Long Covid-19 is believed to affect 10% to 30% of people who get virus, even some with mild illness; doctors say more will seek care

To download a full-size version of the graphic, right-click on it.

Two years ago today, "Kentucky reported its first case of Covid-19," notes Deborah Yetter of the Louisville Courier Journal. "As the pandemic completes its second year in the commonwealth, with falling cases and more optimism for the future, the impact on long-Covid patients, sometimes called long haulers, is profound: affecting their physical health, ability to work, and emotional well-being. It also takes a toll on families. And the worst is yet to come, say some physicians who treat long haulers and predict many more will come forward to seek care in the coming months."

Yetter adds, "Long Covid is believed to affect anywhere from 10 percent to 30% of people who contract the coronavirus. And it can affect those who have only been mildly ill, as well as those who have been hospitalized with more serious illness. While its exact cause is unknown, the effects are becoming well recognized in the medical community and to those who experience the seemingly random nature of the disorder. Conditions such as diabetes, obesity and a suppressed immune system appear to put patients at greater risk for long Covid, but that doesn't explain all cases." Some are young and were healthy.

Yetter's story appeared in the newspaper's Sunday print edition but was not immediately posted on its website. For a story in the British Medical Journal about Long Covid, click here.

"Scientists say much remains unknown about long Covid," writes Allyson Chiu of The Washington Post, noting that they haven't even agreed on a proper medical name for it. But she does explain much of what we do know, answering such questions as how it is diagnosed and treated.

Researchers at UCLA wrote in Annals of Internal Medicine that treating long Covid is complicated because "We do not know what constitutes long Covid or how to formally diagnose it, an issue that is further exacerbated by limited research data of varying quality and consistency."

Vapers or hookah users may be at greater risk for nose and sinus cancers, and upper respiratory ailments, than cigarette smokers

Photo by Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune, via Alamy

Electronic cigarette vapers and hookah smokers are more than twice as likely to exhale particles through their nose compared with cigarette smokers, who favor exhaling the emissions from their mouth, says a study led by researchers at New York University.

The study discreetly followed 341 men and women from March 2018 to February 2019, and they found that vapers and hookah smokers exhaled through their nose (63% and 50% respectively). By contrast, only 22% of cigarette smokers did the same. The study is published in the journal Tobacco Use Insights.

“Our findings suggest that the unique way vapers and hookah smokers use their devices may expose the nose and sinuses to far more emissions than cigarettes, which may in turn increase their risk for upper respiratory diseases,” says the study's lead author, Emma Karey.

Experts have long known that smoking techniques for traditional tobacco products can influence which parts of the respiratory tract are at highest risk for disease. Past studies have shown, for example, that cigarette smokers, who tend to inhale more deeply, more frequently develop lung cancer. Cigar smokers, who tend to breathe more shallowly, are more likely to develop mouth and throat cancers. However, the new study is the first to examine exhalation patterns in e-cigarette and hookah pipe users outside of a controlled laboratory setting, says Karey.

“Because vaping and hookah devices are used differently than traditional cigarettes, we need to consider diseases of both the nose and lungs to evaluate their safety before judging whether one is more risky than another,” says study senior author Terry Gordon.

Gordon notes that in a related study, the research team identified increased damage in the nasal passages of vapers and hookah users but not in cigarette smokers, lending credence to the concern. He cautions, however, that the investigators still need to determine whether this nasal damage seen in vapers is truly a result of their unique breathing pattern and not due to an unrelated issue.

Most counties are still at high risk for coronavirus infections, but new CDC map is a lot more yellow, and even has some green

State Department for Public Health version of CDC map, adapted by Kentucky Health News

By Al Cross

Kentucky Health News

Most Kentucky counties are still in the high-risk category that calls for the general public to wear masks in indoor public spaces, according to the latest ratings by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the 120 counties, 65 are in the high-risk zone and 47 are in medium risk, in which the CDC says residents who are immunocompromised or at high risk for severe illness should talk to a health-care provider about "additional precautions, such as wearing masks or respirators indoors in public. If you live with or have social contact with someone at high risk for severe illness, consider testing yourself for infection before you get together and wearing a mask when indoors with them."

Only eight counties are rated at low risk, but none were in that category last week, the first week of CDC's new rating system. Last week, only 18 counties were medium risk and 102 were high risk.

Even in low-risk counties, CDC recommends residents "stay up to date with Covid-19 vaccines and boosters" and "maintain improved ventilation throughout indoor spaces when possible."

Kentucky is 5 percentage points below the national vaccination rate, with 60 percent of the eligible population (5 and older) fully vaccinated, and 43 percent of those with booster shots, which research shows are needed against the dominant Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The pace of vaccinations continued to slow Friday, with the seven-day average falling to 1,772 per day, the lowest since vaccines became widely available.

