Sunday, Jun 30th
Last update07:49:10 AM GMT
Health Glance
A week after recovering from a fever, nurse Maria Gray was given a surgical mask and assigned to Research Medical Center’s ward of patients suspected of having the virus that causes COVID-19.
For two consecutive shifts, she asked hospital nurse managers for an N95 respirator mask that would offer more protection. On both shifts, supervisors denied her request and reassigned her to a different hospital floor.
Andrew Jack, a British actor and dialect coach who appeared in multiple “Star Wars” films, has died at 76 due to complications from the coronavirus.
Jack, who played General Ematt in “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens” and “Star Wars Episode VIII — The Last Jedi,” also served as dialect coach for films including “Avengers: Endgame,” “The Nightingale” and “Eastern Promises,” for actors including Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson and Robert Downey Jr.
Jack died in a hospital in Surrey on Tuesday, his agent Jill McCullough said in a statement Wednesday.
“Andrew lived on one of the oldest working houseboats on the Thames, he was fiercely independent but madly in love with his wife, also a dialect coach,” McCullough said, according to The Associated Press.
More coronavirus infections were reported from South Korea to France to Qatar on Saturday after health officials in Washington state, Oregon and California on Friday reported a worrying development: new cases among people who have not traveled recently to countries hit hard by the outbreak or come into contact with anyone known to have the disease, which public health officials refer to as community transmission.
The four new cases Friday bring the total number of covid-19 cases detected through the U.S. public health system to 19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The coronavirus spread further on Friday, with cases reported for the first time in six countries across three continents, battering markets and leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise its impact risk alert to “very high.”
Hopes that the epidemic that started in China late last year would be over in months, and that economic activity would quickly return to normal, have been shattered.
World shares were on course for their largest weekly fall since the 2008 financial crisis, bringing the global wipeout to $6 trillion as supply chains were disrupted, travel plans postponed and major events canceled.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked state and federal officials from moving as many as 50 Americans infected with the coronavirus to a city in southern California for quarantine.
U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Stanton, an Obama appointee, issued an order late Friday to prevent the transfer of coronavirus patients from Travis Air Force Base in Northern California to Costa Mesa in Orange County. The patients were previously quarantined on a cruise ship in Japan after a mini-outbreak on the vessel.
Local officials argued before the court that the federal government’s plan did not include sufficient protections from the virus for residents. They swiftly sought court intervention after being informed by the state government of plans to move patients to a state-owned facility in Costa Mesa as soon as Sunday.
A Holland America Line cruise ship on Tuesday was refused entry to Thailand over fears of coronavirus. This is the fifth port to deny the ship to dock despite no cases of the virus having been confirmed on board the ship.
Holland America Line tweeted Monday that its MS Amsterdam ship would be disembarking in Bangkok for travelers to head home, but on Tuesday the Thai health minister refused the ship’s entry.
“I have issued orders. Permission to dock refused,” Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul reportedly said in a Facebook post.
A health insurer in Utah is seeking to reduce prescription drug costs by flying state employees to Mexico, where they can collect medications at a fraction of the US cost.
The year-old programme involves around 10 state employees. The cost savings are so large that the insurance program can pay for each patient’s flight, give them a $500-per-trip bonus and still save tens of thousands of dollars.
One participant, 62-year-old teacher Ann Lovell, said she saved as much as $2,400 by travelling from Salt Lake City to San Diego and then crossing the border, in order to refill a prescription for arthritis medication.
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