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Tag: infants and toddlers

  • Fisher-Price reminds consumers of 2019 recall of Rock ‘n Play Sleepers after more deaths | CNN Business

    Fisher-Price reminds consumers of 2019 recall of Rock ‘n Play Sleepers after more deaths | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Fisher-Price has reannounced its 2019 recall of the Rock ‘n Play Sleepers on Monday after at least eight infant deaths occurred after the initial recall, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

    “On April 12, 2019, at the time the original recall was announced, over 30 fatalities were reported to have occurred in the Rock ‘n Play Sleepers after the infants rolled from their back to their stomach or side while unrestrained, or under other circumstances,” the commission said in a statement. “Since the recall, approximately 70 additional fatalities have been reported, which includes at least 8 fatalities that were reported to have occurred after the initial recall announcement.”

    “Approximately 100 deaths have reportedly occurred while infants were in the products,” the CPSC indicated. “Fisher-Price notes that in some of the reports, it has been unable to confirm the circumstances of the incidents or that the product was a Rock ‘n Play Sleeper.”

    The CPSC indicated that “consumers should stop using the Rock ‘n Play immediately and contact Fisher-Price for a refund or voucher. It is illegal to sell or distribute the recalled sleepers.”

    The initial 2019 recall affected about 4.7 million sleepers. The sleepers were sold at stores such as Walmart, Target and Amazon from September 2009 to April 2019.

    At the time of the initial recall, Chuck Scothon, general manager at Fisher-Price, said the company considered the recall the “best course of action” and would continue to stand by the safety of all its products.

    “With these actions, we want parents around the world to know that safety will always be a cornerstone of our mission, that we are committed to these values, and will continue to prioritize the health, safety and well-being of the infants and preschoolers who utilize our products,” Scothon said during the initial recall.

    – CNN’s Nicole Chavez contributed to this report

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  • Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside and West reach tentative agreement as more than 7,000 nurses still due to strike | CNN Business

    Nurses at Mount Sinai Morningside and West reach tentative agreement as more than 7,000 nurses still due to strike | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Mount Sinai Morningside and West hospital reached a tentative agreement with the state nursing union on a new contract Sunday, avoiding a strike Monday morning, according to a news release from the union.

    Nurses at two other area hospitals, Mount Sinai Hospital and Montefiore Bronx, are still due to strike after not reaching agreements.

    Both hospitals are back at the bargaining table with New York State Nurses Association nurses today – if a tentative agreement is not reached, then approximately 3,625 nurses at Mount Sinai and approximately 3,500 nurses at Montefiore Bronx will strike at 6 a.m. Monday. The union said during a news conference Sunday morning that negotiations could go into the early morning.

    The new tentative agreement at Morningside and West brings the anticipated number of nurses to strike down from 8,700 to about 7,125. The tentative agreement improves staffing, protects benefits and increases salaries over three years.

    That brings seven of the 12 New York hospitals in negotiations to reach tentative agreements or new contracts.

    “The time is now to settle fair contracts that help nurses deliver the care that all New Yorkers deserve. We are fighting to improve patient care and will do whatever it takes to win,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a statement Sunday.

    New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital is continuing to move infants out of intensive care units to other area hospitals, is diverting ambulances to other facilities and postponing elective surgeries and heart surgeries ahead of a planned nursing strike Monday.

    In a statement late Saturday, the hospital said it has been negotiating “in good faith” with the nursing union on a new contract. Mount Sinai has agreed to meet with NYSNA nurses after walking out on a bargaining session Thursday, the union said Sunday.

    A Mount Sinai spokesperson told CNN on Saturday the hospital system is actively bargaining with the Mount Sinai Morningside and West campuses under separate union agreements.

    But if agreements aren’t reached at several New York City area hospitals, thousands of nurses will strike on Monday morning.

    The hospital said Sunday its current wage offer “is identical” to ratified agreements at NewYork-Presbyterian and Maimonides – and would increase a Mount Sinai nurse’s base salary by 19.1 percent over three years.

    “But NYSNA’s inconsistent bargaining, unwillingness to accept this offer, and insistence on moving forward with a strike has left us no choice but to take significant actions to care for our patients,” the hospital statement said.

    Seven neonatal intensive care unit infants were safely transferred Saturday to partner hospitals in New York City, a hospital spokesperson told CNN on Sunday. Another six will be transferred Sunday from the NICUs at Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai West, the spokesperson said.

    “In addition, we have transferred close to 100 patients from the affected hospitals – The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai Morningside – to unaffected hospitals within the Mount Sinai system and partner hospitals in NYC and we continue to safely discharge patients who were schedule to go home.” All elective surgeries have been postponed, the spokesperson said.

    The NYSNA hit back Saturday at comments from Mount Sinai, which said Friday it was transferring infants in its neonatal intensive care units to other area hospitals because of the strike notice, adding the hospital was dismayed by the union’s “reckless” actions.

    “As a labor and delivery nurse who helps mothers to bring babies into this world, I find it outrageous that Mount Sinai would compromise care for our NICU babies in any way. We already have NICU nurses caring for twice as many sick babies as they should,” Matt Allen, the union’s regional director, said.

    “It’s unconscionable that Mount Sinai refuses to address unsafe staffing in our NICU and other units of the hospital but is now stirring fears about our NICU babies in contract negotiations,” he added.

    In a statement Saturday, the NYSNA said nurses at BronxCare and The Brooklyn Hospital Center reached tentative agreements that will improve safe staffing levels and enforcement, increase wages by 7%, 6%, and 5% annually during their three-year contract, and retain their healthcare benefits.

    On Saturday, nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian announced they had agreed to ratify their deal, but it was a close vote – 57% nurses voted yes and 43% were against.

    “Voting on whether to ratify a contract is a key component of union democracy. Just like in any democracy, there is rarely 100 percent consensus,” Hagans said in a statement.

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  • Amid negotiation gridlock between Mount Sinai Hospital and the nursing union, newborns in intensive care are caught in the middle, one nurse says | CNN Business

    Amid negotiation gridlock between Mount Sinai Hospital and the nursing union, newborns in intensive care are caught in the middle, one nurse says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Crucial union negotiations between Mount Sinai Hospital and the New York State Nurses Association appear to be at a standstill and both parties say the other is refusing to return to the bargaining table.

    As the impasse continues between the hospital and union, the most vulnerable patients – newborns in Mount Sinai’s neonatal intensive care unit – are caught between the opposing sides, causing worry among families, one Mount Sinai nurse, who declined to provide her name out of fear of repercussions, told CNN.

    With thousands of New York nurses poised to strike early Monday morning, one of Manhattan’s famed hospitals announced Friday it would transport newborns in its intensive care unit to other area hospitals in preparation for the strike.

    A Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson confirmed to CNN Friday that neonatal intensive care unit infants would be transferred to other area hospitals because of the strike notice.

    “We are seeking a resolution [to the strike.] The impact is great,” the spokesperson told CNN.

    A NICU nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital told CNN that families of patients in the unit have been deeply concerned about moving their sick infants from one hospital to another. Moving the babies to a different facility can be “very stressful” for a NICU patient, the nurse said, as well as the parents.

    “They’ve asked us all week what’s going to happen to their babies, and what’s going to happen next week,” the nurse said.

