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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced a tough grilling from House GOP lawmakers Tuesday over his handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes during the height of the pandemic.
Cuomo visited Capitol Hill for a closed-door interview with the House select subcommittee investigating the coronavirus pandemic.
Lawmakers zeroed in on a March 25, 2020, executive order by the governor that restricted nursing homes from refusing to admit or readmit residents "solely based on confirmed or suspect[ed] diagnosis of COVID-19."
A report releasedin March 2022 by the New York state comptroller found Cuomo's Health Department "was not transparent in its reporting of COVID-19deaths in nursing homes" and it "understated the number of deaths at nursing homes by as much as 50%" during some points of the pandemic.
CUOMO FINALLY FORCED TO TELL WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT COVID-19 DECISIONS THAT COST THOUSANDS OF LIVES
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, chairman of the COVID-19 select subcommittee, grilled former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo behind closed doors Tuesday. (Getty Images)
Cuomo has pushed back on these claims, insisting New Yorks health department was following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance issued by the Trump administration before Cuomos order.
A report releasedin March 2022 by the New York state comptroller found former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Health Department "was not transparent in its reporting of COVID-19deaths in nursing homes." (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
In his opening remarks, Cuomo said "any serious review must stop asking political questions and start asking fact-based ones." He pointed out that New York was "No. 39 in terms of pro rata nursing home deaths [despite the state] being ground zero for COVID."
He also accused the Trump administration of targeting Democrat-led states "despite both red and blue states issuing" the same guidelines.
GOP lawmakers held a post-hearing press conference at which they accused Cuomo of deflecting blame.
LIBERAL NY TIMES COLUMNIST ADMITS MEDIA, PUBLIC HEALTH WERE TOO DISMISSIVE ON LAB LEAK THEORY
"I felt like the governor was defensive throughout most of the day, often putting blame on other people rather than himself. [He] didnt seem to be taking a lot of responsibility for the things that were happening," Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said.
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., called Cuomo a "phony" and a "fraud" who "put our most vulnerable population at risk, resulting in the death of over 15,000 seniors.
"And it was Andrew Cuomo who covered it up," Lawler added. "It wasnt just the directive which was bad enough and idiotic and resulted in the death of the 15,000-plus seniors. It was Andrew Cuomo, for political purposes, who directed the state government to cover up the death toll."
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been accused of mishandling his state's response to COVID-19. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
GOP conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said Tuesday's deposition "was a step in delivering accountability and delivering long overdue answers to those families who are still mourning the loss of their loved ones."
Speaking to reporters after the deposition, Cuomo said the federal government was ultimately to blame for the severity of the pandemic.
"We have two very different opinions on what happened during COVID," Cuomo told a reporter. "I think the federal government failed this nation. And it was abysmal. How did COVID get to the U.S. in December and nobody knew? How did it take so many months before we had basic testing in place? How did we have a president running around saying, It's going to be gone when the weather gets warm?' who then admits to a reporter that he purposely downplayed it?"
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told Fox News Digital the governor "presented fact-based evidence that New York, at the end of the day, was the 39th state for pro rata in nursing home deaths in 2020 despite the fact that it started off the hardest hit."
"We worked day and night to protect New Yorkers and save lives even though the experts kept changing the facts on the ground. We were grappling with international PPE shortages and no national response," Azzopardi said. "The fact that this partisan farce was allowed to go on, and they continue telling their fact-less stories, especially in order to help their marginal members who werent even at the hearing, tells you what a joke this was."
Wenstrup subpoenaed Cuomo in March to appear before his committee. A letter accompanying the subpoena said Cuomo's testimony "is vital to our investigation into the effectiveness of federal guidance and regulations implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the protection of nursing home residents."
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"Further, this investigation may inform legislation to enhance the federal scientific guidance process, including the drafting, publication, and implementation of guidances originating from CMS or CDC," the letter said.
Fox News Digital's Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
New findings from a USsurveyfrom Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) scientists concludes that 6.9% of US adultsor almost 18 million adultshave ever had long COVID as of early 2023, confirming the results of previous surveys.
AHRQ fielded the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to a sample of 17,418 adults, which extrapolates to 259 million adults. The research was published late last week in JAMA.
A total of 8,275 respondents reported a history of COVID-19 infection, of whom 1,202 said they had long-COVID symptoms, extrapolating to 17.8 million (6.9%) of all Americans.
Across age-groups, women were more likely than men to report having long COVID (8.6% vs 5.1%). Young and older adults were less likely than adults aged 35 to 64 years to report long COVID, which the authors said may be due to younger people's generally better health and high rates of COVID-19 vaccination and low COVID-19 rates among older people.
These findings support the CDCs definitionthat long COVID 'represents many potentially overlapping entities, likely with different biological causes and different sets of risk factors and outcomes.'
White and Hispanic adults had higher rates of long COVID than Black and Asian adults. Asians had the lowest long-COVID rate and the highest rate of COVID-19 booster receipt. Black respondents had the second-lowest incidence of both COVID-19 and long COVID.
