Tag: iab-cold and flu

8-year-old migrant girl who died in US Border Patrol custody was treated for flu several days before her death, authorities say | CNN

CNN
—

An 8-year-old migrant girl who died in the custody of US immigration authorities last week was treated for flu-like symptoms for several days prior to her death at a Texas hospital, according to authorities.

The girl, Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, a citizen of Panama, died Wednesday in a Harlingen, Texas, hospital, just eight days after her family was taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection in Brownsville, Texas, the agency said in a news release Sunday. Members of her family, including her parents and two siblings, are all citizens of Honduras, says the news release.

According to CBP records, Reyes was medically assessed on May 10 and did not complain of any illnesses or injuries at the time. However, her family did report a medical history, including chronic conditions of sickle cell anemia and heart disease, according to the news release.

It was not until four days later, on May 14, that Reyes’ mother took her to a treatment area after the girl complained of abdominal pain, nasal congestion and a cough, the release says. At the time, Reyes tested positive for Influenza A and was given several medications, including Tamiflu and Zofran. CBP says she was also given acetaminophen and ibuprofen. She had a temperature of 101.8 degrees, according to the release.

The girl and her family were then taken to the US Border Patrol Station in Harlingen, per agency protocols, CBP said. The Harlingen station is “designated for cases requiring medical isolation for individuals diagnosed with or closely exposed to communicable diseases,” CBP said in the release.

The girl was again assessed by medical personnel after she and her family arrived in Harlingen on May 14. She was given medication for three days, the agency said.

CBP said medical records show Reyes’ mother brought her to the Harlingen medical unit three times on Wednesday. During the first visit, the girl had complained of vomiting, was given Zofran and instructed to hydrate and return as needed.

During the second visit, Reyes complained of stomach pains, according to the release. CBP medical personnel wrote in their records that she was stable and instructed her mother to follow up if needed, the release said.

Reyes’ mother brought her daughter to the medical unit for the third time around 1:55 p.m. CT, according to the release. She was carrying her daughter, who seemed to be having a seizure and then became unresponsive. Medical personnel gave the girl CPR and called for emergency medical help, CBP said.

Emergency medical personnel took the girl and her mother to the Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen. Reyes was pronounced dead less than an hour later, at 2:50 p.m. CT, the release said.

An autopsy was performed on the girl by the Cameron County Medical Examiner’s office Friday but an exact cause and manner of death is still pending, according to the release.

In a statement released Sunday, CBP acting commissioner Troy Miller said “we are deeply saddened by the tragic death” and announced a series of actions intended to “reinforce existing policies and continue to ensure appropriate care for all medically fragile individuals.”

The agency has reviewed and will continue reviewing cases of “all known medically fragile individuals” in custody and, along with the agency’s medical services contractor, will review services rendered to in-custody individuals, “especially those who are medically at-risk,” Miller says in the statement.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s Chief Medical Officer will immediately initiate a review of medical care practices at CBP facilities and ensure the deployment of additional medical personnel as needed,” says Miller.

He added that CBP would make the results of the investigation public.

The girl’s parents have been released from immigration custody and will be headed to New York to meet up with family, the Honduran Foreign Ministry previously told CNN.

Once in New York, the family plans to attend their immigration court hearings and request asylum, according to the ministry.

The Honduran Foreign Ministry is working to help the Reyes family with the transfer of their daughter’s body to New York, where she will likely be buried, the ministry said.

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May 21, 2023
Chinese city proposes lockdowns for flu — and faces a backlash | CNN

Hong Kong
CNN
—

A Chinese city has sparked a backlash on social media after saying it would consider the use of lockdowns in the event of an influenza outbreak.

The city of Xi’an – a tourism hotspot in Shaanxi province that is home to the famous terracotta warriors – revealed an emergency response plan this week that would enable it to shut schools, businesses and “other crowded places” in the event of a severe flu epidemic.

That prompted a mixture of anxiety and anger on China’s social media websites among many users who said the plan sounded uncomfortably similar to some of the strict zero-Covid measures China had implemented throughout the pandemic and which have only recently been abandoned.