    “It’s a big journey for a baby who’s never been outside the hospital,” she told CNN. “It’s not anything that we want to happen. We want our babies to stay. We want to be taking care of them. And it’s kind of shocking, and actually a little infuriating, that the hospital is letting it get to this point.”

    The more critical the baby’s condition is, the more complicated and riskier a transfer to another hospital becomes, the nurse explained.

    “You would need at least a doctor or nurse practitioner, a respiratory therapist if the patient is on respiratory support and a transport nurse to work the pumps and administer medicine if needed,” she said.

    The nurses who care for the sick infants often grow close to the families and develop a trusting relationship with them, especially because some babies spend weeks or even months in the NICU, the nurse told CNN.

    “They’re comfortable leaving their babies with us when they aren’t able to be there,” she said. “We keep in contact with the families after their babies have gone home – so we really do develop a close bond to these families.”

    “We treat our babies in the hospital like they’re our own kids. We’re very protective of them,” she added.

    New York State Nurses Association President Nancy Hagans has said the goal of the negotiations is to improve patient care and staffing, get fair wages and to recruit and retain nurses.

    Negotiations between the health system and the nurse’s union have been ongoing since September, a Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN Saturday, but low staffing levels have afflicted the NICU unit for years, the nurse told CNN.

    “For over three years now, we’ve been understaffed,” she said.

    The number of patients in the unit surges and falls regularly, according to the nurse, but as patient levels rise, staffing levels stay the same. The unit can surge to 64 patients, she said.

    “You feel like you’re not actually giving your all to your patients,” she said. “You’re really pulled very thin.”

    Paying close attention to infant patients is especially important, according to the nurse, because unlike other patients – even small children – they can’t verbalize pain or discomfort.

    “You really have to be on top of their vital signs and general assessment. And when you’re not able to spend as much time as you need to with them, some things do get missed,” she said. “And it’s very unfortunate.”

    CNN has reached out to the hospital regarding the nurse’s comments on low staffing.

    More than 8,700 nurses are prepared to strike Monday morning if tentative contract agreements are not reached at several hospitals, Hagans, the union president, said at a virtual news conference Saturday morning.

    As of Saturday, negotiations across New York’s hospitals were continuing at Montefiore Bronx and the Mount Sinai Morningside and West campuses, according to the nurse’s union.

    But the president of the nurse’s union told reporters Saturday the main Mount Sinai Hospital complex left the bargaining table late Thursday and no further bargaining sessions have been scheduled since.

    A Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN that hospital management is “waiting for the union to come back to us” to resume negotiations.

    The hospital said it put forth a deal at Thursday evening’s bargaining session was the same one the union agreed to for nurses at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Tentative agreements have also been reached with union nurses at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island.

    Mount Sinai also said it has offered a 19.1% compounded pay raise over three years, which is the same offer other hospital systems in the city have made.

    The NICU nurse at Mount Sinai said that nurses in her unit don’t want to strike and are hoping that they can come to an agreement with the hospital before Sunday night.

    “It truly breaks our heart having to strike and leave our patients, but unfortunately you have to do some drastic things sometimes,” she told CNN.

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  • A $3,300 self-driving stroller is at this year’s CES. Are parents ready? | CNN Business

    A $3,300 self-driving stroller is at this year’s CES. Are parents ready? | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Hang onto your baby bonnets: Self-driving technology is coming to strollers.

    Canadian-based baby gear startup Gluxkind was showing off its Ella AI Powered Smart Stroller at this year’s CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas that offers some of the most cutting edge – and out-there – new technologies.

    The smart stroller offers much of the same tech seen in autonomous cars and delivery robots, including a dual-motor system for uphill walks and automatic downhill brake assist. Like a Tesla with “Autopilot,” the Gluxkind’s stroller’s onboard technolgy has sensors that detect objects around it – but it’s meant to serve as an “extra pairs of eyes and an extra set of hands,” according to the company’s website – not a replacement for a caregiver.

    The Ella stroller is able to drive itself for hands-free strolling – but only when a child is not inside. It uses cameras to monitor surroundings and navigate the sidewalks.

    For parents who are probably and understandably nervous about putting their baby in a stroller with a mind of its own, Gluxkind provided a YouTube video with some use cases. A parent walking a stroller down hill rushes to save a child’s dropped toy that is rolling away. The stroller brakes on its own.

    In another demo, a child is tired of sitting in the stroller and wants to be carried. The Ella strolls itself while the parent carries the child.

    Still self-driving technology isn’t totally proven and certainly not ready for prime time. Although companies that have implemented the technology in cars say they add an element of safety when used properly and the driver is paying attention, putting children in the care of AI may not be for everyone.

    Gluxkind, founded in 2020, also put additional stroller-specific features into the Ella including “Automatic Rock-My-Baby” and a built-in white noise machine to soothe sleeping toddlers. The entire system is outfitted with a car seat, infant bassinet and toddler seat.

    “The development has been driven by our own experience as new parents.,” Anne Hunger, Gluxkind CPO and co-founder, wrote in a November press release. “We’ve put a lot of hard work into this product and are excited to get it into more customers’ hands in 2023.”

    For $3,300, parents can join the pre-order list for the 30-pound Ella, one of the consumer tech products named as an Innovation Awards Honoree at the 2023 CES show. Deliveries of the stroller are expected to begin in April 2023, according to the company website.

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  • The search for a missing toddler in Tacoma continues nearly 24 years later | CNN

    The search for a missing toddler in Tacoma continues nearly 24 years later | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Theresa Czapieski couldn’t hold back tears when police in Tacoma, Washington, showed her what her daughter could look like today. She has not stopped searching for the then-2-year-old Teekah Lewis since 1999.

    “I’m not giving up until my daughter is found,” Czapieski told CNN.

    Tacoma police released an age progression photo of Teekah last week in the hopes of solving one of the area’s oldest missing children’s cases.

    Teekah was last seen in the video game area at the New Frontier Lanes bowling alley on the night of January 23, 1999. Czapieski said Teekah was a “mama’s girl.” The toddler had been next to her until it was Czapieski’s turn to bowl. She then asked her brother and then-boyfriend to keep an eye on the toddler. When Czapieski turned around to check on her daughter, she was gone.

    “They said they didn’t see nothing, so whoever took her, took her within seconds.” Czapieski told CNN.

    Police say no one remembers seeing the toddler leave the building. That night, Czapieski says, the bowling alley was packed, and hundreds of people could have been there.

    Czapieski previously visited the bowling alley with some of her children and thought it was a safe place to take Teekah in an outing with other family members, she said.

    Tacoma Police Detective Julie Dier said Teekah’s disappearance has been “a big mystery.”

    “At this point, we don’t have any evidence, any physical evidence. We have no body. And while that remains the case, there is always a chance that she is still somewhere out there,” Dier told CNN on Monday. “It’s a big mystery.”

    When the toddler disappeared in 1999, Dier said police went to great lengths to find her, mowing down a wetland and using search dogs. Investigators have received numerous tips since Teekah went missing, but none have ever led to a suspect, police said.

    Now, they’re asking the public for information about a late 1980s or early 1990s maroon or purple Pontiac that a witness says fishtailed while speeding from the bowling alley parking lot, moments before announcements of Teekah’s disappearance were made inside the building.

