The origin of COVID-19 is highly debated most studies have focused on a zoonotic origin, but research from the journal Risk Analysis, examined the likelihood of an unnatural origin (i.e. from a laboratory.)
The results indicate a greater likelihood of an unnatural than natural origin of the virus. The researchers used an established risk analysis tool for differentiating natural and unnatural epidemics, the modified Grunow-Finke assessment tool (mGFT) to study the origin of COVID-19. This risk assessment cannot prove the specific origin of COVID-19 but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.
One of the researchers, Xin Chen, Ph.D., a researcher from The University of New South Wales, is available for an interview to speak more about the results of this study and its implications.
A Stoughton man has pleaded guilty to participation in a COVID-19 business relief loan fraud scheme that netted those involved over $220,000, according to the Massachusetts U.S. Attorneys Office.
On Thursday, 41-year-old Patrick Joseph pleaded guilty to several fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud charges, the U.S. Attorneys office said in a press release.
Between April 2020 and April 2021, Joseph participated in a scheme that netted those involved over $220,000 through fraudulent COVID-19 paycheck protection business loan applications, according to the U.S. Attorneys office. He and co-conspirator, 55-year-old Stoughton resident Yves Montima, submitted 12 fraudulent loan applications, both in their names and on behalf of others.
The fraudulent loan applications claimed non-existent independent contractor income that they substantiated through falsified tax documents, the U.S. Attorneys office said. In addition to the money they got from the loans submitted in their own names, Joseph and Montima received kickback payments from the other people who benefited through their scheme.
Montima pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in November 2021, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorneys office. In September 2023, a federal judge sentenced him to three years of supervised release with the first 10 months served in home confinement and to pay $239,595 in restitution.
Joseph was indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2021, and his sentencing is scheduled for June 20, according to the U.S. Attorneys office. He faces decades in prison, over a decade of supervised release and over $1 million in fines and forfeiture.
Coronavirus
By Aditi Debnath | Here & Now
March 15, 2024
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Wisconsin Department of Health Services state epidemiologist Dr. Jasmine Zapata discusses key lessons learned in the four years after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and ongoing status of the virus.
Mar 17, 2024, 6:17pmUpdated 16h ago
By: News 12 Staff
On this weeks New Jersey Power & Politics, an independent review says New Jersey was unprepared for COVID-19 and is underprepared for the next health emergency.
Congress took a big step this week that could lead to a ban on TikTok how the New Jersey delegation voted.
And scathing criticism and mounting pressure forced lawmakers to pull the fast-tracked Open Public Records Act. Politico reporter Matt Friedman explains.
Katelyn Bowling (Credit: GoFundMe)
BREMEN, Ga. - A 15-year-old girl from Bremen has reportedly died from a stroke after contracting COVID-19.
Katelyn Patricia Bowling was a Bremen Middle School student who was born in Carrollton. Her aunt said she had cerebral palsy and suffered a COVID-related stroke that affected her motor skills and caused irreversible brain damage.
On March 13, she passed away at a local healthcare facility.
A GoFundMe was created to help the family make ends meet during their time of bereavement.
Katelyn will be laid to rest this weekend. The visiting hours and funeral plans have been organized by Hightower Family Funeral Homes.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented exposure to stressors driven by fears of a novel and deadly disease, intense uncertainty, and resulting isolation measures, which in turn resulted in increases in anxiety for many. According to new research however, individuals who were in therapy for anxiety prior to the start of the pandemic did not experience upticks in their symptoms throughout this exceptionally challenging time.
The new research suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) provided tools to help individuals with anxiety to manage their symptoms in the face of these intense stressors, according to the study's authors. The study, led by psychologists at McLean Hospital, a member of Mass General Brigham, and Touro University, published March 13th in PLOS One.
Our research suggests that CBT and DBT can offer major benefits to protect individuals' mental health amidst a major world catastrophe and period of upheaval. People who have been treated for anxiety know that fighting it is not helpful, and that there are tools to help accept the current realities of their situations," he added. "In some ways, having a previous anxiety disorder before a crisis occurs can be a blessing."