But the measures of the pandemic in Kentucky continued to fall. The share of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus in the last seven days dropped for the 40th straight day, to 6.49%.

The state reported 2,076 new virus cases Friday, lowering the seven-day average to 1,747, half what it was 11 days ago. Almost 23 percent of the new cases were in Kentuckians 18 and younger.

NYT map, adapted by KHN; click on it to enlarge.

Kentucky's seven-day infection rate is 19.5 daily cases per 100,000 residents, less than half what it was just eight days ago. But the rate remains the fifth highest among the states, and the state's hospitalization rate is third, trailing only West Virginia and Georgia, according to CDC data ranked by The New York Times.

Kentucky hospitals reported 782 patients with Covid-19, down 75 (almost 9%) from Thursday, with 155 of them in intensive care and 75 on mechanical ventilation. One of those was former Louisville radio host Wayne Perkey, according to a Facebook post by his former colleague, Steve Lee Cook.

UPDATE, March 6: Perkey, 84, died though his family said he "had been vaccinated, received a booster shot and had been cautious about exposure," the Courier Journal reports.

Intensive-care units in five of the 10 hospital regions were more than 80% full, but few of those ICU beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients, except in the easternmost region (Lee to Pike counties), where 34 Covid patients occupied 28% of the ICU beds. That was the same number of ICU Covid patients as in the Lexington area, and just three fewer than in the Louisville region.

The CDC rankings are driven by new virus cases, Covid-19 hospital admissions and the share of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with the disease. Thus, while new-case rates are high in some counties, their relatively low hospital numbers keep them out of the high-risk category.

The state attributed 45 more deaths to Covid-19, pushing its pandemic toll to 14,018. In the last seven days, the state has reported more than 37 deaths per day, about 50% higher than the average was a month ago. Deaths are a lagging indicator of the pandemic, and Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday that deaths will "tail off," just as other pandemic metrics have.

Rural vaccination rates lag in Ky. and rest of U.S., but difference in rural and urban rates in Ky. isn't as big as national gap

By Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

Getting vaccinated for Covid-19 is less popular in Kentucky, and in rural America, than in the rest of the country. But rural Kentuckians do a better job of keeping up with their counterparts in other states than urban Kentuckians do.

That's one way to look at a study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of first-dose coronavirus vaccinations through Jan. 31.

It found that 73.1 percent of Americans had received one of the vaccines, but only 58.5% of rural Americans had. The rate among urban Americans was 75.4%.

In Kentucky, 63.7 percent of residents were vaccinated, but the difference in urban and rural counties was less than in the rest of the nation. The urban rate was 68.7% and the rural rate was 56.5.%

Kentucky's rural rate was much closer to its national counterpart, just 2 percentage points less, than the urban rates: 68.7% of urban Kentuckians were vaccinated, while 75.4% of all urban Americans were.

So, while rural residents have been blamed for low vaccination rates, urban Kentuckians play an important role in that, too. Here's a breakdown of the national and state figures by type of area (click on a table to enlarge it):

                                                Metropolitan areas

                 Total    Large (Central)    (Fringe)       Medium        Small        Micropolitan    Non-core     URBAN    RURAL

 

Compromise bill to address hospitals' issues with ambulance services passes first hurdle; aimed at delays in transfers

Update 3/16/22: House Bill 777 was heard in the Senate Health & Welfare committee today, but was delayed after the Kentucky Association of Counties objected to parts of it. Chairman Sen. Ralph Alvarado asked the stakeholders to go back to the negotiating table and try to work out their differences before they vote on it. 

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

With input from 13 stakeholders, a compromise version of a bill to improve ambulance responses to both emergent and non-emergent transfers is headed to the full House for consideration. 

Rep. Ken Fleming, R-Louisville

Sponsor Ken Fleming, R-Louisville, told the House Health and Family Services Committee that it had taken more than 1,000 hours of work to produce House Bill 777, with input from a range of lobbying interests. This is the third numbered version of the legislation to be filed, which is unusual.

Previous versions included things like response time requirements, putting regulatory authority in the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and eliminating of the need for any new emergency medical service to get a certificate of need from the state. All those provisions caused an uproar among EMS workers and some of their allied associations, but HB 777 appears to be more palatable, with only a few concerns voiced to the committee Thursday. 

"This bill has not been an easy task," Fleming said. "It reflects the stakeholders . . . being open-minded, and their willingness to serve patients, and their determination to do the right thing." 

Fleming said the bill "moves the ball forward" in dealing with issues of transportation between health-care facilities, the main impetus for the bill. 

"I have many examples where patients were not transferred from one facility to another from either eight hours or several days," he said. 

