TV News LIES

Nearly 71,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, a new record that predates the Covid-19 crisis, which the White House and many experts believe will drive such deaths even higher.

Preliminary numbers released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the trend is driven by fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids, which accounted for 36,500 overdose deaths. Deaths involving cocaine and methamphetamine also are rising.

With billions of dollars devoted to ending the opioid epidemic, policymakers had hoped overdose deaths would continue to decline, or at least plateau, after 2018 showed a dip for the first time in three decades.

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The number of people who have died of the coronavirus in the US has now topped 80,000, while the number of cases in the country hits 1.3 million.

On Sunday, the death toll reached 80,308, and it has been revealed nursing home residents and workers now account for a third of these fatalities.

A New York Times database shows that at least 25,600 residents and workers at US nursing homes or long-term care facilities for the elderly have died from coronavirus as of Saturday.

More than 143,000 people were infected with coronavirus at about 7,500 facilities, according to statistics gathered by the newspaper.

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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.

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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.