The U.S. public health emergency ends May 11. For the first time in three years, the CDC will stop posting a national count of COVID-19 cases, among other changes.
CDC
Despite the decline, about 1 out of every 13 deaths in the U.S. in 2022 was associated COVID-19. The virus killed nearly 245,000 people in 2022, CDC data shows.
Nearly 70,000 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses that involved fentanyl in 2021, almost a four-fold increase over five years. By 2021, about two-thirds of all overdose deaths involved the potent synthetic opioid, according to the report.
The fungus, Candida auris, is a form of yeast that is usually not harmful to healthy people but can be a deadly risk to fragile hospital and nursing home patients.
The vaccines were more than 40% effective in preventing adults from getting sick enough from the flu that they had to go to a doctor’s office, clinic or hospital, health officials said during a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccines meeting Wednesday.
During the past seven days, an average of 31 people have been hospitalized each day in Chicago from COVID-19, down more than 40% during the past week, according to city data last updated Wednesday.
The pandemic disrupted vaccinations and other routine health care for children, and also taxed the ability of school administrators and nurses to track which children weren’t up-to-date on shots.
Title 42 has been used more than 2.5 million times to expel migrants since March 2020, although that number includes people who repeatedly attempted to cross the border. The case will be argued in February, and the stay will be maintained until the Supreme Court decides.
The increase in cases across China follows the rollback of the nation’s strict anti-virus controls. China’s “zero COVID” policies had kept the country’s infection rate low but fueled public frustration and crushed economic growth.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday said the city is expected to move from a “medium” risk level for contracting COVID-19 back to a “high” risk level, likely sometime in the next week. When that happens, the city will reinstate an advisory, urging Chicagoans to mask up.
“It’s too soon to say whether iGAS case numbers are just returning to pre-pandemic levels or if they are rising beyond what we would normally expect based on what we know about GAS seasonal patterns,” CDC spokesperson Kate Grusich wrote In an email.
Rates of deaths from drug overdoses among older adults have more than tripled in the past two decades, according to one report published Wednesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. In 2020, more than 5,000 adults 65 and older in the United States died of a drug overdose.
In a report issued Wednesday, the WHO and the CDC said millions of children were now susceptible to measles, among the world’s most contagious diseases. In 2021, officials said there were about 9 million measles infections and 128,000 deaths worldwide.
Chicago hospitals and health care providers are also coping with sharp increases in flu cases and illness caused by RSV, a respiratory virus, officials said.
There have been about eight flu hospitalizations for every 100,000 people this season — rates typically seen in December or January. The RSV hospitalization rate is 10 times higher than usual for this point in the season, too.
The move is likely to reduce fears, at least temporarily, of an imminent surge of COVID-19 once colder weather settled over Chicago for the duration, forcing people indoors.