The bill was the brainchild of the Kentucky Hospital Association. Its president, Nancy Galvagni, spoke of long delays that hospitals experience when trying to get patients to the level of care that they need, especially in rural areas. In an earlier interview with Kentucky Health News she told of patients who had died waiting on a patient transfer and psychiatric patients who were being refused transport. 

"The problem we're seeking to address isn't a hospital problem. It's not an ambulance problem. It's not a local government problem. It's a patient problem," she said. "And I think we all understand that we just can't do things the way we've always done when people's lives and their health is in the balance."

A key provision in HB 777 would establish a task force to meet between legislative sessions to study emergency medical services and make recommendations to the General Assembly. It would require the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services to create a special committee to study a list of specific issues defined in the bill, such as response times and needs of patients with behavioral-health issues. 

Both lawmakers and stakeholders praised the idea of the task force, which was not included in previous versions of the legislation.

The director of KBEMS, Mike Poynter, told Kentucky Health News in a statement that it was unfortunate that the agency had been mentioned as part of each of the three bills filed on this issue. In an earlier interview, Poynter told KHN that while there is always room for improvement, "I don't think KBES is broken and I have the statistics that can back that up."

"We do believe that House Bill 777 is the best compromise we can come to at this time," Poynter said in a statement. "We wish that KBEMS and other EMS professionals would have been brought to the table before any of this legislation took draft. . . . We would welcome more time to sit at the table with all affected stakeholders to create a more pro-active plan, rather than be forced into a reflex, expedited reaction."

Poynter also spoke to the resiliency, passion and expertise of EMS workers. "Like we always do, the EMS family adapts and will find solutions to problems no matter what. EMS professionals don’t do what they do because they have to, they do so because they feel called to do so."

The bill would also reform aspects of the certificate-of-need requirements to allow cities, counties and hospitals to transport patients under certain conditions without obtaining a certificate. For example, a hospital could create an ambulance service limited to transporting patients from that hospital.

Galvagni told Kentucky Health News that Kentucky is one of only two states that has a certificate-of-need process for ambulances, which she said creates a barrier to care. 

Conjuna Collier, senior vice president of risk management at Masonic Homes of Kentucky, told Kentucky Health News that the certificate-of-need portion of the bill is important due to the challenges ambulance services face in managing emergency calls and inter-facility transfers. 

Collier said that they have transfer issues "on a daily or weekly basis," including patients discharged from the hospital early in the morning but not arriving at the next facility until late in the evening to "way up in the middle of the night." She said they also struggle to get Covid-19 patients transferred and get patients to and from dialysis in a timely manner. 

"Of course, a heart attack is going to come before picking up a 90-year-old at a dialysis appointment, but then there still is that service that's not getting provided for that resident," she said, later adding, "There just needs to be more of them." 

Dr. Walt Lubbers, an EMS physician, medical adviser for the Kentucky Board of EMS and a representative of the Kentucky EMS Association, said the bill offered a "reasonable compromise on a whole lot of things."  

"It provides good stability for letting the folks that know about EMS continue to regulate EMS, as well as a reasonable change to the complaint process," Lubbers said. "And it recognizes that we don't think we're done and that we can't walk away with this being the only EMS bill that any of us ever think of."

Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley said he wasn't at the meeting to support or oppose the bill, but to voice concerns and to ask that they "look at it further" and "slow it down."  

He said he gets many calls from people who can't get transported from Harlan Appalachian Regional Healthcare Hospital to UK HealthCare in Lexington or that an ambulance did not make it to their home. "This happens more often, more times than it should," he said. 

Mosley said his concern is around the shortage of personnel in emergency medical services, and what would happen if more services are allowed to open that could further dilute their workforce and services.

"The goal has to be what we can effectively do that improves the service to our citizens, not only those that are in the hospital, but those that are at home that need to call 911 and expect and deserve that that ambulance gets there to help them," Mosley said. "Until we address the human shortage element in this industry. I'm afraid efforts like this will have unintended consequences." 

Kevin Pharis, director of Grayson County EMS, told Kentucky Health News that removing all of the certificate-of-need requirements, as proposed in the previous bill, would not fix the problem because "We do not have the personnel to staff ambulances that we already have." He said paramedics are leaving for better pay better pay and working conditions in hospitals, and the cost to become a paramedic versus what they are paid is a problem.

The bill doesn't deal with staffing, but that is part of budget discussions because sponsors recognize that staffing is an issue, said Rep. Kim Moser, R-Taylor Mill, a recent co-sponsor of the bill and chair of the committee. 

The hospitals' Galvagni said, "House Bill 777 does not give all parties what they desire, but we feel it's an important first step to addressing the needs of our patients. . . . We're very proud that we were able to work out a solution to move this issue forward." 