    Dier said investigators are hoping the release of the age progression photo and calls for information about Teekah’s disappearance result in someone who may have seen something contacting police.

    It is still a possibility that Teekah is alive and doesn’t know she was a kidnapping victim, police said.

    The composite showing how Teekah might currently look was created by the Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) Laboratory at Louisiana State University, which offers forensic anthropology services to law enforcement and coroner’s offices.

    Larry Livaudais, an imaging specialist at the lab, told CNN it took him about three weeks to create the age progression image. He referenced about four dozen photos of Teekah’s mother, father and siblings, alongside images of Teekah herself, to get a possible image of what she would look like in 2022.

    “It really is an artistic creation, but it is based upon scientific knowledge of facial growth patterns and morphological changes that take place in the face,” Livaudais said, adding that he built cognitive triggers into the image that are designed to spur recognition and memory in people who know might know Teekah.

    Czapieski says she hopes her daughter, who would be in her mid-20s, has so far lived a good life. She likes to imagine that Teekah played sports in high school, graduated and went on to college, the mother said.

    “If she’s out there and she sees this, know you have five sisters that want to meet you. You have a mom and (an) enormous number of aunts and uncles that are just waiting for you to come home. We know it’s been almost 24 years, and I’m sure you don’t know this but we want to know you. We want to bring you home, because I’ve never given up on you,” Czapieski said. “I will not stop looking for you until you’re found.”

    The Tacoma Police Department is asking anyone with information about the case to contact call the Crime Stoppers of Tacoma-Pierce County at 1-800-222-TIPS. Police are also offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to arrest and charges in the case.

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  • Aaron Carter’s son turns 1 just weeks after dad’s death | CNN

    Aaron Carter’s son turns 1 just weeks after dad’s death | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Melanie Martin celebrated her son Prince’s first birthday, while also honoring her child’s late father, singer Aaron Carter.

    The boy celebrated his first birthday just three weeks after his dad was found dead in the bathtub at his Lancaster, California home. Carter was 34.

    Martin, who had been engaged to Carter, shared a video compilation on her verified Instagram account of their time as a family.

    “Happy birthday to my baby boy Prince Lyric Carter,” the caption read. “Today is going to be a tough one for me but I know your daddy is playing birthday songs for you up in heaven I love you baby boy!!!”

    The LA County Coroner is still working to determine the cause of Carter’s death.

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  • Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt welcome second child | CNN

    Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt welcome second child | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Heidi Montag Pratt and husband Spencer Pratt have welcomed their second child.

    “The Hills” couple introduced their new baby boy on Thursday, with Montag posting to Snapchat from the hospital. She shared that he was born at 11:31 a.m., weighing 7 lbs. and 9 oz., but did not reveal a name.

    Earlier, Montag had posted herself doing breathing exercises and rubbing her baby bump as Pratt drove her to the hospital.

    “Okay, this is the real deal. Oh yeah, definitely gonna have this baby very quickly. Oh my gosh, this is the real thing. I couldn’t tell if my water broke or not because it’s just a little at first, I mean, not a little, and these contractions are just nonstop now,” she said in the video.

    Montag and Pratt also share 5-year-old son, Gunner. The duo announced they were expanding their family in June.

    “I have been hoping and praying for this moment for so long!” Montag said on social media at the time. “Once I saw the word ‘pregnant’ I started hysterically crying, overwhelmed with joy and shock and I sprinted upstairs to show Spencer.”

    Montag and Pratt eloped in 2008 and had another ceremony in 2009.

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  • Desperate for heart surgery for their baby, a family feels the effects of pediatric hospital shortages | CNN

    Desperate for heart surgery for their baby, a family feels the effects of pediatric hospital shortages | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Even before their daughter was born in June, Aaron and Helen Chavez knew she would need heart surgery. Doctors expected her to have an operation around 6 months of age.

    When it became apparent in September that it would have to happen much sooner than expected, the Chavezes said, they endured an agonizing monthlong wait for a bed to open at their local children’s hospital so baby MJ could have the procedure she needed.

    “They said, ‘Well, we would love to get her in as soon as possible. However, right now, we don’t have beds,’ ” Aaron said.

    Space for children in hospitals is at a premium across the country. Data reported to the US government shows that as of Friday, more than three-quarters of pediatric hospital beds and 80% of intensive care beds for kids are full. That’s up from an average of about two-thirds full over the past two years.

    Federal data shows that the strain on hospital beds for kids began in August and September, which is right around the start of the school year in many areas.

    Hospitals are seeing higher than normal numbers of sick infants and children due to a particularly early and severe season for respiratory infections in kids, including respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and influenza.

    As of Friday, Golisano Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York, the facility that treated the Chavezes’ daughter, was over capacity. Federal data shows that it has been consistently more full than the national average over the past few months. Golisano went from having 85% of its beds occupied in August to over 100% now.

    Like many other hospitals across the country, Golisano has seen a sharp increase in children who are severely ill with RSV. Dr. Tim Stevens, the chief clinical officer, said 35% of the hospital’s current patients – excluding those in the neonatal intensive care unit – have RSV.

    A lack of available beds means patients are sometimes held in the emergency department to wait for a bed to open so they can be admitted, Stevens says.

    It may also mean children who have chronic conditions and need procedures or hospital care, but whose conditions are stable, may have to wait.

    MJ was born in June with a ventricular septal birth defect – a hole between the pumping chambers of her heart. It’s a relatively common problem affecting about 1 in every 240 infants in the United States, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Doctors could see the defect on prenatal ultrasounds, but because MJ was never in the right position to get a good image, they weren’t sure of its size.

    If they’re small enough, these holes usually close on their own soon after birth. But the hole in MJ’s heart was not small.

    It caused the oxygen-rich blood coming from her lungs to mix with oxygen-poor blood returning from the rest of her body. Too much blood got squeezed back into her tiny lungs with each heartbeat, straining her respiratory system.

    Everything exhausted her, even nursing or drinking from a bottle. “She would stop eating before she was full and before she got the calories that she needed,” Aaron said.

    Typically, babies will take a bottle for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, but MJ would doze off after six or seven minutes, her mother recalls.

    They didn’t worry, Helen says, because they were trying hard not to be anxious newbies. “All those websites, they say sometimes you just have a sleepy baby, and it’s OK,” she said.

    Other signs that MJ might be hungry could be explained away, too. They mistook her constant fussing for colic. Her scalp started to get dry and flaky, and they thought it might be a common skin condition called cradle cap.

    As first-time parents, the Chavezes didn’t realize at first that MJ wasn’t eating enough. Doctors didn’t immediately catch it, either. MJ got three checkups during her first month, one within a few days of coming home from the hospital, the other at two weeks and another at one month.

    It’s normal for babies to lose weight after birth, especially if Mom got IV fluids during labor and delivery. They typically return to their birth weights by 2 to 3 weeks of age. And at first, MJ did regain weight, climbing back to her birth weight by 2 weeks old.

    But babies with heart conditions like hers can have faster-than-normal metabolisms, and it was between weeks two and four that her parents say the feeding issues really began to cause problems.

    “We were frustrated and we were scared, because she looked like she was losing weight, not gaining weight. She was very thin for a baby,” Aaron said.

    The doctors had advised them to count the number of wet and dirty diapers she was having each day as a way to judge whether she was eating enough. Her parents didn’t know it was not as much as she should have been.