DavidH. Rosmarin, PhD, ABPP, lead study author,clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital, and associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School
For the study, researchers compared the treatment trajectories of 764 individuals who participated in outpatient therapy and divided them into four groups based on when they initiated treatment: pre-pandemic (start date on or prior to 12/31/2019), pandemic-onset (from 01/01/2020 to 03/31/2020), during-pandemic (from 04/01/2020 through 12/31/2020), and post-pandemic once vaccines became available (on or after 01/01/2021).
Anxiety was measured at intake and at each subsequent session using the GAD-7 questionnaire, which assesses for anxiety symptoms. Then, the researchers analyzed the trajectories of anxiety and compared the four groups. Therapy consisted of CBT and DBT.
Their findings revealed that overall, patients presented with moderate anxiety when they began treatment, which rapidly decreased within 25 days of starting therapy, and gradually declined to mild anxiety over the remainder of their sessions. When comparing the four groups of patients, the researchers found no substantive differences between groups, suggesting that treatment effects were robust to environmental stressors related to the pandemic. Moreover, among patients who were in treatment at the start of the pandemic, the researchers did not detect an increase in anxiety during the initial acute phase of COVID-19 (March 20, 2020 through July 1, 2020).
We were surprised. We thought that during the height of the pandemic and before vaccines were available, patients would show increased anxiety and that therapy would be less effective but that was not the case."
Steven Pirutinsky, PhD, study co-author, assistant professor at Graduate School of Social Work at Touro University
Studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic adversely impacted mental health, with measurable increases in anxiety from the pandemic's onset in early 2020 through the fist availability of vaccinations in early 2021. One report from the World Health Organization found global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25 percent in the first year of the pandemic.
"There is a widespread misperception that anxiety is a risk factor for people crumbling and not being able to function," says Rosmarin. "However, when people receive evidence-based psychotherapy and learn skills to cope, they can become more resilient than those who have never had anxiety at all."
Limitations of the study include that the participant pool, while demographically and clinically diverse, consisted primarily of highly educated individuals geographically specific to the northeastern United States. The pandemic-onset group was also smaller than the others, which may be attributed to limited availability of in-person therapy around that time. The study also did not look at other mental health measures, including depression and substance use. More research is needed to gain insights into how these findings may be impacted in other regions of the country, and conditions aside from anxiety disorders.
Source:
Journal reference:
Rosmarin, D. H.,et al.(2024) Response to anxiety treatment before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.PLOS ONE.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296949.
Pressley Has Led Efforts in Congress to Expand Access to Long COVID Treatment, Invest in Research, and More
WASHINGTON Today, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) issued the following statement marking Long COVID Awareness Day while continuing her fight in Congress to support the millions of people in America still living with COVID-19.
Long COVID remains a national crisis in America that demands a bold, federal response that ensures no one is ignored, left out, or left behind in our recovery. On Long COVID Awareness Day, Im proud to join national and grassroots advocates across the country to demand action from lawmakers to provide our COVID Long Haulers with the resources and treatment they need and deserve, said Rep. Pressley. Congress must immediately pass my TREAT Long COVID Act with Rep. Beyer and Rep. Blunt Rochester to expand access to Long COVID clinics and help Long Haulers access care right in their communities, as well as fully fund the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Long COVID Research and Practice, and make bold federal investments in Long COVID research. As we heal from the COVID-19 pandemic, I want our Long Haulers to know that we see them, their experiences are real, and we will never stop fighting for them.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people with Long COVIDmay experience a combination of symptoms, ranging from extreme fatigue and cognitive dysfunction to muscle pain and gastrointestinal issues, to difficulty breathing, insomnia, and heart palpitations. Across the country,nearly one in five adultswho have had COVID-19 still suffer from symptoms of Long COVID, and more than 65 million people are suffering worldwide. These complications affect people of all ages and all walks of life, with disproportionate impacts reported on women and people of color.
In Congress, Rep. Pressley, along with Representatives Don Beyer and Lisa Blunt Rochester, has introduced the TREAT Long COVID Act to increase access to medical care and treatment for communities and individuals struggling with Long COVID and its associated conditions. The bill would fund the expansion of Long COVID clinics and empower health care providersincluding community health centers and local public health departmentsto treat Long COVID patients in their own communities. A summary of the bill can be foundhere, and the bill text is availablehere.
Rep. Pressley has also held a series ofvirtual and in-person roundtable discussions with patients, health care providers, and advocates in the Massachusetts 7thto discuss the Long COVID crisis. Watch their roundtablehere.