HB 777 would also: 

• Require the health cabinet to investigate and hold hearings regarding complaints related to ambulance services, while leaving disciplinary enforcement to KBEMS;
• Make it easier for patients to register complaints;
• Give the cabinet complete and immediate access to all data and records of KBEMS and its contractors;
• Make KBEMS an independent agency of state government, rather than part of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System;
• Add KBEMS to the list of boards and commissions for which the Department of Professional Licensing in the Public Protection Cabinet provides administrative services, technical assistance and advice;
• Exempt organ-procurement organization vehicles from speed limits and traffic-flow patterns while transporting a human organ or tissue in an emergency situation; and
• Create a Technical Advisory Committee on Emergency Medical Services to advise regarding Medicaid EMS issues.

Other organizations involved in crafting the bill are the Kentucky League of Cities, the Kentucky Association of Firefighters the Kentucky Psychological Association and Advocacy Network; the Kentucky Association of Counties; the Kentucky Association of Healthcare Facilities;, the nursing-home lobby; the Kentucky Center of Assisted Living; the Kentucky Ambulance Providers Association; the Kentucky Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials; and the Kentucky Emergency Number Association.

Most coronavirus metrics keep falling; Beshear says the main lesson of the pandemic is 'We all count, every single one of us'

Chart by The Washington Post, adapted by Kentucky Health News; for a larger version, click on it.

By Al Cross

Kentucky Health News

As the pandemic continued receding in Kentucky Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear said "The great lesson of Covid is that we all count, every single one of us."

At his regular weekly press conference, Beshear said, "We have a generation of kids who missed out on some things but through their sacrifices have saved thousands of lives, and can look around this commonwealth and know that at their young age, they have already made a difference in saving lives and ensuring that other people's relatives are at that next holiday celebration."

Beshear, who has a 12-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter, continued: "I see it on the faces of our young people. They know they've done something special, and I believe it's going to make them into one of the most special generations that we have ever seen."

The governor spoke extemporaneously and at length about the pandemic after saying in response to a question that the state's memorial to the victims is being delayed by supply-chain issues, but will be open by next March.

"I think it's important for people," he said. You know, we are going to be grieving for a long time. You don't lose 14 thousand Kentuckians, more than any three wars put together, and not feel it for a long time. We have a number of people who are dealing with long-haul syndrome, symptoms of Covid, and still aren't better. We have others who may bear their scars internally as well as externally with sacrifices that they have had to make.

"We've had a whole generation of health-care heroes who've had to go through something they couldn't imagine, and front-line workers and National Guard men and women who have done such incredible work; educators who were able to get our classrooms in Kentucky open faster that just about another state."

After mentioning Kentucky children's sacrifices, Beshear said the memorial "will be a gathering place for us to come together, to remember, to mourn, to celebrate the bravery and to hopefully learn and remember the great lesson of Covid is that we all count, every single one of us."

Beshear has often sounded that communitarian theme as he has exhorted Kentuckians to wear masks, get vaccinated and take other preventive measures, saying they should protect themselves and others.

Thursday, he reported that new vaccinations for Covid-19 are at an all-time low, between 100 and 200 on the most recent daily report. Most shots now are boosters; the daily average for all vaccinations is also at a record low, 2,202, according to federal data processed by The Washington Post.

"We certainly need people to continue to get vaccinated," Beshear said of the numbers. "I wouldn't call 'em plummeting, but they are significantly down . . . We really encourage people, especially 5 to 25, to get vaccinated."

Another contrary sign: The state's daily report of 2,281 new cases left the seven-day rolling average just a bit higher than the day before: 1,764.9 compared to 1,764.6 on Wednesday. It had dropped for 30 days.

However, the report also said that the state's seven-day coronavirus infection rate, the more common metric used by health officials, fell to 20.49 per 100,000 residents. It has declined for 19 days.

NYT map from CDC data, adapted by Ky. Health News; click to enlarge.

The state's infection rate remained sixth among the states, and its Covid-19 hospitalization rate remained third, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data ranked by The New York Times.

Twenty-five of Kentucky's 120 counties were in the nation's top 100: Perry was fourth, Morgan eighth, Pike 12th, Trigg 14th, Breathitt and Wayne 19th and 20th, Taylor 26th; Bath, Caldwell and Knott, 29-30-31; Adair 40th, Martin and Lawrence 46th and 47th, McCreary 51st, Pulaski 55th, Russell 60th; Butler, Clinton and Whitley, 72-73-74; Montgomery 82nd, Johnson 88th, Green 95th; and Carter, Floyd and Harlan, 98th, 99th and 100th.

The share of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus in the last seven days dropped for the 39th day in a row, to 6.94%. Health officials say a rate above 5% is concerning; the high, on Jan. 23, was 33.1%.

"Everything continues to get better," Beshear said. "A pandemic that has been really hard, those are really great words to say."

Beshear said "The hospitalizations show no sign of flattening," but Thursday's decrease in Covid-19 hospital cases was one of the smallest in weeks, and use of intensive-care beds was up.

