Flu season is here and the number of hospitalizations from respiratory illnesses has nearly doubled since late December.
“We took a big jump after Dec. 21, and it’s still going up,” said Dr. Ned Calonge, chief medical officer at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
According to the last update from CDPHE on Jan. 4, there were 278 influenza hospitalizations in the state. That’s up from 246 the week before and 140 on Dec. 21.
A Texas woman has described the life-threatening circumstances that led to her getting all of her childhood vaccinations again.
There has been a noticeable decline in the number of Americans who consider childhood vaccines important, with just 40 percent of U.S. adults believing it is extremely important for parents to protect their children this way, according to an August 2024 Gallup poll.
That’s down significantly from 58 percent in 2019 and 64 percent in 2001 and comes against a backdrop of online misinformation and skepticism around vaccines sparked by the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some of the kids never stopped crying, not from pain, but from fear and loneliness.” These haunting words from Peg Kehret’s award winning book Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio remind us of a time when the fight against the disease was far from over. It is a fight we cannot afford to relive.
More than 35 children’s books recount the polio epidemics of the mid-20th century, ranging from fiction to biographies of Dr. Jonas Salk (the discoverer of the polio vaccine) to nonfiction exploring the science and historical impact of the disease. While today’s children may not face the same threat of polio, their voices are noticeably absent amid the growing questions and fears sparked by the culture wars. Several weeks ago, one of our young granddaughters asked why polio is on the news all the time.
The winter holiday rituals are behind us. It’s cold and snowy in many places. And, now, unfortunately, another annual tradition is upon us.
“Respiratory season is here,” says Dr. Brendan Jackson, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It is getting to be in full swing now with a lot of people getting sick, a lot of people missing work, missing school, just feeling lousy in general.”
People tend to travel and get together with family and friends over the holidays. The bad news is that this often means they come home with some nasty bug. And we’re in the thick of that again right now.
Five years ago this week, STAT was interviewing nervous infectious disease scientists about a mysterious disease spreading in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, located roughly 500 miles west of Shanghai. On Jan. 4, 2020, we published the first of what would become a torrent of articles on the disease now known as Covid-19.
The intervening years have both sped and crawled by, too busy at times to take stock of all that has changed, too plodding to believe we have arrived at this anniversary already. (The first case of Covid in the U.S., in a person who had traveled to Wuhan, was not confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until Jan. 20, 2020.)
It was a rough New Year celebration for Denver resident Justin Orr.
He told Denver7 he started feeling sick on Monday, and things quickly spiraled when it exacerbated his asthma.
“January 1, I tried to go to Walgreens Pharmacy to get an inhaler, but of course, they were closed for New Year’s. And then I was like, ‘Yep, I gotta go to a hospital because I feel like something else is going on in my body,’” said Orr.
Five years ago, a cluster of people in Wuhan, China, fell sick with a virus never before seen in the world.
The germ didn’t have a name, nor did the illness it would cause. It wound up setting off a pandemic that exposed deep inequities in the global health system and reshaped public opinion about how to control deadly emerging viruses.
The virus is still with us, though humanity has built up immunity through vaccinations and infections. It’s less deadly than it was in the pandemic’s early days and it no longer tops the list of leading causes of death. But the virus is evolving, meaning scientists must track it closely.
Another week brings more health care proposals, as incoming President Donald Trump and his pick for the head of the Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. share plans to change up some establishments throughout the United States. From vaccine access to funding changes to firing staffers at the National Institutes of Health, it seems no area will be untouched by the new administration.
Later today, around 10 minutes after this email lands in your inbox, I’ll be holding my four-year-old daughter tight as she receives her booster dose of the MMR vaccine. This shot should protect her from a trio of nasty infections—infections that can lead to meningitis, blindness, and hearing loss. I feel lucky to be offered it.
This year marks the 50-year anniversary of an ambitious global childhood vaccination program. The Expanded Programme on Immunization was launched by the World Health Organization in 1974 with the goal of getting lifesaving vaccines to all the children on the planet.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in response to bird flu that’s spreading among the state’s dairy cows. The virus has already caused the deaths of more than 120 million birds across the country since 2022. Stephanie Sy reports on efforts in Colorado to keep the dairy workforce safe.
