US health departments experience workforce shortages and struggle to reach adequate staffing levels in public health

Gaps persist in hiring enough U.S. public health workers, and health departments continue to face challenges in recruiting new employees, according to a new study by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Indiana University. Insufficient funding, a shortage of people with public health training, and a lack of visibility for public careers, in addition to lengthy hiring processes, are cited as barriers contributing to an absence of progress for achieving a satisfactory level of workers. The results are published in Health Affairs.

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Mayo Clinic must face religious bias claims over COVID vaccine policy, court rules A U.S. appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit accusing the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota of illegally firing five employees who refused on religious grounds to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or be regularly tested for the virus. Daniel Wiessner Reuters

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Long-COVID codes in health record may dramatically underestimate its prevalence Long COVID is likely much more prevalent than indicated in electronic health record (EHR) diagnostic or referral codes, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine researchers report in eClinicalMedicine. CIDRAP

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Study: Before vaccines, 44% of COVID-19 patients in ICU died A new analysis of pre-vaccine data from scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that 18% of hospitalized patients and 44% of those admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) for COVID-19 died, with wide variations among different groups.  CIDRAP

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Before the mid-December 2020 introduction of COVID-19 vaccines, the pandemic caused approximately 480,000 hospitalizations, and 350,000 deaths in the United States.

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