    “One day, I was holding her, sitting in our recliner. I looked down at her and I was like, ‘this baby looks puny. Like, she does not look like she feels good,’ ” Helen said.

    She called their pediatrician, who saw them the same day. The pediatrician immediately notified their cardiologist, who arranged for a feeding tube to help MJ get more nutrition.

    Helen says they had been told MJ would need surgery to repair the hole in her heart around 6 months of age.

    “Once the feeding issues started, though, that I think that we all kind of realized that, OK, she’s probably not going to hit that six-month mark,” she says.

    MJ got the feeding tube when she was around 6 weeks old, in August. Her doctors started talking about moving the operation up but advised her parents that she would need to gain some weight first.

    The feeding tube helped for a time, but by the time MJ was 3 months old, her condition had deteriorated.

    “Every breath came with a grunt,” Aaron said. “She was fairly regularly sweating, no matter the ambient temperature in the room or whether we were holding her or not.”

    Every time MJ drew a breath, the skin around her collarbone would suck in and her abdomen would pull under ribcage, a symptom known as a retraction. Retractions are a sign that someone is working very hard to breathe.

    “It looked like her chest was almost scooping under her lungs with each breath. The retractions were getting really bad. It was around that point that they told us, ‘Hey, yeah, this is accelerating faster. We’re going to need to get her in for surgery soon,’ ” Aaron said.

    Helen said their cardiologist first discussed getting MJ’s case reviewed – a key step her doctors needed to prepare for her surgery – on September 14.

    “He said, ‘it might take a couple of weeks to get her in because we’ve been really slammed with emergencies, but we’ll get her in,’ ” Helen said.

    Doctors put MJ on medications called diuretics to help drain excess fluid off her lungs and ease her breathing – but then, at the end of September, she caught a cold.

    It wasn’t a bad cold, and Helen Chavez, a pharmacist, thinks that if the baby had been healthy, she probably could have fought it off at home with no problems. But Helen was worried, so she took she MJ to the ER.

    The doctors checked her, determined she was stable and sent the family home with supportive care.

    At a follow-up doctor’s visit, Helen said, she asked again, “Where are we on the surgery?”

    Helen said the cardiologist said they had not been able to review MJ’s case.

    “And they said, ‘Well, we would love to get her in as soon as possible. However, right now we don’t have beds,’ ” Aaron said.

    “Throughout that time, she kept getting worse. More symptoms would pop up in terms of the breathing would get worse, the retractions would get worse, that kind of a thing. Like there was more and more and more piling up,” Aaron said.

    Helen said she understood that MJ’s condition was still stable, but she was worried it wouldn’t stay that way.

    “I was like, ‘I’m worried she’s going to crash and that’s how we’re going to get in for this surgery is, it’s going to take this kid crashing and burning before we can get her in,’ ” Helen told the doctor, who reassured her.

    ” ‘No, no, no, she is not going to get to that point before we get her in,’ ” she says they were told.

    On October 10, things took a turn.

    The baby slept in a bassinet beside her parents’ bed. Helen nudged Aaron awake around midnight to look at their daughter, and his first thought was to reassure his wife that yes, the doctors had told them that her breathing was going to look bad. But then he rolled over and peered at MJ, who was asleep.

    “That was the moment that I was wide awake,” Aaron said, and he was terrified.

    “It was the raggedness of her breathing and the noise. Every breath, there was a strange sound coming from her. It sounded like she was fighting for, like, struggling for every breath.”

    They raced to the hospital.

    “We were sitting in the ER, and every other kid in that pediatric ER was hacking, coughing, sneezing,” Helen said. “Clearly, respiratory viruses hit Rochester early and very hard.”

    Helen said it was clear by the end of that visit that medications had done all they could do and that MJ would continue to get worse without the operation.

    “Our understanding is, it took an extra ER visit to push the timeline,” Helen said.

    That visit prompted an emergency appointment with the cardiologist.

    “That’s where they were like, ‘OK, we’ve got her in for conference,’ ” Helen said.

    The hospital says it can’t comment on the specifics of MJ’s case.

    “The Golisano Children’s Hospital cardiology and cardiac surgery teams review the status of all pediatric patients who need heart surgery twice a week,” the hospital said in a statement to CNN. “We cannot comment on a specific case, but once surgery becomes necessary, it is scheduled as quickly as needed based on the medical condition of the child. The current high census of pediatric inpatients at our hospital has not affected our ability to schedule non-elective pediatric cardiac surgeries in a timely way.”

    Stevens, the chief clinical officer, says those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

    “Each of those are reviewed by our medical and surgical team to determine whether or not they’re time-sensitive,” he said. “Things that are time-sensitive or certainly urgent or emergent, they get done.”

    When it becomes clear that a child needs to be admitted, Stevens said, hospital officials find ways to open beds, and they try to do it so it doesn’t exhaust their nurses.

    Stevens says he’s hopeful the situation will improve, that infections will die down, “because this is not sustainable.”

    Aaron Chavez agrees that there was no delay once MJ’s case got the necessary review – but says that review itself kept getting put off.

    “We were essentially told that her case review was being delayed because they simply didn’t have the beds,” he said.

    The surgical team reviewed MJ’s case on October 13, and she had surgery 12 days later, according to Aaron.

    Aaron says the family has no complaints about the quality of care their daughter received, and they’re grateful to the entire team of doctors, nurses and other staff who treated their daughter.

    “Once push came to shove, they definitely got her in, but the last four weeks were really, really harrowing,” Helen said. “It was just kind of hard to watch your baby have trouble breathing and know that there’s not a whole lot you can do.”

    On the morning of October 25, the Chavezes brought MJ to the hospital, where doctors walked them through the operation. A piece of synthetic material would be sewn into her heart to patch the hole. Over time, the material would allow her own cells to grow on it and cover the defect.

    The procedure could take as long as 12 hours. But it went faster than anticipated, and MJ was finished in half that time. The surgeon came out to tell them the good news: The operation had been a success.

    “Her surgeon said that it was the biggest hole that he has seen in 2022 and one of the biggest he has ever seen,” Aaron said.

    The Chavezes then went to the pediatric intensive care unit to wait for MJ. As soon as they saw her, they could see she was better.

    Before the surgery, her skin had been pale and mottled; after, she was a healthy pink.

    “Just in that short amount of time, her skin had that pinkness and redness in places that you expect like the nose, and her fingers were proper pink,” he said. “That color you expect out of a healthy baby. It was really nice to see that.”

    She was in the hospital for six days, and her recovery amazed her care team.

    “She kind of crushed recovery milestones like it was her job,” Aaron said.

    Now back home, MJ is playing catch-up with the developmental milestones she missed while she was sick. Her muscles are weak, she can’t sit up or roll over yet, and she may never switch back from the feeding tube to a bottle. A team of occupational and physical therapists comes over to help. They expect she will eventually make up for the time she missed, but it will take some work.

    Still, Aaron says the surgery has had an amazing effect.

    Before her operation, MJ was very uncomfortable and always tired.

    “The baby that I have now, that returned from surgery, is constantly smiling at us. She’s almost laughed three different times in the last couple of days, right? She’s so close to a laugh. She seems like an entirely different baby,” Aaron said.