“Vaccinate the public rather than using such time to create a sense of panic,” one user wrote on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

“How will people not panic given that Xi’an’s proposal to suspend work and business activities were issued without clear instruction on the national level to classify the disease?” asked another.

While cases of Covid in China are falling, there has been a spike in flu cases across the country and some pharmacies are struggling to meet demand for flu remedies.

However, Xi’an’s emergency response plan will not necessarily be used. Rather, it outlines how the city of almost 13 million people would respond to any future outbreak based on four levels of severity.

At the first and highest level, it says, “the city can lock down infected areas, carry out traffic quarantines and suspend production and business activities. Shopping malls, theaters, libraries, museums, tourist attractions and other crowded places will also be closed.”

“At this emergency level, schools and nurseries at all levels would be shut down and be made responsible for tracking students’ and infants’ health conditions.”

The backlash comes as the central government in Beijing has emphasized the need to open the country back up following the removal of all Covid restrictions in January.

Throughout the pandemic, China had enforced some of the world’s most severe Covid restrictions, including lockdowns that stretched into months in some cities. It was also one of the last countries in the world to end measures such as mass testing and strict border quarantine periods, even amid growing evidence of the damage being done to its economy.

Xi’an itself was subject to a draconian lockdown between December 2021 and January 2022, with 13 million residents confined to their homes for weeks on end – and many left short of food and other essential supplies. Access to medical services was also affected. In an incident that shocked and angered the nation, a heavily pregnant woman was turned away from a hospital on New Year’s Day because she didn’t have a valid Covid-19 test, and suffered a miscarriage after she was finally admitted two hours later.

Shortly before China removed its pandemic era restrictions the country had been rocked by a series of demonstrations against its zero-Covid policy.

Memories of being confined to their homes and of panic buying that in some areas led to food shortages remain fresh in people’s minds and the idea of a return to Covid-style measures appears to have hit a nerve.

However, some voices called for calm.

Epidemiologist Ben Cowling, from the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, said he saw the rationale of the move.

“I think it’s quite rational to make contingency plans. I wouldn’t expect a lockdown to be needed for flu, but presumably there are different response levels,” he said.

One user on Weibo expressed a similar sentiment: “It is merely the revelation of a proposal, not putting it in place. It is quite normal to take precautions given this wave of flu is coming at us very strong.”

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March 10, 2023
FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

CNN
—

A panel of independent experts that advises the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions voted unanimously Thursday to update all Covid-19 vaccines so they contain the same ingredients as the two-strain shots that are now used as booster doses.

The vote means young children and others who haven’t been vaccinated may soon be eligible to receive two-strain vaccines that more closely match the circulating viruses as their primary series.

The FDA must sign off on the committee’s recommendation, which it is likely to do, before it goes into effect.

Currently, the US offers two types of Covid-19 vaccines. The first shots people get – also called the primary series – contain a single set of instructions that teach the immune system to fight off the original version of the virus, which emerged in 2019.

This index strain is no longer circulating. It was overrun months ago by an ever-evolving parade of new variants.

Last year, in consultation with its advisers, the FDA decided that it was time to update the vaccines. These two-strain, or bivalent, shots contain two sets of instructions; one set reminds the immune system about the original version of the coronavirus, and the second set teaches the immune system to recognize and fight off Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which emerged in the US last year.

People who have had their primary series – nearly 70% of all Americans – were advised to get the new two-strain booster late last year in an effort to upgrade their protection against the latest variants.

The advisory committee heard testimony and data suggesting that the complexity of having two types of Covid-19 vaccines and schedules for different age groups may be one of the reasons for low vaccine uptake in the US.

Currently, only about two-thirds of Americans have had the full primary series of shots. Only 15% of the population has gotten an updated bivalent booster.