Congresswoman Pressley has nominated two constituents to serve on HHS Federal Advisory Committee on Long COVID.
Rep. Pressley has been a longtime champion for people suffering from Long COVID and for disaggregated demographic data on COVID-19 to better address the pandemics disproportionate impact on communities of color.
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Up to 5.8 million young people have long COVID, according to a recent study and parents like Amanda Goodhart are looking for answers.
She says her 6-year old son Logan caught COVID multiple times. But even months later, his symptoms didn't get better.
"To see him struggle to stay awake, or crying and saying he doesn't feel good, it's heartbreaking, it's demoralizing, because there's not a lot of treatment options," she told CBS News.
Study author Dr. Rachel Gross of NYU's Grossman School of Medicine says one major challenge in tracking the illness is that symptoms can vary.
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"Long COVID can look different in different children, that not everybody has the same symptoms and that it can look different depending on when the symptoms start," she says.
Some common long COVID symptoms in kids include:
Logan has also been dealing with circulatory and gastrointestinal problems, and he gets tired even from things like standing in line.
Doctors say most children with long COVID recover over several months, but about a third experience symptoms even one year later.
Goodhart says it's been frustrating, adding they've tried multiple treatments with only moderate improvement.
"It's terrible, there's nothing worse than seeing your child go through something you can't fix," she says.
The research also shows long COVID can raise the chances of a child developing type 1 diabetes. And it can even be deadly, leading to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes the syndrome as a "rare but serious condition associated with COVID-19 in which different body parts become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs."
"This study was urgently needed because there are so many questions that need to be answered about pediatric long COVID," Gross says.
The Goodharts hope more attention is given to studying long COVID so more effective treatments can be found.
Sara Moniuszko is a health and lifestyle reporter at CBSNews.com. Previously, she wrote for USA Today, where she was selected to help launch the newspaper's wellness vertical. She now covers breaking and trending news for CBS News' HealthWatch.
It was four years ago on March 12, 2020 that the coronavirus brought the curtain down on Broadway for what was initially supposed to be a monthlong shutdown, but which wound up lasting a year and a half.
The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums and movie theaters and leaving sports teams playing to empty stadiums dotted with cardboard cutouts.
Now, four years later, audiences are coming back, but the recovery has been uneven. Here is a snapshot of where things stand now:
On Broadway, overall attendance is still down about 17 percent: 9.3 million seats have been filled in the current season as of March 3, down from 11.1 million at the same point in 2020. Box office grosses are down, too: Broadway shows have grossed $1.2 billion so far this season, 14 percent below the level in early March of 2020.
Broadway has always had more flops than successes, and the post-pandemic period has been challenging for producers and investors, especially those involved in new musicals. Three pop productions that have opened since the pandemic Six, about the wives of King Henry VIII, MJ, about Michael Jackson and & Juliet, which imagines an alternate history for Shakespeares tragic heroine are ongoing hits, but far more musicals have flamed out. The industry is looking with some trepidation toward next month, when a large crop of new shows is set to open.
Many nonprofit theaters around the country are also struggling attracting fewer subscribers and producing fewer shows and some have closed. One bright spot has been the touring Broadway market, which has been booming.
Michael Paulson
By Frey Lindsay
Executive Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped migration and mobility in Europe, and some of the impacts still linger. In many ways, Europe was better prepared than other regions to respond to the pandemic and its effects on cross-border mobility. Europe had strong coordinating institutions, an existing freedom of movement agreement, world-leading scientific and public-health capacities, and stronger social protection systems and economies than most regions. Despite these advantages, cross-border travel shut down, migrant and refugee flows dropped, and migrant worker unemployment spiked across the region in the pandemics early phase.
The first months of the pandemic saw an unprecedented shutdown in cross-border mobility. Even borders within Europes Schengen Area of free movement were reinstated, with land border controls and travel bans for nonresidents maintained for several months in 2020. As the virus circulated across Europe, countries began to restart mobility through testing and isolation, exemptions, and a traffic light system to assign travel measures according to a travelers region of origin or transit, based on different metrics of risk. However, a lack of coordination undermined these early efforts. The real game changer was the EU Digital COVID Certificate, which by mid-2021 allowed countries to verify a travelers proof of vaccination, testing, or recovery from prior infection. This system was widely adopted and helped Europe move toward targeting travel measures to each persons risk profile rather than restricting travel from entire countries. Thus, the European case offers some hope that regional cooperation can work, while nonetheless underscoring the challenges to cooperation on migration in times of crisis.