    The Chavezes were nervous about sharing their story, but in the end, they decided it was important to shed light on the effects of the ongoing hospital bed shortage.

    “Everybody we have told about the bed shortage, that we have told about the nurses and the staff and the doctors telling us how burnt-out and frustrated they are and how tired they are, everybody’s surprised,” Aaron said.

    “Everybody’s shocked. Everybody thinks that this is over. The pandemic is over. Our health care system’s back to normal. ‘What are you talking about? What shortages?’ “

    In the end, they felt powerless. What could they – two exhausted working parents with a sick infant – do to solve a national crisis?

    After all, after nearly three years of a viral pandemic, doesn’t everyone already know what to do? Stay home if you’re sick. Put on a mask in public places while viral illnesses are running rampant. Get vaccinated.

    “I don’t know how I’m supposed to help tell 330 million people, ‘Hey, you should care about each other,’ ” Aaron says.

    Their story is one reminder of why all those simple but effective measures are important.

    “In the end, we believe the information getting out there is better than not,” Aaron said. “Hopefully, it will help push those in power to do better.”

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  • Holocaust survivor left on a bench as a baby finds new family at 80 | CNN

    Holocaust survivor left on a bench as a baby finds new family at 80 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When Alice Grusová was a baby, her parents left her on a train station bench, with no idea of what would become of her.

    It was June 1942 and this was the last desperate act by Marta and Alexandr Knapp to save their daughter as their attempt to escape what was then Czechoslovakia ended in disaster.

    The couple had fled Prague, but when their train drew in to Pardubice, eastern Bohemia, Nazi soldiers boarded in search of fleeing Jews.

    Grusová – her married name – never saw her parents again. They were arrested and sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp, from where they were later deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Her brother from her father’s previous marriage was also killed there.

    It might have been their infant daughter’s fate too, had it not been for their high-stakes gamble. This year, Grusová celebrated her 81st birthday – as well as her 60th wedding anniversary with husband Miroslav. Living in Prague, they have three sons, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

    This, she had always felt, was the sum total of her family, but earlier this year the retired pediatric nurse traveled to Israel where she reconnected with her Jewish heritage and met her only surviving first cousin – as well as a wider family she didn’t know existed.

    “I was most shocked when I found out, when I was 80, that I have such a large family,” she said in an emotional video call with CNN.

    “I am just sad this didn’t come earlier,” added Grusová, who has battled cancer, hepatitis and a spinal surgery.

    The reunion occurred thanks to the efforts of a curious woman 5,000 miles away in South Africa, during the initial stages of the pandemic. The incredible story has now been shared by online genealogy site MyHeritage.

    With so much of life on hold, Michalya Schonwald Moss delved into her family history on MyHeritage. She had always known her family had been decimated in the Holocaust, but nothing prepared her for the discovery that 120 of her relatives were murdered at Auschwitz.

    Yet out of the unimaginable darkness, a tiny and most unexpected ray of hope emerged. With the help of professional genealogists in both the Czech Republic and Israel, she unearthed the incredible tale of one survivor: Grusová.

    Grusová's parents with her half-brother René. All three were murdered at Auschwitz.

    Having been found on the station bench, the one-year-old girl was initially placed in an orphanage. Grusová, who has no memory of her parents, was later moved to Theresienstadt. She recalled: “There was a nice woman who was taking care of us. I only remember glimpses from that time.

    “And then I remember when I got sick with typhoid and the workers there had to protect me from the Germans.

    “I remember they were telling me to be silent or the bad Germans would come and kill us.”

    Incredibly, she survived and after the war was reunited with her mother’s younger sister Edith – or Editka as she calls her – who survived Auschwitz by being transferred to a labor camp.

    Grusová as a child, with her mother's younger sister Edith, who survived being sent to Auschwitz.

    Her voice cracking with emotion, Grusová recalled her aunt, who like many Nazi camp survivors had her identity number tattooed on her arm. She said: “She was so beautiful, she was slim, she had the tattoo. But I didn’t understand that at the time.”

    At first, the pair lived together in Czechoslovakia, but in 1947 her aunt emigrated to what was then Palestine. For reasons that remain unclear, Grusová was left behind and put up for adoption.

    “I was six when my aunt left Czechoslovakia and I came to my new parents,” she said. “As a child, I was very sad that my aunt left. I didn’t understand why she didn’t take me with her.

    “I was in contact with her for a while. She got married and had a son, whom I last saw in a picture when he was two years old.” But the correspondence with Edith petered out, and in 1966 “we lost each other,” she said.

    Grusová never knew what happened to her aunt – until her son Jan, who speaks English, translated a surprising email his parents received from Schonwald Moss in 2021. He and his wife had spent years trying to trace his mother’s cousin, without success.

    But with the help of professional researchers, Schonwald Moss had not only uncovered Grusová’s incredible tale but had also found that cousin – Edith’s son, Yossi Weiss, now 67 and living in the Israeli city of Haifa.

    Weiss and Grusová “met” online last year, alongside other members of the newly discovered family tree. Weiss had known nothing of his cousin and his own life had been blighted by tragedy – having lost both his mother and his son to suicide.

    Over the summer, Grusová flew to Israel with her husband, their son Jan and his wife Petra to meet Weiss and members of his wider family, including Schonwald Moss, who had traveled from South Africa for the occasion.

    Grusová told CNN: “They wanted to meet me and come to visit me, but my cousin has cancer and he can’t travel.

    “I was scared of the long journey at my age,” she said. “Now I am so pleased I went. I am just sad this didn’t come earlier.

    “If it wasn’t for Covid, I would have never found out I have such a big family.”

    Grusová – who speaks neither Hebrew nor English – communicated with her new-found relatives via an interpreter. Together they visited her late aunt’s grave, the Theresienstadt museum and the World Holocaust Remembrance Center at Yad Vashem, where she recorded her personal testimony and was also filmed for an Israeli news channel.

    First cousins Alice Grusová and Yossi Weiss had an emotional reunion in Israel over the summer.

    Simmy Allen, head of international media at Yad Vashem, was there at the time. He told CNN that it was a “very emotional gathering,” adding: “The idea that the family was uniting and different sides of the family were really discovering their roots and coming to Yad Vashem to solidify that, so that their ancestors have a place that will remember them in perpetuity.”

    Grusová said: “My family increased in size a lot. And Michalya keeps finding more and more relatives.”

    Weiss told CNN he had known little about his mother’s earlier life and was unable to explain why she left his cousin behind when she moved to what was then Palestine.

    “From the little bit she told me I knew she worked in a factory and she came back to the city after the war and she was lucky to survive,” he said. “I knew she was married before and her husband was killed on the Russian front but I didn’t know the chapter of finding Alice.”

    Of their reunion, he said: “I made sure I had private time with Alice.

    “We opened up the issue of my mother coming to Israel and Alice staying behind and agreed that things were complicated.”

    The question will forever remain unanswered, though Weiss has tried to make sense of it. “My mother was a Holocaust survivor coming back from the camps at the age of 25 and had just lost her husband. Alice was five. My mother couldn’t provide her home, school, food and everything,” he said.

    Perhaps she thought her niece would have been better off with adoptive parents, he added.

    “It hurts me on a personal level because sometimes I fantasize about ‘what if,’” he said.

