millions more Americans into a false sense of safety.

“This tunnel is actually a very long tunnel, and the next few months, as the last few months have been, are going to be very dark times,” she said.

The emergence of more contagious variants of SARS-CoV-2, the covid virus, complicates the picture and makes it all the more imperative that Americans spend the coming months doubling down on the very same tactics — masks and physical distancing — that have kept many people safe so far.

But Jha, of Brown University, says the country now faces a different task from that of the fall, when “big behavioral changes and large economic costs” were required to prevent deaths.

“Right now what is required is getting people vaccinated with vaccines we already have,” he said. “The fact that’s going super slow still is incredibly frustrating.”

It is this dichotomy — the advent of lifesaving vaccines as hospitals are filled with more dying patients than ever before — that makes this moment in the pandemic so confounding.

“I can’t help but feel this immense somberness,” said Kristin Urquiza. “I know that a vaccine isn’t going to make a difference for the people that are in the hospital right now or who will be in the hospital next week or even next month.”

This story is from a reporting partnership with NPR.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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As we settle into the new year, we have two small doses of good news.

First, a new federal rule could help cut through one health care issue. Host Dan Weissmann talked about the rule — which requires hospitals to make public the prices they negotiate with insurers — in a short conversation with his former public-radio colleague, Niala Boodhoo, for the daily-news podcast “Axios Today.”

You’ll find more detail on that rule in this story from reporter Celia Llopis-Jepsen, whose reporting about a $50,000 “air ambulance” ride formed the core of a recent episode about how consumers get squeezed by insurers on one side and providers on the other.

Later in the episode, a listener describes how he used what he learned from “An Arm and a Leg” to head off an insurance nightmare.

Here’s a transcript for this episode.

“An Arm and a Leg” is a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions.

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ST. LOUIS — The public service announcement showed a mother finding her teenage son lifeless, juxtaposed with the sound of a ukulele and a woman singing, “That’s how, how you OD’d on heroin.”

It aired locally during the 2015 Super Bowl but attracted national attention and has been viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube.

“You want to tap into a nerve, an emotional nerve, and controversy and anger,” said Mark Schupp, whose consulting firm created the ad pro bono. “The spot was designed to do that, so we were happy with it.”

But like other ads and PSAs seeking to move the needle on public health, it went only so far.

Marketing experts say public health advertising often falls short because it incites people’s worst fears rather than providing clear steps viewers can take to save lives. They say lessons from opioid messaging can inform campaigns seeking to influence behavior that could help curb the coronavirus pandemic, such as wearing masks, not gathering in big groups and getting a covid-19 vaccine.

The Super Bowl ad was produced and aired by the St. Louis chapter of the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse using $100,000 from an anonymous donor. Then-director Howard Weissman said a top priority for his group was for Missouri to start a prescription drug monitoring program.

Five years later, Missouri remains the only state without a statewide program. And the number of opioid deaths has steadily increased in that time, state data shows, up from 672 in all of 2015 to 716 deaths in just the first six months of 2020.

The national council, now called PreventEd, is one of many nonprofits and government agencies that invest millions in messaging aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic. People who study such advertisements said it’s difficult to measure their impact, but if the metric is the number of overdose deaths, they have not yet succeeded. The country set a record for overdose deaths in 2019 that it was on pace to break in 2020.

“You have to give them a solution, especially in a health context, like with opioids, because similar to with cigarette smoking, if you increase fear and don’t give a solution, they are just going to abuse more because that’s their coping mechanism,” said Punam Anand Keller, a Dartmouth College professor who studies health marketing.

To address public health issues, marketers often use images of diseased lungs to discourage smokers or the bloody aftermath of car crashes to prevent drunken driving. But these can provoke “defensive responses” that may be avoided by giving people ways to take action, said a 2014 International Journal of Psychology review of campaigns that use fear to persuade people.

Missouri’s state health and mental health departments, with the help of federal funds, spent at least $800,000 on advertising in 2019 to curb the opioid epidemic through their Time 2 Act and NoMODeaths campaigns, according to data from advertising agencies and partner organizations.