Data presented to the committee shows that Covid-19 hospitalizations have been rising for children under the age of 2 over the past year, as Omicron and its many subvariants have circulated. Only 5% of this age group, which is eligible for Covid-19 vaccination at 6 months of age, has been fully vaccinated. Ninety percent of children under the age of 4 are still unvaccinated.

“The most concerning data point that I saw this whole day was that extremely low vaccination coverage in 6 months to 2 years of age and also 2 years to 4 years of age,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders. “We have to do much, much better.”

Cohn says that having a single vaccine against Covid-19 in the US for both primary and booster doses would go a long way toward making the process less complicated and would help get more children vaccinated.

Others feel that convenience is important but also stressed that data supported the switch.

“This isn’t only a convenience thing, to increase the number of people who are vaccinated, which I agree with my colleagues is extremely important for all the evidence that was related, but I also think moving towards the strains that are circulating is very important, so I would also say the science supports this move,” said Dr. Hayley Gans, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

Many others on the committee were similarly satisfied after seeing new data on the vaccine effectiveness of the bivalent boosters, which are cutting the risk of getting sick, being hospitalized or dying from a Covid-19 infection.

“I’m totally convinced that the bivalent vaccine is beneficial as a primary series and as a booster series. Furthermore, the updated vaccine safety data are really encouraging so far,” said Dr. David Kim, director of the the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Program, in public discussion after the vote.

Thursday’s vote is part of a larger plan by the FDA to simplify and improve the way Covid-19 vaccines are given in the US.

The agency has proposed a plan to convene its vaccine advisers – called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC – each year in May or June to assess whether the instructions in the Covid-19 vaccines should be changed to more closely match circulating strains of the virus.

The time frame was chosen to give manufacturers about three months to redesign their shots and get new doses to pharmacies in time for fall.

“The object, of course – before anyone says anything – is not to chase variants. None of us think that’s realistic,” said Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products in the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

“But I think our experience so far, with the bivalent vaccines that we have, does indicate that we can continue to make improvements to the vaccine, and that would be the goal of these meetings,” Weir said.

In discussions after the vote, committee members were supportive of this plan but pointed out many of the things we still don’t understand about Covid-19 and vaccination that are likely to complicate the task of updating the vaccines.

For example, we now seem to have Covid-19 surges in the summer as well as the winter, noted Dr. Michael Nelson, an allergist and immunologist at the University of Virginia. Are the surges related? And if so, is fall the best time to being a vaccination campaign?

The CDC’s Dr. Jefferson Jones said that with only three years of experience with the virus, it’s really too early to understand its seasonality.

Other important questions related to the durability of the mRNA vaccines and whether other platforms might offer longer protection.

“We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. “It’s been articulated in every one of these meetings despite how good these vaccines are. We need better vaccines.”

The committee also encouraged both government and industry scientists to provide a fuller picture of how vaccination and infection affect immunity.

One of the main ways researchers measure the effectiveness of the vaccines is by looking at how much they increase front-line defenders called neutralizing antibodies.

Neutralizing antibodies are like firefighters that rush to the scene of an infection to contain it and put it out. They’re great in a crisis, but they tend to diminish in numbers over time if they’re not needed. Other components of the immune system like B-cells and T-cells hang on to the memory of a virus and stand ready to respond if the body encounters it again.

Scientists don’t understand much about how well Covid-19 vaccination boosts these responses and how long that protection lasts.

Another puzzle will be how to pick the strains that are in the vaccines.

The process of selecting strains for influenza vaccines is a global effort that relies on surveillance data from other countries. This works because influenza strains tend to become dominant and sweep around the world. But Covid-19 strains haven’t worked in quite the same way. Some that have driven large waves in other countries have barely made it into the US variant mix.

“Going forward, it is still challenging. Variants don’t sweep across the world quite as uniform, like they seem to with influenza,” the FDA’s Weir said. “But our primary responsibility is what’s best for the US market, and that’s where our focus will be.”

Eventually, the FDA hopes that Americans would be able to get an updated Covid-19 shot once a year, the same way they do for the flu. People who are unlikely to have an adequate response to a single dose of the vaccine – such as the elderly or those with a weakened immune system – may need more doses, as would people who are getting Covid-19 vaccines for the first time.