    Grusová felt similarly: “Of course I thought about what my life would have been. As a child, I was very sad that my aunt left. I didn’t understand why she didn’t take me with her.”

    “My cousin tried to explain,” she added. “She was young, her life was saved by a miracle. I am not blaming her for anything.”

    Of the reunion with Grusová, Weiss said: “She wanted very much to see my mother’s grave. It was very important to her and part of the closure.”

    Being at Yad Vashem with Grusová when she recorded her testimony was particularly poignant, he said. “It was very emotional and not easy for anyone.”

    (L to R) Miroslav Grus (Alice's husband), Jan Grus (Alice's son), Michalya Schonwald Moss, Petra Grusová (wife of Jan), Alice Grusová, Yossi Weiss

    Schonwald Moss agreed. “It was one of the most extraordinary, intimate, emotionally healing experiences of my life,” she told CNN.

    The family is now in talks with Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, which plans to record Alice’s video testimony in the new year.

    “To discover that one family member had survived that we never knew about, and that she was still alive and living in Prague, was as if we had found a living ghost. And then to discover her story was especially heartbreaking,” said Schonwald Moss.

    “By having her anew in our lives, she’s taught us what living looks like. Everyday is a repair for our family. And thanks to Alice and the sparkle in her eyes and the love she emanates, we have become a family again.”

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  • By the next RSV season, the US may have its first vaccine | CNN

    By the next RSV season, the US may have its first vaccine | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    It’s shaping up to be a severe season for respiratory syncytial virus infections – one of the worst some doctors say they can remember. But even as babies struggling to breathe fill hospital beds across the United States, there may be a light ahead: After decades of disappointment, four new RSV vaccines may be nearing review by the US Food and Drug Administration, and more than a dozen others are in testing.

    There’s also hope around a promising long-acting injection designed to be given right after birth to protect infants from the virus for as long as six months. In a recent clinical trial, the antibody shot was 75% effective at heading off RSV infections that required medical attention.

    Experts say the therapies look so promising, they could end bad RSV seasons as we know them.

    And the relief could come soon: Dr. Ashish Jha, who leads the White House Covid-19 Response Task Force, told CNN that he’s “hopeful” there will be an RSV vaccine by next fall.

    Charlotte Brown jumped at the chance to enroll her own son, a squawky, active 10-month-old named James, in one of the vaccine trials this summer.

    “As soon as he qualified, we were like ‘absolutely, we are in,’ ” Brown said.

    Babies have to be at least 6 months old to enter the trial, which is testing a vaccine developed at the National Institutes of Health – the result of decades of scientific research.

    Brown is a pediatrician who cares for hospitalized children at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, and she sees the ravages of RSV firsthand. A recent patient was in the back of her mind when she was signing up James for the study.

    “I took care of a baby who was only a few months older than him and had had nine days of fever and was just absolutely pitiful and puny,” she said. Brown said his family felt helpless. “And I was like, ‘this is why we’re doing it. This single patient is why we’re doing this.’ “

    Even before this year’s surge, RSV was the leading cause of infant hospitalizations in the US. The virus infects the lower lungs, where it causes a hacking cough and may lead to severe complications like pneumonia and inflammation of the tiny airways in the lungs called bronchiolitis.

    Worldwide, RSV causes about 33 million infections in children under the age of 5 and hospitalizes 3.6 million annually. Nearly a quarter-million young children die each year from complications of their infections.

    RSV also preys on seniors, leading to an estimated 159,000 hospitalizations and about 10,000 deaths a year in adults 65 and over, a burden roughly on par with influenza.

    Despite this heavy toll, doctors haven’t had any new tools to head off RSV for more than two decades. The last therapy approved was in 1998. The monoclonal antibody, Synagis, is given monthly during RSV season to protect preemies and other high-risk babies.

    The hunt for an effective way to protect against RSV stalled for decades after two children died in a disastrous vaccine trial in the 1960s.

    That study tested a vaccine made with an RSV virus that had been chemically treated to render it inert and mixed with an ingredient called alum, to wake up the immune system and help it respond.

    It was tested at clinical trial sites in the US between 1966 and 1968.

    At first, everything looked good. The vaccine was tested in animals, who tolerated it well, and then given to children, who also appeared to respond well.

    “Unfortunately, that fall, when RSV season started, many of the children that were vaccinated required hospitalization and got more severe RSV disease than what would have normally occurred,” said Steven Varga, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa, who has been studying RSV for more than 20 years and is developing a nanoparticle vaccine against the virus.

    A study published on the trial found that 80% of the vaccinated children who caught RSV later required hospitalization, compared with only 5% of the children who got a placebo. Two of the babies who had participated in the trial died.

    The outcomes of the trial were a seismic shock to vaccine science. Efforts to develop new vaccines and treatments against RSV halted as researchers tried to untangle what went so wrong.

    “The original vaccine studies were so devastatingly bad. They didn’t understand immunology well in those days, so everybody said ‘oh no, this ain’t gonna work.’ And it really was like it stopped things cold for 30, 40 years,” said Dr. Aaron Glatt, an infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai South Nassau in New York.

    Regulators re-evaluated the guardrails around clinical trials, putting new safety measures into place.

    “It is in fact, in many ways, why we have some of the things that we have in place today to monitor vaccine safety,” Varga said.

    Researchers at the clinical trial sites didn’t communicate with each other, Varga said, and so the US Food and Drug Administration put the publicly accessible Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System into place. Now, when an adverse event is reported at one clinical trial site, other sites are notified.

    Another problem turned out to be how the vaccine was made.

    Proteins are three-dimensional structures. They are made of chains of building blocks called amino acids that fold into complex shapes, and their shapes determine how they work.

    In the failed RSV vaccine trial, the chemical the researchers used to deactivate the virus denatured its proteins – essentially flattening them.

    “Now you have a long sheet of acids but no more beautiful shapes,” said Ulla Buchholz, chief of the RNA Viruses Section at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

    “Everything that the immune system needs to form neutralizing antibodies that can block and block attachment and entry of this virus to the cell had been destroyed in that vaccine,” said Buchholz, who designed the RSV vaccine for toddlers that’s being tested at Vanderbilt and other US sites.

    In the 1960s trial, the kids still made antibodies to the flattened viral proteins, but they were distorted. When the actual virus came along, these antibodies didn’t work as intended. Not only did they fail to recognize or block the virus, they triggered a powerful misdirected immune response that made the children much sicker, a phenomenon called antibody-dependent enhancement of disease.

    The investigators hadn’t spotted the enhancement in animal studies, Varga says, because the vaccinated animals weren’t later challenged with the live virus.

    “So of course, we require now extensive animal testing of new vaccines before they’re ever put into humans, again, for that very reason of making sure that there aren’t early signs that a vaccine will be problematic,” Varga said.

    About 10 years ago, a team of researchers at the NIH – some of the same investigators who developed the first Covid-19 vaccines – reported what would turn out to be a pivotal advance.

    They had isolated the structure of the virus’s F-protein, the site that lets it dock onto human cells. Normally, the F-protein flips back and forth, changing shapes after it attaches to a cell. The NIH researchers figured out to how freeze the F-protein into the shape it takes before it fuses with a cell.

    This protein, when locked into place, allows the immune system to recognize the virus in the form it’s in when it first enters the body – and develop strong antibodies against it.