The pandemic had a significant and sudden impact on labor mobility, within and into Europe, with implications for employment and labor markets throughout the region. Initially, migrant worker unemployment rose in most sectors, with the gap between migrant and native-born unemployment rates growing across all European countries. But some policy decisions, including regularization policies, mitigated some of the worst impacts. Trends include:
The pandemics impacts on migrant workers were more severe in countries where migrants often have insecure contracts and work in sectors such as tourism that were devastated by the pandemic (e.g., Spain and Sweden), than in those with more generous job retention programs and social protection (e.g., France and Switzerland). Migrant employment began to recover relatively quickly, but it took until 2021 to begin growing at pre-pandemic rates. Many workers from other EU Member States returned home in the first months of the pandemic, particularly to Eastern Europe, meaning the number of intra-EU workers dropped more than the number of third-country national workers in EU labor markets. This seems to be both because moving home to another European country was comparatively easier and because intra-EU workers were more willing to leave as it appeared easier for them to return than it would be for a third-country national who might have to reapply for visas or save funds for the journey.
Governments also tapped into existing populations to meet labor demand. As migrant workers returned to Eastern Europe and other regions, Italy and Spain gave regular status to many irregular migrants, and France tried to attract unemployed or furloughed native-born workers into agriculture. Governments also exempted essential workers (such as farm workers) from border restrictions or quickly expanded visa routes and recruited new workers for the agricultural harvest, as in Germany and the United Kingdom.
Virtually all types of migration dropped in 2020: first residence permits for third-country nationals decreased by 24 percent in just one year. Governments prioritized restarting labor migration, but most other types of movement recovered far more slowly. The impacts of COVID-19 travel measures on migration were starkest in the first two years of the pandemic, which are the primary focus of this report, and were felt by both irregular and regular mobility, although the former recovered quicker than the latter.
International student flows dropped precipitously, with first residence permits for education dropping more than any other category in 2020. Although easing travel restrictions allowed students to return to Europe in 2021, student arrivals have generally been slow to recover to pre-pandemic levels. The United Kingdom, however, announced a new visa that allows graduate students to work for two years after graduation, prompting a significant increase in issuance of student visas in 2021 that exceeded pre-pandemic levels by 55 percent.
Refugee resettlement remains low, but asylum applications have rebounded. Resettlement to Europe was more resilient than in regions and countries with stricter border controls (e.g., Australia), but refugee resettlements declined 40 percent from 2019 to 2020 and remained less than three-quarters of pre-pandemic levels by 2021. By contrast, asylum applications dropped in March 2020 and stayed low as European countries adjusted to telework and remote asylum proceedings, but application numbers began to recover by June and met pre-pandemic levels in mid-2021.
Irregular migration exceeds pre-pandemic levels, but government policies have contributed to a shift toward more dangerous routes. Stricter border policies in Cyprus and Greece, justified by those governments in part by the pandemics public-health risks, caused the number of irregular arrivals in those countries to drop and numbers in Italy and Spain to jump. As migrants turned to more dangerous irregular migration routes, recorded deaths in the Mediterranean increased by 41 percent in 2021.
The contrasting recoveries of different forms of migration to and within Europe underscore the importance of effective migration policymaking in times of uncertainty. Three policy trends emerged within Europe and continue to shape migration patterns and policies even as the focus on the pandemic has waned. First, the success of the EU Digital COVID Certificate, despite privacy and equity concerns, represented a shift back to regional cooperation on borders and offers a tool to help countries re-open quickly if a future health crisis shuts down mobility. Second, the enduring shift to digital migration and asylum processing sparked by office closures and social distancing will force policymakers to balance the advantages of streamlined digitalization with the risks to privacy and data protection. Third, COVID-19s shutdown in global labor mobility and related labor shortages accelerated a policy focus on skilled migration programs, which will be crucial to meeting future labor demand while building human capital and socioeconomic opportunities in Europe. Recognizing these trends and the lessons of the pandemic can equip policymakers in Europe and beyond to prepare contingency plans for the next public-health crisis and strategically move toward a more effective and coordinated plan for migration.