Mac Curran, a 34-year-old social media influencer, described his struggles with opioid addiction in a number of videos for Time 2 Act, one of which was viewed more than 100,000 times on Facebook. In another recent video, Curran used storytelling to highlight the benefits of getting treatment for his addiction. He talked about strangers cheering for him when he returned to a friend’s streetwear store after getting out of the recovery program, and discussed how he learned coping skills he could use throughout life.

Jay Winsten, a Harvard University scientist who spearheaded the U.S. designated-driver campaign to combat drunken driving, described Curran’s videos as “really excellent because he comes across as genuine and well spoken. People remember stories more than they do someone simply lecturing at them.”

Still, Winsten emphasized the importance of including actionable steps and would like to see Missouri and other groups focus on teaching friends of users “how to intervene and what language to use and not to use.”

Others, including the libertarian Cato Institute, argue that PSAs on drug use just don’t work and point to the history of failed campaigns to discourage teen marijuana use.

Yet agencies keep trying. Missouri’s mental health department and the Missouri Institute of Mental Health at the University of Missouri-St. Louis convened focus groups in 2019 with drug users and their families and captured their words on billboards for the NoMODeaths campaign. One said, “Don’t give up on treatment. It’s worth the work,” and gave a number to text for help with heroin, fentanyl or pill misuse.

In addition to giving information, the goal was “to let people who use drugs know that other people care if they live or die,” said Rachel Winograd, a psychologist who leads the NoMODeaths group aimed at reducing harm from opioid misuse.

She said she understands the argument that PSAs are a waste of money, given that organizations like hers have limited funds and also try to provide housing for those in recovery and naloxone, used to revive people after overdoses.

But, Winograd said, some of the advertisements appeared to work. The organization saw a big increase after the ads ran in the number of people who visited its website or texted a number for information on treatment or obtaining naloxone.

Although federal funding rose for fiscal years 2021 and 2022, Winograd’s team and state officials decided to cut NoMODeaths’ advertising budget in half and instead spend the money on direct services like naloxone, treatment and housing.

Now health agencies are consumed by the coronavirus pandemic and are trying to craft messages that cut through politically charged discourse and get the public to adopt safety measures such as wearing masks, staying physically distanced and getting vaccinated.

Convincing people to wear masks has been difficult because messages have been mixed. Missouri’s health department has tried to depoliticize mask-wearing and get people to view it as a public health solution, said spokesperson Lisa Cox.

But Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has appeared without a mask at public events and has declined to enact a statewide mask mandate. He also said at a Missouri Cattlemen’s Association event in July, “If you want to wear a dang mask, wear a mask.”

Cox would not comment on whether Parson’s approach undermined the state’s public health efforts, but Keller said it did.

Missouri’s messaging about vaccines has been much more straightforward and clear. A website provides facts and answers to common questions as it encourages people to “make an informed choice” on whether to get the shots.

Keller praised the “unemotional, not-fear-arousing” approach to the vaccine messaging issued so far.

“It needs the right messengers: well-known individuals who have high credibility within specific population groups that currently are hesitant about taking the vaccine,” Winsten said.

This time, Parson has been one of those messengers. When he announced the launch of the vaccine website in November, he said in a news release: “Safety is not being sacrificed, and it’s important for Missourians to understand this.”

In spite of the politicization of the virus crisis, Winsten, who serves on the board of advisers of the Ad Council’s $50 million covid vaccine campaign, has “guarded optimism” that enough people will get vaccinated to curb the pandemic.

And he remains hopeful that PSAs could eventually help reduce the number of people who die from opioids.

“Look at the whole anti-smoking movement. That took over two decades,” he said. “These are tough problems. Otherwise, they would be solved already.”

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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California’s telemetry nurses, who specialize in the electronic monitoring of critically ill patients, normally take care of four patients at once. But ever since the state relaxed California’s mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios in mid-December, Nerissa Black has had to keep track of six.

And these six patients are really sick: Many of them are being treated simultaneously for a stroke and covid-19, or a heart attack and covid. With more patients than usual needing more complex care, Black said she’s worried she’ll miss something or make a mistake.

“We are given 50% more patients and we’re expected to do 50% more things with the same amount of time,” said Black, who has worked at the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia, California, for seven years. “I go home and I feel like I could have done more. I don’t feel like I’m giving the care to my patients like a human being deserves.”