Kentucky hospitals reported 857 patients with Covid-19, eight fewer than Wednesday, with 87 on mechanical ventilation. Beshear said is the lowest ventilation number since July, when the highly contagious Omicron variant began the largest surge of the pandemic.

Hospitals reported 168 Covid-19 cases in intensive-care units, two fewer than Wednesday, but in seven of the state's 10 hospital regions more than 80% of ICU beds were occupied. Three regions were above 90%, including Northern Kentucky at 100%. However, in no region were Covid patients more than 12% of the intensive-care total, except the easternmost region (Lee to Pike counties), where 26% of ICU patients have the disease.

The state attributed 38 more deaths to Covid-19, raising Kentucky's pandemic toll to 13,973. In the last seven days, the state has reported just over 36 Covid deaths per day.

"Deaths are still too high," Beshear said. "We do think deaths are gonna tail off, just like everything else we're seeing. Right now it looks like we're going to a really good place. So, yes, we've got to learn to live with Covid, but we cannot ignore it."

State House sends the Senate an omnibus anti-abortion bill

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

After two hours of debate Wednesday, the state House passed an omnibus anti-abortion bill, dubbed "The Humanity in Healthcare Act" by its supporters and an intimidation tactic by its opponents. 

Rep. Nancy Tate presenting
SB3 on House floor. LRC photo.

House Bill 3 would strengthen parental-consent requirements, creates higher standards for judges to approve the abortion without parental consent, creates new restrictions for medication abortions, addresses the disposal of fetal remains and increases reporting requirements. 

The bill's main sponsor, Rep. Nancy Tate, R-Brandenburg, said it is not intended to eliminate abortions in Kentucky, asserting "We have already done that" in 2019 by passing a bill to ban abortion once a heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. That measure has been suspended during a court challenge. 

"The intent of House Bill 3 is to ensure that while abortions are legal in Kentucky, we want them to be as safe as possible," she said.

The bill went to the Senate on a 77-20 vote.

The annual abortion report from the state Office of Vital Statistics says that in 2020, 4,104 abortions were recorded in Kentucky. Of those, 13 were performed on girls younger than 15 and 353 were on those 15-19. Most Kentucky abortions (2,421) were among women 20-29. Among other age groups; 779 among those 30-34; 399 among those 35-39; and 139 among those 40 or older.

Most abortions in Kentucky are now accomplished by medication that the Food and Drug Administration allows to be sent by mail. HB 3 would ban the mailing of such medication.

Tate said there have been 24 deaths and more than 3,000 serious injuries from taking these pills, but the Kaiser Family Foundation reports: "Medication abortion is a safe and highly effective method of pregnancy termination if the pills are administered at nine weeks’ ge­­station or less, the pregnancy is terminated successfully 99.6% of the time, with a 0.4% risk of major complications, and an associated mortality rate of less than 0.001 percent (0.00064%)."

Democrats stood one after another to question various provisions of the bill. A few of the Republicans who hold a supermajority in the House spoke in favor of it.

Rep. Josie Raymond said the bill was meant to "intimidate and erode" access to abortion in Kentucky.

"They continue to go against the wishes of the two-thirds of Kentuckians who support unfettered access to abortion," said Raymond, D-Louisville. "They work relentlessly to undermine the unruly and inevitable power of women by making it harder to get abortions. They erode, erode, erode our rights to try to wear us down and wear us out until we get too tired to fight."

Rep. Kelly Flood, who has been a parish minister for 10 years, said that the underlying premise of such bills is that "Women are not capable of moral decisions in their life. . . . We disagree. . . . I want you to know that the moral fiber of women can handle this." 

Flood, D-Lexington, added, "More and more and more governments and faith, people of faith like my faith, Unitarian Universalism, say, 'Yes, we understand that women are capable of moral decision making, including life and death, and that we will have your back to have a safe process to determine how you got pregnant. Was it a crime? Was it a violation by someone you love? Or was it a choice you made, and then something terrible happened where you got sick, and you couldn't carry the pregnancy to term?' Those are real reasons why abortion can be a compassionate act." 

Rep. Bill Wesley, R-Ravenna, said he was voting for HB 3 "on behalf of the child that has no voice," but Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville, said a true pro-life agenda takes care of everybody from birth to death. 

"At what point do we get out of other people's bedrooms, other people's lives, other people's medical decisions and take care of the people that are here, the children that are in child care, foster care being abused, the children that go hungry every night, children that don't have parents, the children that want somebody to love them and can't be adopted," she said. "Why aren't we taking care of the people that are here?" 

Rep. Jeffery Donohue, D-Fairdale (Jefferson County), said he is an adoptive parent and doesn't personally support abortion, but it is not for him to make that decision for others.