    “The companies coming forward now, for the most part, are taking advantage of that discovery,” said Dr. Phil Dormitzer, a senior vice president of vaccine development at GlaxoSmithKline. “And now we have this new generation of vaccine candidates that perform far better than the old generation.”

    The first vaccines up for FDA review will be given to adults: seniors and pregnant woman. Vaccination in pregnancy is meant to ultimately protect newborns – a group particularly vulnerable to the virus – via antibodies that cross the placenta.

    Vaccines for children are a bit farther behind in development but moving through the pipeline, too.

    Four companies have RSV vaccines for adults in the final phases of human trials: Pfizer and GSK are testing vaccines for pregnant women as well as seniors. Janssen and Bavarian Nordic are developing shots for seniors.

    Pfizer and GSK use protein subunit vaccines, a more traditional kind of vaccine technology. Two other companies build on innovations made during the pandemic: Janssen – the vaccine division of Johnson & Johnson – relies on an adenoviral vector, the same kind of system that’s used in its Covid-19 vaccine, and Moderna has a vaccine for RSV in Phase 2 trials that uses mRNA technology.

    So far, early results shared by some companies are promising. Janssen, Pfizer and GSK each appear effective at preventing infections in adults for the first RSV season after the vaccine.

    In an August news release, Annaliesa Anderson, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer of Vaccine Research and Development, said she was “delighted” with the results. The company plans to submit its data to the FDA for approval this fall.

    GSK has also wrapped up its Phase 3 trial for seniors. It recently presented the results at a medical conference, but full data hasn’t been peer reviewed or published in a medical journal. Early results show that this vaccine is 83% effective at preventing disease in the lower lungs of adults 60 and older. It appears to be even more protective – 94% – for severe RSV disease in those over 70 and those with underlying medical conditions.

    “We are very pleased with these results,” Dormitzer told CNN. He said the company was moving “with all due haste” to get its results to the FDA for review.

    “We’re confident enough that we’ve started manufacturing the actual commercial launch materials. So we have the bulk vaccine actually in the refrigerator, ready to supply when we are licensed,” he said.

    Even as the company applies for licensure, GSK’s trial will continue for two more RSV seasons. Half the group getting the vaccine will be followed with no additional shots, while the other group will get annual boosters. The aim is to see which approach is most protective to guide future vaccination strategies.

    Janssen’s vaccine for older adults appears to be about 70% to 80% effective in clinical trials so far, the company announced in December.

    In a study on Pfizer’s vaccine for pregnant women published in the New England Journal of Medicine this year, the company reported that the mothers enrolled in the study made antibodies to the vaccine and that these antibodies crossed the placenta and were detected in umbilical cord blood just after birth.

    The vaccines for pregnant women are meant to get newborns through their first RSV season. But not all newborns will benefit from those. Most maternal antibodies are passed to baby in the third trimester, so preemies may not be protected, even if mom gets the vaccine.

    For vulnerable infants and those whose mothers decline to be vaccinated, Dr. Helen Chu, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington, says the long-acting antibody shot for newborns, called nirsevimab, should cover them for the first six months of life. She expects it to be a “game-changer.”

    That shot, which has been developed by AstraZeneca, was recently recommended for approval in the European Union. It has not yet been approved in the United States.

    The field is so close to a new approval that public health officials say they’ve been asked to study up on the data.

    Chu, who is also a member of an RSV study group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel that advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its vaccine recommendations, says her group has started to evaluate the new vaccines – a sign that an FDA review is just around the corner.

    No companies have yet announced that process is underway. FDA reviews can take several months, and then there are typically discussions and votes by FDA and CDC advisory groups before vaccines are made available.

    “We’ve been working on this for several months now to start reviewing the data,” Chu said. “So I think this is imminent.”

    Watching this year’s RSV season unfold, Brown, the pediatrician who enrolled her son in the vaccine trial for toddlers, says progress can’t come fast enough.

    “The hospital is surging. We’re not drowning the way some states are. I mean, Connecticut, South Carolina, North Carolina, they’re really drowning. But our numbers are huge, and our services are so busy,” she says.

    Brown says her son is mostly healthy. He doesn’t have any of the risks for severe RSV she sees with some of her patients, so she was happy to have a way to help others.

    And while it’s far too early to say whether the vaccine James is helping to test will prove to be effective, the trial was unblinded last week, and Brown learned that her son was in the group that got the active vaccine, not the placebo

    He has done well through this heavy season of illness, she says. The NIH-sponsored study they participated in is scheduled to be completed next year.

    The vaccine, which is made with a live but very weak version of virus, is given through a couple of squirts up the nose, so there are no needles. The hardest part for squirmy James, she said, was being held still.

    “If we can do anything to move science forward and help another child, like, sorry, James. You had to have your blood drawn, but it absolutely was worth it.”

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  • 4 dead, including 10-month-old baby girl, in Bronx house fire, NYPD says | CNN

    4 dead, including 10-month-old baby girl, in Bronx house fire, NYPD says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Four people, including a 10-month-old baby girl, were killed in a fire at a home in the Bronx early Sunday morning, the New York Police Department said.

    New York Fire Department Assistant Chief Kevin Brennan said firefighters immediately began removing victims from the building after responding to a report of a fire at the residence just after 6 a.m ET.

    Two boys, aged 10 and 12, were declared dead at the scene by emergency service workers. The baby girl and a 22-year-old man were rushed to a nearby hospital where they were later pronounced dead, according to the NYPD

    Police have not publicly released the identities of those killed and the cause of the fire, which will be determined by the fire marshal, is under investigation, according to the NYPD.

    A 21-year-old woman and a 41-year-old man were seriously injured and are currently being treated at an area hospital, police said.

    Several firefighters also suffered minor injuries, the FDNY said.

    Due to the “heavy fire” on the first and second floor, the incident was upgraded to a second-alarm fire, prompting the response of more than 100 firefighters and EMS personnel, according to the FDNY.

    The fire comes months after New York Mayor Eric Adams signed an executive order in March on fire safety, after a separate fatal Bronx apartment building fire left 17 people dead in one of the deadliest fires in the city’s history.

    The executive order is designed to enhance fire safety enforcement, outreach efforts to educate New Yorkers, and identify safety violations, Adams announced in a news release at the time.

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  • Alyssa Scott is pregnant following death of son Zen with Nick Cannon | CNN

    Alyssa Scott is pregnant following death of son Zen with Nick Cannon | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly a year after losing her infant son, Alyssa Scott has announced she is pregnant again.

    Scott shared five-month-old son Zen with Nick Cannon. He died in December 2021 after being diagnosed with brain cancer. She also has a 4-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. This will be her third baby, but did not reveal any other information about the pregnancy.

    She shared the news with a baby bump photo, writing, “With you by my side… ,” alongside the sweet snap.

    When their baby was sick, Cannon called Scott “just the strongest woman I’ve ever seen” on his talk show.

    Along with Zen, Cannon is father to Rise Messiah, 5 weeks, Golden Sagon, 5, and daughter Powerful Queen, 19 months, with model Brittany Bell.

    He is also dad to twins Zion and Zillion, 16 months, with Abby De La Rosa. He shares 11-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan with ex-wife Mariah Carey.