At Thursday’s meeting, the advisory committee also heard more about a safety signal flagged by a government surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

The CDC and the FDA reported January 13 that this system, which relies on health records from a network of large hospital systems in the US, had detected a potential safety issue with Pfizer’s bivalent boosters.

In this database, people 65 and older who got a Pfizer bivalent booster were slightly more likely to have a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of their vaccination than people who had gotten a bivalent booster but were 22 to 42 days after their shot.

After a thorough review of other vaccine safety data in the US and in other countries that use Pfizer bivalent boosters, the agencies concluded that the stroke risk was probably a statistical fluke and said no changes to vaccination schedules were recommended.

At Thursday’s meeting, Dr. Nicola Klein, a senior research scientist with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, explained how they found the signal.

The researchers compared people who’d gotten a vaccine within the past three weeks against people who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots because this helps eliminate bias in the data.

When they looked to see how many people had strokes around the time of their vaccination, they found an imbalance in the data.

Of 550,000 people over 65 who’d received a Pfizer bivalent booster, 130 had a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of vaccination, compared with 92 people in the group farther out from their shots.

The researchers spotted the signal the week of November 27, and it continued for about seven weeks. The signal has diminished over time, falling from an almost two-fold risk in November to a 47% risk in early January, Klein said. In the past few days, it hasn’t been showing up at all.

Klein said they didn’t see the signal in any of the other age groups or with the group that got Moderna boosters. They also didn’t see a difference when they compared Pfizer-boosted seniors with those who were eligible for a bivalent booster but hadn’t gotten one.

Further analyses have suggested that the signal might be happening not because people who are within three weeks of a Pfizer booster are having more strokes, but because people who are within 22 to 42 days of their Pfizer boosters are actually having fewer strokes.

Overall, Klein said, they were seeing fewer strokes than expected in this population over that period of time, suggesting a statistical fluke.

Another interesting thing that popped out of this data, however, was a possible association between strokes and high-dose flu vaccination. Seniors who got both shots on the same day and were within three weeks of those shots had twice the rate of stroke compared with those who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots.

What’s more, Klein said, the researchers didn’t see the same association between stroke and time since vaccination in people who didn’t get their flu vaccine on the same day.

The total number of strokes in the population of people who got flu shots and Covid-19 boosters on the same day is small, however, which makes the association a shaky one.

“I don’t think that the evidence are sufficient to conclude that there’s an association there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

Nonetheless, Richard Forshee, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance, said the FDA is planning to look at these safety questions further using data collected by Medicare.

The FDA confirmed that the agency is taking a closer look.

“The purpose of the study is 1) to evaluate the preliminary ischemic stroke signal reported by CDC using an independent data set and more robust epidemiological methods; and 2) to evaluate whether there is an elevated risk of ischemic stroke with the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine if it is given on the same day as a high-dose or adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccine,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

The FDA did not give a time frame for when these studies might have results.

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January 26, 2023
Japan considers downgrading Covid-19 to same level as seasonal flu | CNN

Tokyo
CNN
—

Japan will consider downgrading Covid-19 to the same category as seasonal influenza this spring, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Friday.

Kishida said he had instructed Health Ministry officials to discuss the move and his administration would also review rules on face masks and other pandemic measures.

“In order to further advance the efforts of ‘living with Corona’ and restore Japan to a state of normalcy, we will transition the various policies and measures to date in phases,” Kishida said.

While daily Covid-19 cases in Japan have declined in recent weeks, the country still faces around 100,000 new infections a day.

Covid-19 is categorized as a Class 2 disease, the same status as tuberculosis and avian influenza, according to Japan’s Health Ministry. Officials will now discuss reclassifying it to Class 5 – the lowest rank, which includes seasonal flu.

Japan fully reopened its borders to overseas visitors last October after more than two years of pandemic restrictions, ending one of the world’s strictest border controls.