"I do support the woman having a choice, or a young girl having a choice, with the doctor's input on it," he said, adding later, "This is not our task, it's not our responsibility." 

Rep. Jim DuPlessis, R-Elizabethtown, spoke in favor of the bills' additional parental-consent rules, saying he would want to know if his child was having sex, let alone planning to get an abortion. "Kids can't go get tattoo without our permission. Why? Why are we going to let them have an abortion without us knowing? It is the craziest thing I've ever heard." 

Rep. Nima Kulkarni, D-Louisville, said that while most young people talk to their parents before an abortion, those who do not typically don't because of fear of harm, including being kicked out. Others, she said, may live in homes with parents who are "abusive, absent, addicted or otherwise dysfunctional." She added, "Evidence shows that laws requiring parental consent do not increase the rate at which young people tell their parents about pregnancies or abortion care."

Several amendments filed by Democrats failed, including one for exemptions in cases of rape or incest and another to make a religious exemption for Jewish women. Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, read from a statement from the National Council of Jewish Women in support of her amendment. 

Rep. Danny Bentley, R-Russell, falsely claimed during the floor debate that "Jewish women only have one sex partner" and that one of the abortion medications is the same chemical used in Holocaust gas chambers, so "To say that the Jewish people approve of this drug now is wrong."

The American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the National Council of Jewish Women's Louisville Section condemned Bentley's comments in a statement Wednesday night, the Courier Journal reports. They said he "went on a bizarre, anti-Semitic rant."

Bentley apologized for his remarks: "I meant absolutely no harm in my comments today and sincerely apologize for any they caused. Last week we received a heartbreakingly sad reminder that anti-Semitism still exists in our society and I apologize if my comments today caused similar pain or any doubt that I stand with the Jewish community against hatred."

McConnell, long a vaccine advocate, objects to Biden's mandate for health-care workers, saying it threatens Ky. rural hospitals

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been perhaps the most outspoken Republican leader in favor of vaccination against the coronavirus, but Thursday he objected to President Biden's vaccination mandate for health-care workers, saying it threatens health care in rural America.

‘It’s unfair on a personal level, but even just looking at public health, it is terrible policy for rural America," McConnell said in a Senate floor speech. "We cannot have President Biden mass-firing doctors and nurses when hospitals are already short-staffed. Washington Democrats could safely hobnob in the Capitol all Tuesday evening with no masks, then they ought to stop pushing mass firings of essential health workers."

Rural vaccination rates are 17 percentage points lower than in urban areas, twice where the gap was in April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in research published Thursday.

McConnell said vaccines "do not prevent people catching or transmitting the current variant. There is no moral justification for sweeping mandates. The benefits accrue to the person who gets the shot. What’s more, the CDC’s own research says that prior infection provides protection that is at least as strong as the vaccines. But the president’s overreaching mandate ignored that."

McConnell cited examples from his recent week in Kentucky, quoting three unnamed hospital leaders in Benton, Murray and Hardinsburg who said they were looking at "areas that may have to be shut down" due to lack of staff. He quoted in as saying, "I can afford to lose not one more nurse."

Youth mental health, which has become more problematic in the pandemic, is being addressed at local, state and national levels

By Melissa Patrick

Kentucky Health News

At a time when President Biden and the federal government have sounded alarms about an increase in mental-health issues in youth, school counselors in Kentucky say they too are seeing an increase, and Kentucky lawmakers are working to move several youth-related mental health bills.

Wilson (Spectrum News image)

Kristen Wilson, who has been a school counselor at Woodford County High School in Versailles for the past eight years, told Crystal Sicard of Spectrum News that she has seen an increase in students seeking help with their mental health over the last year.

“It doesn’t just affect the small ones, it affects everybody,” Wilson told Sicard. “It’s something that we take very, very seriously. We don’t want to take any chances.”

Fabian Garcia, a senior at WCHS, told Sicard that he sees his peers struggling with their mental health and he's thankful to have resources at school to help.

“I was in a situation earlier this year and I went to the guidance office and they really helped me out,” Garcia said.

Wilson told Sicard that mental-health issues have been rising in all grade levels, faculty members and adults in the community. 

“It’s okay to struggle,” she said. “It’s okay to, you know, have your moments where you’re just kind of at a loss, but it’s also important to reach out to someone. I always tell my students don’t struggle in silence.”

Photo illustration from fgcnow.com

State legislators have been working to improve access to mental-health services in Kentucky's schools.

In response to the 2018 murders of two students and injury of 18 others in a shooting at Marshall County High School, in 2019, the legislature passed the School Safety and Resiliency Act. Among other things, it requires one trained school-resource officer in every school and one guidance counselor for every 250 students by July 1, 2021, but is subject to availability of funds and qualified personnel. School-based mental-health providers are part of the guidance-counselor requirements law. 

