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Red Cross Offers Chance to Win Super Bowl 2022 Tickets Amid Blood Shortage

  Red Cross Offers Chance to Win Super Bowl 2022 Tickets Amid Blood Shortage Jan. 13, 2022 -- The American Red Cross is hoping to entice blood donors this month by offering a chance to win tickets to Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles or a home theater package, according to The Wall Street Journal. The nonprofit, which provides 40% of the country’s blood, said supply is at historically low levels. With a 10% overall decline in people giving blood during the pandemic and a 60% drop in blood drives at schools and colleges, this marks the worst blood shortage in more than a decade. “The crisis is so severe that we are having to limit the amount of blood that can be sent to hospitals,” Emily Coberly, MD, Red Cross divisional medical director, told the newspaper. Low blood supply can affect patient care, which is particularly urgent during the ongoing pandemic. Coberly said she has seen multiple examples of people with cancer who couldn’t receive transfusions on their scheduled treatment days. “
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Why Getting COVID on Purpose Is a Dangerous Idea

  Why Getting COVID on Purpose Is a Dangerous Idea Jan. 13, 2022 -- As COVID-19 cases from Omicron in the United States have skyrocketed to what seems like new records every other day, speculation is rising among some experts and scientific novices alike that infection for many seems unavoidable. MORE FROM THE WEBMD NEWSROOMl Asthma, Pneumonia and Other Lung Diseases Explained Symptoms of Coronavirus What Happens When You Get Coronavirus? In a Senate hearing Tuesday, acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, even told the panel, "most people are going to get COVID." In mid-December, World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said vaccines alone won't protect us against Omicron. In late December, an epidemiologist told BBC News: "We have to be realistic; we are not going to stop Omicron." Now, posts are popping up on social media resurrecting ideas similar to chickenpox parties, where you intentionally mingle with infected people. One r
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United Airlines Says 3,000 Employees Tested Positive

  United Airlines Says 3,000 Employees Tested Positive Jan. 13, 2022 - United Airlines is responding to the surge in COVID cases by cutting an unspecified number of flights to "make sure we have the staffing and resources to take care of our customers," company CEO Scott Kirby said in a memo to employees, USA Today reported. Kirby said 3,000 of the airline’s employees in the United States – about 4.5% of the workforce – have tested positive for COVID. During the holiday travel rush, about a third of United employees in Newark, N.J., called in sick on a single day. Newark Liberty International is one of United’s hubs. “Our frontline teams continue to put in a tremendous effort during what I know is an incredibly challenging and stressful time – the omicron surge has put a strain on our operation, resulting in customer disruptions during a busy holiday season,” Kirby said in the memo, according to USA Today. Flight tracker FlightAware said United canceled 149 flights on Tuesday
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Omicron Surge Pushing Health Care System to Limit

  Omicron Surge Pushing Health Care System to Limit Jan. 14, 2022 -- The U.S. health care industry was already stretched thin by two years of the COVID-19 pandemic when the Omicron variant struck. As hospitals fill with patients again, experts and workers say damage to the industry may be long-lasting. “It has exploded. We’re in a crisis, red-tier situation again,” Denise Duncan, a registered nurse and president of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, told NBC News. Doctors and other health care professionals are overworked and continually face the threat of being infected themselves. Some are quitting or changing their jobs, causing staffing shortages in already overburdened medical facilities. “Everyone is quitting, the nurses especially, and a lot of doctors are retiring,” a Pennsylvania physician who asked not to be named told NBC News. “I’m going back into fellowship because as a hospitalist everything is your responsibility and when pat
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Track how full ICUs are with Covid patients across the U.S.

 Maps: Track how full ICUs are with Covid patients across the U.S. In Maryland, Covid patients are now filling 42 percent of the state’s adult intensive care unit beds, the highest rate in the nation. In Connecticut, 32 percent of adult ICU beds are filled with Covid patients, more than double the rate four weeks ago. These are just two states where the share of Covid patients in ICUs are growing, and ICUs report that more than 80 percent of their beds are in use, a pandemic record. As of Wednesday, the share of ICU beds given to adult patients with Covid had increased in three-fourths of the country, as more people require aid in highly stressed critical care facilities, according to an NBC News analysis of data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Hospital ICU stress, a measure designed to help hospitals plan and manage their surge capacity, was a concept introduced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The
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Critics call to end three-month celibacy requirement for gay, bisexual men amid blood shortage

 Critics call to end three-month celibacy requirement for gay, bisexual men amid blood shortage Amid a national blood shortage, LGBTQ advocates and more than two dozen members of Congress are calling on the Food and Drug Administration to further ease donor restrictions on sexually active gay and bisexual men. To be eligible to donate blood in the United States, men who have sex with men must abstain from same-sex sexual activity for 90 days. The limitations have long been criticized as discriminatory by advocates and seen by many in the medical community as unnecessarily obstructive to the nation’s crucial blood supply. The chorus of criticism intensified this week after the Red Cross declared on Tuesday that the recent surge in Covid-19 cases had fueled the “worst blood shortage in more than a decade.” “This is a crisis of the FDA’s own making,” said Jay Franzone, an LGBTQ advocate who remained abstinent for a year to donate blood in January 2017, abiding by former and more stringent
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A virus, a party and a lockdown: Why Boris Johnson’s luck may have just run out

 A virus, a party and a lockdown: Why Boris Johnson’s luck may have just run out LONDON — Could this actually be it for Boris Johnson? The prime minister faced the fight of his career Thursday after his qualified apology for flouting Covid regulations imposed by his government failed to quiet whispers about a mutiny within his own Conservative Party. On Wednesday, Johnson told a packed House of Commons that he was sorry for attending the May 20, 2020, party at No. 10 Downing St., but that he “believed implicitly that this was a work event.” This statement prompted laughter and jeers in the chamber. Johnson had finally admitted to attending the “bring your own booze” party with dozens of staff members in the garden of his residence and office. The event was held during a strict government lockdown that meant Britons were only allowed to meet one other person from outside their household, while schools, pubs and nonessential shops were closed. “The prime minister’s position has become or
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