Health Glance
Hantavirus. Ebola. West Nile. Measles. And, of course, cyclospora — that stomach parasite making people miserable across the country. Americans have plenty to worry about this summer.
But remember COVID-19? It may not be surprising that many people may have almost forgotten about COVID. Unfortunately, COVID hasn't forgotten about us.
"We're now in the midst of a growing summer surge of COVID here in the United States," says Dr. John Brooks, an infectious disease doctor at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., who used to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "I think most of us kind of feel like it's fading away and are certainly very grateful for that. But nationally we're seeing it ticking up pretty much everywhere."
The virus is spreading the most again in the South and West, but is also on the rise in the Northeast and Midwest. The good news is the virus is still at very low levels. And so far this summer's wave seems to be continuing the trend of getting milder each year, sending fewer people to the hospital and causing fewer deaths.
Flanked by top health officials including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump unveiled a federal policy that looked skeptically at childhood vaccination.
"Do you even looksmaxx, bro?"
Respiratory therapist Marcy Freeman doesn't need a research study to confirm for her a return to the dark days of coal mining. She finds evidence in a stack of more than 150 funeral programs, all for former patients at her pulmonary rehabilitation clinic in Norton, Virginia.
Cases of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection known for causing explosive diarrhea, have now reached 47 states as the illness reached unprecedented numbers.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, on Sunday told American parents that they should get their children vaccinated against measles, as the surge in infections has reached numbers not seen in the past 35 years.
