An informed guide to the pandemic, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment. |
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 | | The New York Times |
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“A surge on top of a surge” |
The holidays were not kind to California. New infections in the state have skyrocketed — driven by Thanksgiving gatherings and then Christmas festivities — despite weekslong lockdowns in December throughout much of the state. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is warning of “a surge on top of a surge” linked to the holidays that will only get worse in the coming weeks. |
More inoculations would help ease California’s burden, but as with the rest of the country, the vaccine rollout in California has been sluggish, with only about a third of the state’s 1.3 million doses reaching the arms of patients. Worryingly, at least six people in the state have been found to have been infected with the new, more transmissible variant of the virus. |
There has been some progress. Infection rates appear to have stabilized in recent days, but reporting anomalies tied to the holidays mean that it may be another week before we have a solid understand of how much the virus has recently spread. |
Even if infection rates slow, my colleague Shawn Hubler, who covers California, said officials were bracing for a harrowing month, and asking an already exhausted population to hunker down until this latest surge passed. |
“There are many more people who are obeying the law, than not,” Shawn said. “But it’s still not enough.” |
Suing patients for unpaid bills |
When the coronavirus arrived in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered state-run hospitals to stop suing patients over unpaid medical bills. Almost every major private hospital in the state voluntarily followed suit, except Northwell Health, the state’s largest health system. |
My colleague Brian Rosenthal, an investigative reporter, found that the nonprofit health system, which operates 23 hospitals, sued more than 2,500 patients last year, for an average bill of $1,700, plus large interest payments. The flurry of lawsuits hit teachers, construction workers, grocery store employees and others at a time of widespread unemployment. |
Across the state, Brian found that around 50 hospitals have sued about 5,000 patients since March, but Northwell stands out for its aggressive number of lawsuits and because of its connections to Mr. Cuomo. Northwell’s chief executive officer, Michael Dowling, has been a close friend to Mr. Cuomo for more than three decades and has served as the governor’s closest ally in the hospital industry during the pandemic. |
Medical debt lawsuits are becoming more common across the country, as health care costs have risen and insurance companies push more of the financial burden onto patients. These cases are rarely contested in court, and they usually lead to default judgments that allow hospitals to garnish wages and freeze accounts to extract money, sometimes without the patient’s knowledge. |
What else we’re following |
Coping? I’ve been staying home for eight months. I’m no longer coping. I’m merely surviving, day after day. I always wake up angry, go to bed angry. I can’t take it anymore. It’s come to the point I simply do not care anymore whether I get sick or not. I just really want to go out and see people, socialize. The only reason I don’t is because I live with my father, and I couldn’t get myself to put him in harm’s way. Still, this fix has been far worse than the problem, in my experience, since Day 1. — Gabriel Luciano Oliveira Mattos, Aracaju, Brazil |
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| Carole Landry contributed to today’s newsletter. |
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