Influenza – or the common flu – and Covid-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses with simlar symptoms, but they are caused by different viruses and require testing to confirm a diagnosis, the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website.

According to the CDC, the risk of death or hospitalization from Covid-19 is greatly reduced for most people due to high levels of vaccination and population immunity from previous infections.

However, the World Health Organization still lists the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic, and reiterated in its latest update a recommendation for people to wear masks following recent exposure or close contact with Covid-19, and for “anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space” to do the same.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on governments last week to continue sharing the sequencing data of the coronavirus, as it remained vital to detect and track the emergence and spread of new variants.

“It’s understandable that countries cannot maintain the same levels of testing and sequencing they had during the Omicron peak. At the same time, the world cannot close its eyes and hope this virus will go away. It won’t,” he said.

The news came as South Korea announced it will lift its mask mandate for most indoor areas, with exceptions for public transport and health facilities. The changes will take effect on January 30, South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Friday.

The measure will be lifted after the Lunar New Year holiday, when a large number of people are expected to travel, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

New Covid-19 cases, severe cases and related deaths are all declining and the country’s medical response capacity remains stable, KDCA added.

The agency has strongly recommended people wear masks if they have Covid-19 related symptoms, belong to a high-risk group, have been in contact recently with a positive case, or are in a crowded space.

The prime minister said the easing of the mandate could result in a temporary surge of new cases and urged health authorities to stay vigilant.

South Korea has scrapped most of its pandemic restrictions and eased its outdoor mask mandate in May 2022. It still requires people who test positive to undergo seven days of home isolation.

The country has also restricted travel from mainland China and implemented testing requirements for people arriving from China, Hong Kong and Macau following Beijing’s easing of Covid restrictions.

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January 19, 2023
Grizzly bears test positive for bird flu in Montana, officials say | CNN

CNN
—

Three grizzly bears were euthanized in Montana after they became ill and tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus, according to the state’s Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

These were the first documented cases of bird flu in a grizzly in Montana and the first nationwide for this outbreak of HPAI, according to Dr. Jennifer Ramsey, the department’s wildlife veterinarian.

The juvenile bears were in three separate locations in the western part of the state during the fall, the Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks said in a statement.

The bears “were observed to be in poor condition and exhibited disorientation and partial blindness, among other neurological issues,” the statement said. “They were euthanized due to their sickness and poor condition.”

Avian influenza – commonly called bird flu – is a naturally occurring virus that spreads quickly in birds. There were documented cases of HPAI in a skunk and a fox in Montana last year, and the virus has been seen in raccoons, black bears and a coyote in other states and countries, according to the Montana agency.

“The virus is spread from one bird to another,” Dr. Ramsey told CNN via email. “These mammals likely got infected from consuming carcasses of HPAI infected birds.”

“Fortunately, unlike avian cases, generally small numbers of mammal cases have been reported in North America,” Ramsey said. “For now, we are continuing to test any bears that demonstrate neurologic symptoms or for which a cause of death is unknown.”

While finding three grizzlies with bird flu in a short period of time may raise concerns, Ramsey said it may well be that there have been more cases that haven’t been detected.

“When wildlife mortalities occur in such small numbers or individuals, and in species like skunks, foxes and bears that don’t spend a lot of time in situations where they are highly visible to the public, they can be hard to detect,” the wildlife veterinarian said.

“When you get that first detection you tend to start looking harder, and you’re more likely to find new cases,” she said. “When a large number of birds are found dead on a body of water, it gets noticed and reported… when someone sees a dead skunk, they may think nothing of it and not report it.”

While it’s unknown just how prevalent the virus is in wild birds, “we know that the virus is active basically across the entire state due to the wide distribution of cases of HPAI mortality in some species of wild birds,” Ramsey said.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in November the country was approaching “a record number of birds affected compared to previous bird flu outbreaks,” with more than 49 million birds in 46 states dying or being killed due to exposure to infected birds.