    He also shares son Legendary Love, 3 months, with model Bre Tiesi and has a baby daughter daughter, Onyx Ice Cole, with model LaNisha Cole.

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  • RSV in children: Symptoms, treatment and what parents should know | CNN

    RSV in children: Symptoms, treatment and what parents should know | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In September, an 8-month-old baby came into Dr. Juanita Mora’s office in Chicago with an infection the doctor hadn’t expected to see for another two months: RSV.

    Like her peers across the country, the allergist and immunologist has been treating little ones with this cold-like virus well before the season usually starts.

    “We’re seeing RSV infections going rampant all throughout the country,” Mora said.

    Almost all children catch RSV at some point before they turn 2, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Most adults who catch it have a mild illness; for those who are elderly or who have chronic heart or lung disease or a weakened immune system, it can be dangerous. But RSV can be especially tricky for infants and kids.

    Mora, a volunteer medical spokesperson for the American Lung Association, says it’s important for parents, caregivers and daycare workers to know what to watch for with RSV, which stands for respiratory syncytial virus. That way, they know whether a sick child can be treated at home or needs to go to a hospital.

    “The emergency department is getting completely flooded with all these sick kids, so we want parents to know they can go to their pediatrician and get tested for RSV, influenza and even Covid-19,” Mora said.

    Here’s what else parents need to know amid the surge of respiratory illnesses.

    For many, RSV causes a mild illness that can be managed at home.

    On average, an infection lasts five days to a couple of weeks, and it will often go away on its own, the CDC says. Sometimes, the cough can linger for up to four weeks, pediatricians say.

    Symptoms may look like a common cold: a runny nose, a decreased appetite, coughing, sneezing, fever and wheezing. Young infants may seem only irritable or lethargic and have trouble breathing.

    Not every child will have every potential RSV symptom.

    “Fevers are really hit or miss with RSV infections, especially in young infants,” said Dr. Priya Soni, assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Cedars Sinai Medical Center.

    Parents should watch for any changes in behavior, she said, including taking longer to eat or not being interested in food at all. The child can also develop a severe cough and some wheezing.

    It’s also important to watch for signs that your child is struggling to breathe or breathing with their ribs or belly – “symptoms which may kind of overlap with many of the other viruses that we’re seeing a resurgence of,” Soni added.

    Since it’s not easy for parents to tell the difference between respiratory illnesses like, say, RSV and flu, it’s good to take a sick child to a pediatrician, who can run tests to pinpoint the cause.

    “You may need to take your baby to be evaluated sooner rather than later,” Soni said.

    When it comes to RSV, parents should be especially cautious if their children are preemies, newborns, children with weakened immune systems or neuromuscular disorders, and those under age 2 with chronic lung and heart conditions, the CDC says.

    “Parents should be really astute to any changes, like in their activity and their appetite, and then pay particular attention to any signs of respiratory distress,” Soni said.

    Testing is important because treatment for things like flu and Covid-19 may differ.

    There’s no antiviral or specific treatment for RSV like there is for the flu, nor is there a vaccine. But if your child is sick, there are things you can do to help.

    Fever and pain can be managed with non-aspirin pain relievers like acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Also make sure your child drinks enough fluids.

    “RSV can make kids very dehydrated, especially when they’re not eating or drinking, especially when we’re talking infants,” Mora said. “Once they stop eating or their urine output has decreased, they’re not having as many wet diapers, this is a sign they may have to go to the pediatrician or emergency department.”

    Talk to your pediatrician before giving your child any over-the-counter cold medicines, which can sometimes contain ingredients that aren’t good for kids.

    Your pediatrician will check the child’s respiratory rate – how fast they’re breathing – and their oxygen levels. If your child is very sick or at high risk of severe illness, the doctor may want them to go to a hospital.

    “RSV can be super dangerous for some young infants and younger kids, particularly those that are less than 2 years of age,” Soni said.

    Mora said labored breathing is a sign that a child is having trouble with this virus. RSV can turn into more serious illnesses such as bronchiolitis or pneumonia, and that can lead to respiratory failure.

    If you see that a child’s chest is moving up and down when they breathe, if their cough won’t let them sleep or if it’s getting worse, “that might be a sign that they need to seek help from their pediatrician or take them to the emergency department, because then they might need a supplemental oxygen, or they may need a nebulization treatment.”

    CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen says this respiratory difficulty – including a bobbing head, a flaring nose or grunting – is one of two major trouble signs with any respiratory infection. The other is dehydration. “That particularly applies to babies with stuffy noses. They may not be feeding.”

    Much of the care provided by hospital staff will be to help with breathing.

    “We provide supportive measures for RSV and these kids with oxygen, IV fluids and respiratory therapies, including suctioning,” Soni said.

    A thin tube may need to be inserted into their lungs to remove mucus. A child can get extra oxygen through a mask or through a tube that attaches to their nose. Some children may need to use an oxygen tent. Those who are struggling a lot may need a ventilator.

    Some babies might also need to be fed by tube.

    The best ways to prevent RSV infections, doctors say, is to teach kids to cough and sneeze into a tissue or into their elbows rather than their hands. Also try to keep frequently touched surfaces clean.

    If a caregiver or older sibling is sick, Mora says, they should wear a mask around other people and wash their hands frequently.

    And most of all, if anyone is sick – child or adult – they should stay home so they don’t spread the illness.

    There is a monoclonal antibody treatment for children who are at highest risk for severe disease. It’s not available for everyone, but it can protect those who are most vulnerable. It comes in the form of a shot that a child can get every month during the typical RSV season. Talk to your doctor about whether your child qualifies.

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  • First US senator to give birth in office offers heartfelt Mother’s Day message: ‘You’re what keeps this country strong’ | CNN Politics

    First US senator to give birth in office offers heartfelt Mother’s Day message: ‘You’re what keeps this country strong’ | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, the first sitting US senator to give birth while in office, offered a heartfelt Mother’s Day message on Sunday, celebrating moms nationwide for “growing the next generation for our nation.”

    “Hang in there, sister. We’re in this together, and nobody has perfect work-life balance, everybody struggles, and so do the best that you can,” the Democrat told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    “You’re what keeps this country strong.”

    Duckworth and her husband, Bryan Bowlsbey, are the parents of two daughters, Abigail and Maile. Abigail was born while Duckworth was serving in the US House as a Chicago-area congresswoman.

    In 2018, after giving birth to Maile, Duckworth became the first US senator to cast a vote on the floor with her newborn by her side.

    Her vote came just one day after the Senate changed long-standing rules to allow newborns on the chamber floor during votes. The rule change, voted through by unanimous consent, was done to accommodate senators with newborn babies and lets them bring children under 1 year old onto the Senate floor and breastfeed them during votes.

    “It feels great,” Duckworth told reporters at the time. “It is about time, huh?”

    The Illinois Democrat on Sunday spoke about Democratic efforts to pass legislation to address rising child care costs.

    “Families spend as much as a quarter to half of their income on child care, and there’s no way for working families to survive under those burdens,” Duckworth said.

    “We keep trying,” she added when asked by Bash about finding bipartisan solutions.

    Duckworth is a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a helicopter pilot during the Iraq War. She was the first female double amputee from the war after suffering severe combat wounds when her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down.

    Duckworth served in the Obama administration as an assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs. She was first elected to the US House in 2012 and the Senate four years later.

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