Senate Bill 8 of 2020 said the goal of the act was to have at least one counselor per public school and to have at least one counselor or school-based mental health service provider for every 250 students. 

A survey by the state school security marshal's office said in its 2020-21 annual report found that many school districts are still working toward that goal.

The survey found that 99% of Kentucky's schools have adopted a trauma-informed approach to education, 97% have a trauma-informed team, and 92% have employed a certified school counselor. However, only 41.88% met the goal of one counselor or school-based mental health provider per 250 students.

The overall ratio of mental-health professionals to student is 1 for every 328, but "We are seeing that number going up," School Security Marshal Ben Wilcox told the Senate Education Committee Feb. 10.

This year, Senate Bill 102, sponsored by Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, offers some clean-up language for SB 8 that would require local superintendents to provide a yearly census of all school-based mental health providers and their duties to the state Department of Education. Under SB 8, they only had to report the number of school counselors. The bill awaits a committee assignment in the House. 

Another mental-health bill awaiting a vote, in the Senate Education Committee, is House Bill 44, sponsored by Rep. Bobby McCool, R-Van Lear (Johnson County). It would require a local school district's attendance policy to include provisions for a student's mental or behavioral health status.

Youth mental health is also drawing national attention.

In December, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on youth mental health saying that even before the pandemic, one in three high-school students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, a 40% increase from 2009 to 2019. And in a similar time frame, suicide rates went up 57% among people aged 10 to 24. In the pandemic, rates of anxiety and depression have only gone up.

President Biden sounded the alarm on youth mental health in his State of the Union address. He has offered a proposal to make it easier for school-based mental health professionals to seek reimbursement from Medicaid, and put an extra $1 billion in his proposed budget to help schools hire additional counselors and school psychologists and other health professionals, building on monies already provided toward this effort through the American Rescue Plan, the last pandemic-relief bill.  

"Let's take on mental health," Biden said. "Especially among our children, whose lives and education have been turned upside down."

State as a whole moves out of the 'red zone" but 51 counties are still in it; infection rate 6th, hospitalization rate 3rd among states

NYT graphs show new-case rates of the top state, Maine; Kentucky (which
ranks sixth); and the only bordering state in the top 10, West Virginia
(which ranks fifth). Kentucky ranks third in Covid-19 hospitalizations.

By Al Cross

Kentucky Health News

After almost four months, Kentucky's rate of new coronavirus cases is no longer what the state considers top be a high level of transmission. In other words, the state is out of the "red zone," defined as more than 25 daily cases per 100,000 residents in the last seven days.

That said, 51 of the state's 120 counties still have rates in the red zone, and 18 have rates that are more than double the statewide rate of 23.26 per 100,000: Perry, 133.7; Menifee, 121.1; Wolfe, 107.8; Leslie, 88.2; Lawrence, 71.8; Breathitt, 62.2; Martin, 61.3; Knott, 57.9; Wayne, 56.2; Bath, 56; Montgomery, 52.8; Lee, 52.1; Harlan, 51.6; Morgan, 48.3; Floyd, 48.2; Magoffin, 48.2; Adair, 47.6; and Elliott, 47.5.

Kentucky's seven-day infection rate remained sixth among the states, and its Covid-19 hospitalization rate ranked third, according to The New York Times' ranking of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

The state's hospitalizations have dropped 42 percent in the last 14 days, about the national average, and its new-case rate has dropped 68%, more than the national figure of 59%.

Wednesday, the state reported 2,334 new virus cases, lowering the seven-day rolling average to 1,765 per day, just over half what it was nine days earlier.

The percentage of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus in the last seven days was 7.73%, making 38 straight days it has dropped from a high of 33.1%.

Kentucky hospitals reported 865 patients with Covid-19, just over half the number reported two weeks earlier, with 170 in intensive care and 87 on mechanical ventilation. Three of the 10 hospital regions reported more than 90% of their intensive-care beds in use, and two were between 80% and 90%.

The state attributed 35 more deaths to Covid-19, approximately the average for the last seven days. That raised Kentucky's pandemic toll to 13,935.

Opinion: Legislature is moving bill that would restrict abortion rights while ignoring several filed to help babies and mothers

This opinion was originally published in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

By Linda Blackford

Herald-Leader Opinion Editor

Why bother writing about abortion access in Kentucky? The die is cast, as it were, with superdupermajorities in the state House and Senate who can legislate however they want. It’s very possible that in the near future, the Supreme Court will strike down the constitutional right to an abortion, and Kentucky will become once again home to back alleys and wire hangers. We already have a trigger law in place outlawing the practice in Kentucky as soon as the Supreme Court rules.