Human infections with bird flu are rare but are possible, “usually after close contact with infected birds. The current risk to the general public from bird flu viruses is low,” the CDC says on its website.

The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks is asking people to report any birds or animals acting “unusual or unexplained cases of sickness and/or death.”

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January 18, 2023
Parents are not OK after three years of Covid and a brutal winter of children’s respiratory illness | CNN
CNN
—

With children back in school and daycare after the holidays, weary parents fear what illness awaits them next during this brutal respiratory virus season.

Since October, RSV, a respiratory virus which often is most severe in young children and older adults, hit early and cases started rising quickly. Cases of influenza started rising soon after, all while Covid-19 continued to spread, with new variants surfacing.

The CDC estimates:
At least 24 million illnesses and 16,000 deaths have occurred due to the flu this season;

About 15% of the US population lives in a county with a “high” community level of Covid-19;

There were about 14 RSV hospitalizations for every 100,000 children under 5 in the latest week of complete data – about eight times higher than the overall hospitalization rate.
CNN spoke to parents across the country about the challenges this flu season. They described canceling Christmas, missing trips home to see family and pulling their children out of daycare to keep them safe from illness.

Here are some of their stories, as told in their own words. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Michaela Riley from Issaquah, Washington

I am a single mom living in the suburbs of Seattle. I work for one of the major corporations here. On the outside, I look successful. I have senior in my title, I consistently get promotions and recognition. On the inside, I am breaking from stress related to illness, never getting a real vacation and now the inability to pay for my basic needs.

I had to work through the holidays, and I had my kids. My parents were going to watch them. Then they got norovirus, which also canceled Christmas. Then my daughter’s father got some horrible flu, so my backup plan for Christmas got canceled. We still hadn’t celebrated Christmas until January 7 because everyone was healing.

I have 4-year-old and 11-year-old daughters. Basically, all November one of us was sick. My kids got RSV and were so sick for 14 days. After that, I got it. I had no vacation time, so I had to work from home with them. It was a very long, trying time.

As a single parent, I’ve always been focused on keeping all the balls in the air. But now it is so much harder that what I’m actually doing is making decisions on which ball to drop, just to keep myself going.

I have used every single vacation day on either my children being sick, me being sick or me having to take one mental health day because I was totally overwhelmed since the beginning of quarantine. I was supposed to go camping last year with the family. I got Covid for the fourth time and had to cancel. I’m going a little bonkers.

The group I work with has been so supportive of me and understanding of my situation. They honestly helped me during the worst times.

I have this hashtag for 2023: #BeFree23. Instead of focusing on the struggle, I focus on what’s working in my life. I feel better about 2023. I don’t think anything’s going to change, but changing my mindset is the one thing I have control over.

Jason Hecht from Ann Arbor, Michigan

I am a doctor who works in critical care with a wife who works in primary care. Not only are we struggling on the health care worker side with the massive demands of this season but also struggling far more at home.

The last month or two have probably been the most mentally and emotionally taxing I’ve ever had in my life. We have a 2-year-old and a 3-month-old. It was our youngest who was sick about a month ago and ended up in the ICU on the ventilator with RSV.

At the time, we had a healthy, thriving 2-month-old without an issue in the world. To see him so quickly knocked down and be to the point of almost dying in the intensive care unit was very sobering for my wife and I. Seeing your baby that sick – that part alone has been very emotionally draining.

I was all too aware of how severe his illness was. It was difficult to play the role of father, husband and caretaker because the pull was so strong to go into health care provider mode.

We had to completely upend our life, pull both kids out of daycare. We’re still struggling to find a reliable source of child care that’s going to be safe for both of them, including our now vulnerable son. We’re still paying for both kids’ daycare spots, even though they aren’t going, because daycare waitlists are so long. As parents and health care workers, we are not coping well.

We’ve used six or seven weeks of PTO total so far since this happened in November. This was difficult, too, with my wife coming off maternity leave. Her maternity leave has been mostly unpaid, so that was already three months we were going without her paycheck. I don’t have any paternity leave.