As covid patients continue to flood California emergency rooms, hospitals are increasingly desperate to find enough staffers to care for them all. The state is asking nurses to tend to more patients simultaneously than they typically would, watering down what many nurses and their unions consider their most sacrosanct job protection: a law existing only in California that puts legal restrictions on the nurse-to-patient ratio.

“We need to temporarily — very short-term, temporarily — look a little bit differently in terms of our staffing needs,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, after he quietly allowed hospitals to adjust their nurse-to-patient ratios on Dec. 11. Usually, California law requires a hospital to first get approval from the state before tinkering with those ratios; Newsom’s move gave hospitals presumptive approval to work outside the ratio rules immediately.

Since then, 188 hospitals, mainly in Southern California, have been operating under the new pandemic ratios: They can require ICU nurses to care for three patients instead of two. Emergency room and telemetry nurses may now be asked to care for six patients instead of four. Medical-surgical nurses are looking after seven patients instead of five.

Nurses have taken to the streets in protest, holding physically distanced demonstrations across the state, shouting and carrying posters that read: “Ratios Save Lives.” The union, the California Nurses Association, says the staffing shortage is a result of bad hospital management, of taking a reactive approach to staffing rather than proactive — laying nurses off over the summer, then not hiring or training enough for winter.

“What we’re seeing in these hospitals is their just-in-time response to a pandemic that they never prepared for — just-in-time staffing, just-in-time resources, not staffing up, calling nurses in on a shift at the very last minute — to boost profits,” said Stephanie Roberson, government relations director for the California Nurses Association. “And we’re seeing how nurses are being stretched even thinner.”

But hospitals say this is an unprecedented crisis that has spiraled beyond their control. In the current surge, four times as many Californians are testing positive for the coronavirus compared with the summer’s peak. As many as 7,000 new patients could soon be coming to California hospitals every day, according to Carmela Coyle, who heads the California Hospital Association.

“This is catastrophic and we cannot dodge this math,” she said. “We are simply out of nurses, out of doctors, out of respiratory therapists.”

The state has asked the federal government for staff, including 200 medical personnel from the Department of Defense, and it’s tried to reactivate the California Health Corps, an initiative to recruit retired health workers to come back to work. But that has yielded few people with the qualifications needed to care for hospitalized covid patients.

Hiring contract nurses from temporary staffing agencies or other states is all but impossible right now, Coyle said.

“Because California surged early during the summer and other parts of the United States then surged afterward,” she said, “those travel nurses are taken.“

The next step for hospitals is to try “team nursing,” Coyle said — pulling nurses from other departments, like the operating room, for example, and partnering them with experienced critical care nurses to help care for covid patients.

Joanne Spetz, an economics professor who studies health care workforce issues at the University of California-San Francisco, said hospitals should have started training nurses for team care over the summer, in anticipation of a winter surge, but they didn’t, either because of costs — hospitals lost a lot of revenue from canceled elective surgeries that could have paid for that training — or because of excessive optimism.

“California was doing so well,” she said. “It was easy for all of us to believe that we kind of got it under control, and I think there was a lot of belief that we would be able to maintain that.”

The California Nurses Association has good reason to be defensive regarding the integrity of the patient-ratio law, Spetz said. It took 10 years of lobbying and activism before the bill passed the state legislature in 1999, then several more years to overcome multiple court challenges, including one from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“I’m always kicking their butt, that’s why they don’t like me,” Schwarzenegger famously said of nurses, drawing broad ire from the nurses union and its allies.

Nurses prevailed in the court of public opinion and in law; rules that put a legal cap on the number of patients per nurse finally took effect in 2004. But the long battle made nurses fiercely protective of their win. They’ve even accused hospitals of using the pandemic to try to roll back ratios for good.

“This is the exercise of disaster capitalism at its finest, where [hospital administrators] are completely maximizing their opportunity to take advantage of this crisis,” Roberson said.

Hospitals deny they want to change the ratio law permanently, and Spetz said it’s unlikely they’d succeed if they tried. The public can see that nurses are overworked and burned out by the pandemic, she said, so there would be little support for cutting back their job protections once it’s over.

“To go in and say, ‘Oh, you clearly did so well without ratios when we let you waive them, so let’s just eliminate them entirely,’ I think, would be just adding insult to moral injury,” Spetz said.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.