On Tuesday, March 1, the House Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee, which for some strange reason now hears abortion bills instead of the Health and Family Services Committee (because Health members might be too touchy-feely?), approved House Bill 3, the new omnibus bill that does all kinds of things to make it even harder to get an abortion here. The bill takes special aim at MAB, medication that can cause an abortion very early on in a pregnancy, and is so safe and effective that it accounts for half of all abortions in Kentucky and was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to be sent through the mail directly to people’s homes.

Photo illustration from Deamstime

So why shout into the wind (again)? Well, I think it’s worth pointing out that Republicans are not the only ones who care about mothers and babies. The Kentucky House Democratic Women’s Caucus (again) has crafted a slate of maternal health bills, not one of which has been even assigned to committee.

They range from a sales tax exemption for breast pumps to bereavement leave in the case of a child’s death to Medicaid coverage for doulas. House Bill 37 would try to stem Kentucky’s horrific maternal mortality rates, including the fact that Black women die at more than double the rate of white women. According to the 2020 Maternal Mortality Report for Kentucky, in 2017, roughly 76 percent of all maternal deaths were preventable.

One exception is House Bill 174, which would extend Medicaid to new mothers for up to a year, which passed the House, and of course there are some Republicans, like Sen. Julie Raque Adams of Louisville, who have worked hard on issues affecting families.

But 16 bills from House Democrats would also address getting new mothers on Medicaid, postpartum depression, parental leave, and new rights for pregnant inmates. In other words, they are all trying to help the lives of mothers and babies in this state — actual people who are already here — in humane and holistic ways.

And let me say this again: None of these bills has been assigned to committee, which tells us that the majority party is not really that interested in doing anything but score political points.

There are two more bills that sit ignored in the Committee on Committees: House Bills 299 and 300 would require health-care plans to cover birth control before and immediately after a pregnancy. If I were worried about unwanted pregnancies, I’d be very interested in getting birth control to more people, but that is both logical and consistent, two words that don’t abound in Frankfort.

Despite what Republicans tell you, no one thinks abortion is grand or wonderful, but as many doctors will tell you, it can be an important part of women’s healthcare that should be between those women and their doctors. The fundamental hypocrisy of the GOP caring only about the unborn is alive and well. Sadly, it will probably be even more on display in the years to come. 

Linda Blackford writes columns and commentary for the Lexington Herald-Leader. She has covered K-12, higher education and other topics for the newspaper for the last 20 years.

State is almost out of the 'red zone' but still ranks 6th in nation, and many counties still have high coronavirus infection rates

Ky. Health News graph, from state data; click on it to enlarge.

By Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

Kentucky remains one of the states most affected by the coronavirus, even as most measures of the pandemic continue to decline.

The state reported 2,783 new cases of the virus Tuesday, lowering the seven-day average to 1,815, about half what it was nine days earlier. But its rate of new cases remained sixth in the nation, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data processed by The New York Times.

In Covid-19 hospital patients, now an official measurement of county-by-county risk, Kentucky ranks third, behind West Virginia and Georgia.

The state reported its seven-day infection rate as 26.5 daily cases per 100,000 residents, about half what it was eight days earlier -- and almost out of the "red zone" for areas with rates above 25 per 100,000, officially considered a high level of transmission.

Counties with rates more than double the statewide rate are Wolfe, 169.7; Perry, 158.6; Menifee, 132.1; Leslie, 92.6; Crittenden, 92.5; Wayne, 82.2; Knott, 76.2; Lee, 71.4; Lawrence, 67.2; Breathitt, 66.7; Martin, 66.4; Magoffin, 64.6; Letcher, 63.6; McCreary, 61.4; Elliott, 58.9; Floyd, 58.6; Owsley, 58.2; Morgan 58; Harlan, 54.4; Robertson, 54.2; and Rowan, 53.7.

The share of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus in the last seven days is 8.1%, less than half the percentage of two weeks ago.

Kentucky hospitals reported 917 patients with Covid-19, about a third fewer than a week ago, with 179 in intensive care and 102 on mechanical ventilation. 

While Covid-19 patients are still numerous, the disease has become much burdensome to hospitals. Only five of the 10 hospital regions reported more than 80% of their intensive-care beds in use. Northern Kentucky was at 100%, but only 4% of its intensive-care beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients.

The only rising measure of the pandemic in Kentucky is the most lagging indicator, Covid-19 deaths. The state attributed 44 more deaths to the disease Tuesday, raising the total to 13,900 and the seven-day average to 33.9 deaths per day. The 14-day average is 32.2 per day.

Gov. Andy Beshear's Facebook page said one of the new fatalities was only 27 years old. "The governor encouraged Kentuckians to get vaccinated and boosted to protect themselves and others," his page said.

Kentucky ranks 12th in deaths per 100,000 residents over the last 14 days, but almost all its border states rank higher: Ohio is No. 1; Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia are 3-4-5; and Missouri is No. 7.