I am very passionate about what I do, and I love being able to help people when they’re at their worst in the ICU. It’s been difficult to have to put all that aside to prioritize only being a parent right now.

Adriana from Warwick, Rhode Island (She asked that her last name not be used)

The only reason I waited only two hours in the ER is because my son stopped breathing. Everyone rushed to take care of him. His oxygen levels were at 73. My youngest caught RSV at 7 weeks old.

My soul left my body when I was in the hospital. I saw there was a respiratory therapist, a pediatrician and two nurses, that they lay down my baby and they started suctioning all the mucus because he was so stuffy, he couldn’t breathe. They put him on oxygen.

I couldn’t believe how lucky we were that he responded to the treatment as fast as he did.

Now, I always carry a little oximeter with me. If he gets stuffy or anything like that, I put that on his finger. That’s part of my diaper bag.

Between my son being hospitalized for one night and the two kids’ deductibles and co-payments, we are $3,000 in debt, just from September until today. He was given just two doses of Tylenol at the hospital and that was almost $300.

Every time I call the pediatrician’s office, they pretty much triage us over the phone to see if the child is sick enough to grant a visit because of how slammed they are. I have been constantly redialing for several minutes just to get through. When you go into the office, you can see they’re all very tired.

I think that anything that has to do with kids lately in the country is being overlooked. There’s still the formula shortage. A lot of parents like me, we’re still struggling to find the right formula. I drive all around Rhode Island to find it, and I’m lucky if I can get two cans. My baby is allergic to cow milk protein, so it’s not like I can just get him any formula.

We usually fly back home for the holidays – I’m from Puerto Rico. But this year we just stayed home. It was a bummer for my oldest because he’s used to spending the holidays with the grandparents.

Mahbubur Rahman from Bonney Lake, Washington

In the last three months, we got five colds, four ear infections, visited urgent care 10 times and the emergency room four times, once while my kid was sick with RSV. In the last two years, my child had a cold only once.

This is our first child. He’s a Covid child – he’s not exposed to anywhere because we stayed at home for the last two years. When we started sending him to preschool then this started happening, all things are coming together: face the fear of Covid, viruses like the flu and then, RSV.

My child had a febrile seizure. His temperature cannot go past 102 and we need to continuously use Tylenol and ibuprofen just to control it. This is happening like every other week. We prepared our car with emergency things for if we need to stay at the hospital. We always pack our bag and put it in our car – like it still is there.

I am working from home and my wife is not working. Still, we feel like we are exhausted. In the last two months, I think I did like 50% of the work that I usually do. When my son and wife had RSV, my manager actually just told me to manage time whenever I can work, and it does not need to be 9 to 5.

For the holidays, we had a plan to go back our country, Bangladesh, but we had to cancel the trip. We did not visit our home the last three years. I did in 2019 before Covid and never went back because my wife was pregnant and then my child was born.

I hope that this will go away, and everything will be better this year. But the fear and the emotions, I think will not go away pretty soon.

Stephanie Archinas-Murphin from Lakewood, California

My 3-year-old daughter started preschool in September and sure enough she got three viruses – RSV, rhinovirus and pneumonia – all at the same time. She spent four days at the hospital, and it was hell watching her going through it.

It’s very heartbreaking to just have her come out and experience the world. And now all these things are happening with her getting sick. We want to have a different experience for her.

We pretty much got everything. My older daughter got the flu, so did my husband and myself. We’ve been on this never-ending journey since October.

When my youngest was ill, she had to be out for three weeks. My husband was out for two weeks just to be able to take care of her. But when we got hit by the flu after Thanksgiving, my husband didn’t have any time off left. I have a private practice and don’t get PTO, but I had to take the brunt and cancel my clients. That was a dent in our income because I didn’t have any pay. Thankfully, I have some savings, so that helped a lot.

When I was low on Motrin and my daughter Morgan had the flu, I happened to post it on Instagram. My relative asked if I want some and even dropped off Motrin for me and drove from almost 40 miles away. It was so heartwarming to know that there are people out there who are looking out for me.

