By Andy Miller and Rebecca Grapevine Lorna DeLoach and her husband were diagnosed with COVID-19 a week ago. “I’m just taking it day by day,’’ she said Wednesday while battling a fever. “I’ve got some secondary infection going on.’’ DeLoach, 56, believes she was infected with COVID while performing her duties as the probate court…
As COVID-19 spread last year, sales of hand sanitizers skyrocketed, with consumers and businesses trying to prevent infection. Also soaring were sanitizer-related calls to the Georgia Poison Center. Here and nationally, more kids than usual have been ingesting these fluids, which are typically alcohol-based. The state saw a 60 percent increase in poisoning calls related…
It’s not just the actual infections that have altered the medical landscape in Cook County. The COVID-19 pandemic has produced many more people with depression and anxiety, says Dr. Jairaj Goberdhan, a family physician in the South Georgia county. “I have written more prescriptions for that,’’ he says, adding, “I have written more sleep aid…
Matt Gaffney had trouble living in a group home for people with disabilities like himself. He’s nonverbal and suffers from multiple conditions: severe autism, bipolar disorder, chronic gastrointestinal issues. In group homes, Matt, now 42, had his medications ‘‘raised to higher levels,’’ says Sue Gaffney, his mother. And she adds that his last group home…
By Katja Ridderbusch When Randall Hampton got his first dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine in mid-January, he asked the nurse to give him the booster shot right away. “But they wouldn’t do it,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “They wanted me to come back three weeks later.” (As eager as he was, the wait is…
By Alicia Thompson McBride In nine years of teaching English to teenagers, I thought I had heard it all – until essays from a writing assignment revealed the secret lives of my students. Their papers opened my eyes to the psychological traumas that plague their lives – pressures that COVID-19 is exponentially magnifying. A year…
By Brenda Goodman and Andy Miller Brenda Goodman is a senior news writer for WebMD. Andy Miller is editor of Georgia Health News. This article first appeared in WebMD. After 10 months of masks, social distancing, virtual school, fear for vulnerable loved ones, and loneliness, this is the news no one wanted to hear: The virus…
The impact of COVID-19 overwhelmed the news cycle – and public discussion — during 2020. That’s why it’s difficult to include any other topics in our annual Top 10 Georgia health care stories of the year. Nevertheless, we put COVID-related stories in our first five slots. It very well could have been all 10. Here’s…
When Maya put paint chips in her mouth, her mother instantly knew the danger. Sarah Tuck recognized that their Savannah rental home, built 100 years ago, could contain lead. So she got Maya tested through a doctor’s office. The reading for Maya when she was about a year old was a disturbing 18 micrograms of…
A pandemic can easily skew the trajectory of health statistics. Amid this year’s long COVID-19 crisis, things may actually have improved in a couple of health categories, such as a higher number of people using telehealth services. But many categories are likely to have worsened – and some dramatically. The United Health Foundation released its…