I’m all about taking it one day at a time. I don’t want to overwhelm myself. I’m not going to stop planning or going out, but I’m being mindful that things may change.
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January 15, 2023
Why eggs have been so expensive this year | CNN Business

New York
CNN Business
—

Several grocery items have gotten more expensive this year. But nothing comes close to the rise in egg prices.

In the year through November, not adjusted for seasonal swings, egg prices jumped 49%, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since early this year, a deadly avian flu has been reducing poultry flocks — specifically turkeys and egg-laying hens. That’s one reason for the unrelenting increase in prices. But the situation has been exacerbated by elevated feed and energy costs for producers, in addition to high demand in the supermarket.

Experts think that the peak has passed, but until these conditions improve, expect to pay more for eggs in the grocery store.

Avian flu has been a problem in the US for several months now, but in recent weeks wholesale prices have been hitting records.

As of last week, “prices have been escalating for nine consecutive weeks… setting new record highs on a daily basis since the week of Thanksgiving,” said Karyn Rispoli, editor of the Egg Price Current for Urner Barry, which offers food market data.

On Friday, Midwest large eggs, the benchmark for eggs sold in their shells, hit $5.46 per dozen, Rispoli said, citing Urner Barry’s data. This time last year, Urner Berry’s data shows, that price was around $1.70.

One reason for the increase? Not enough supply.

“There’s simply not been enough production to support the incredibly strong retail demand we’ve seen this year,” Rispoli said. Supply has been constrained by the deadly bird flu.

The current outbreak of Highly-Pathogenic Avian Influenza started in the US around February, and has persisted throughout the year. The last major bird flu outbreak in the United States was in 2015. But that one was contained by June of that year, noted Brian Earnest, lead economist for animal protein in CoBank.

“This year, we’ve continued to see flock depopulations throughout the entire year, and there’s an expectation that we’ll continue to see it into 2023,” he said, noting that he expects “we’re going to see a tight supply situation and elevated pricing environment moving forward.”

About 60 million birds are gone because of the disease so far, according to the USDA. Of those, about 43 million are egg-laying hens, according to USDA data provided by the American Egg Board, a farmer-funded group which markets eggs.

Still, farmers have been able to moderate the losses. “Our producers learned a lot of hard lessons from 2015,” said Emily Metz, CEO of the American Egg Board. Some farmers have been able to repopulate their flocks, decreasing the net impact on flock sizes and egg supplies. As of early December, there were about 308 million hens laying eggs for consumption, down from about 328 million in December 2021, according to the USDA.

The supply squeeze isn’t the only thing contributing to higher egg prices, said Metz. Higher fuel, feed and other producer cost are also driving up wholesale prices, she said. And then there’s that high demand for eggs, which spikes this time of year.

People buy more eggs around the holidays, when they’re baking and cooking more, and eating breakfast at home more often.

Wholesale prices tend to go up in the winter because of those habits, noted Earnest. That has “brought about a very strong market condition.”

Year-round demand for eggs has also also been strong.

Even while prices have soared, sales of eggs have only ticked down about 2% by unit in retail in the year through December 4th, according to data from IRI, a market research firm.

Shoppers have been accepting high prices at the grocery store as they pull back on restaurant visits. And even though eggs have gotten more expensive, they still cost less than other proteins.

As that peak holiday demand passes, wholesale prices are expected to fall.

“Based on current trade values and market conditions, it appears that the market may have finally reached its peak,” said Rispoli. Friday’s wholesale prices were the same as Thursday’s, the first time pricing held steady since October, she said.

“Several suppliers have reported to us… that they are seeing their orders slow,” in the week leading up to Christmas, she added. By then, “most grocers have pulled in whatever inventory they’ll need for the holidays.”

It might take another three to six months for prices to moderate in retail, said KK Davey, president of thought leadership at IRI and NPD, and even longer for prices to come down to what they were last year.

“It may take some more time,” he said.

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December 27, 2022