Recipients of COVID-19 boosters reported lower rates of long COVID (5.8%) than those who had received only the primary vaccine series (8.7%) or had never been vaccinated (8.4%). "These findings suggest that booster shots may enhance protection against long COVID, possibly because booster shots reduce the risk of severe COVID-19," the study authors wrote. "MEPS did not find that booster shots were associated with a reduced risk of having had COVID-19 in general."
Long-COVID rates didn't differ significantly by household income level. Respondents who had certain chronic conditions, including obesity, reported higher long-COVID rates than other adults, with those with emphysema or chronic bronchitis reporting the highest rates (14% and 17%, respectively).
The results were comparable to those of the 2022 National Health Interview Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which found long-COVID rates of 6.9% and 6.4%, respectively, the researchers noted.
"These findings support the CDCs definitionthat long COVID 'represents many potentially overlapping entities, likely with different biological causes and different sets of risk factors and outcomes,'" they concluded.
Visivasnc / iStock
A new study today in JAMA Network Open shows that pediatric hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) doubled during the 2022-2023 season compared to the prior year.
The population-based cohort study of children aged 5 years and younger in Ontario, Canada, looked at hospitalization and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions for RSV from July 1, 2017, through March 31, 2023.
On average, 700,000 children per study year were included. Though the 2021-2022 season peaked a bit earlier than prepandemic seasons, the number of hospitalizations was similar, at 289.1 per 100,000 children in 2021-2022, compared to 281.4 to 334.6 per 100,000 in 2017 through 2020.
In 2022-2023, however, RSV season peaked a month earlier and resulted in more than twice as many hospitalizations (770.0 per 100000).
The RSV hospitalizations also led to more ICU admissions.
The proportion of children admitted to an ICU in 2022-2023 (13.9%) was slightly higher than prepandemic (9.6%-11.4%); however, the population-based rate was triple the prepandemic levels (106.9 vs 27.6-36.6 per 100000 children in Ontario)," the authors said.
The rate of mechanical ventilation use was also two- to three-fold higher in 2022-2023 compared with prepandemic years, the authors said.
During 2020 and 2021, cases of RSV dropped as COVID-19 mitigation measures, including masking and school closures, halted transmission of RSV. In Ontario, only 11 RSV hospitalizations and seven ICU admissions occurred during the 2020-2021 season. But in 2022-2023, a resurgence was seen as RSV, flu, and COVID-19 all co-circulated with most mitigation efforts removed.
The unexpected and widespread influences on seasonal respiratory viruses that followed the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need for ongoing research.
"The unexpected and widespread influences on seasonal respiratory viruses that followed the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need for ongoing research to understand the impact of pandemic mitigation measures and the unique factors of transmission for common pathogens to ensure societies are better prepared to respond to future pandemics," the authors concluded.
WASHINGTON (WSTM-WTVH) Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill, testifying about how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been accused of misrepresenting the number of deaths reported inside state nursing homes during the pandemic.
Cuomo was peppered with questions from reporters as he walked into the closed interview with the Oversight Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo maintains New York committed no wrongdoing following investigations by the Department of Justice.
Cuomo was the face of New York's response to the pandemic at its height in the spring of 2020 when the virus ravaged the country and hit New York particularly hard.
Tuesday, Congressional Republicans grilled Cuomo about the March 2020 advisory which barred New York nursing homes from rejecting patients who tested positive for COVID-19. Some people say they lost family members because of the policy.
Cuomo aimed to defend himself from accusations the nursing home directive led to the needless death of nursing home patients.
The former governor insists the state followed directives issued by the Trump administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] and CDC did very extensive instructive guidance," he said, "and the investigations say New York followed the federal guidance."
Cuomo also claimed there are "two very different opinions on what happened during COVID," saying New York performed well, but not the federal government.
The former governor called the criticism purely political, saying only blue states were investigated and not red states, which issued the same directives.
"It's ironic today that you hear complaints about the weaponization of the justice system, when they nuclearized the justice system against Democratic states," he insisted.
Republican representatives Claudia Tenney and Elise Stefanik of New York criticized Cuomo on social media on the eve of his testimony.
Four years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, state health officials are closing the last remaining COVID-19 community testing sites.
The Georgia Department of Public Health announced this week that the sites will close at the end of the month.
Theyve largely been replaced by kiosks that dispense testing kits for both COVID-19 and influenza.
A map of kiosk locations can be found at DPH.Georgia.gov/CovidTesting.
Free test kits are also available statewide at county health departments.
Using the popular COVID antiviral Paxlovid failed to significantly improve symptoms in 155 patients experiencing moderate to severe long COVID, according to a study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The findings are part of the STOP-PASC trial, and the study was conducted at Stanford University from November 2022 to September 2023. All enrollees reported at least 3 months of postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) symptoms.
The participants were randomized at a rate of 2:1 to treatment with oral nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) or with placebo twice daily for 15 days. Paxlovid is given as a 5-day course of pills during acute COVID-19 infections to prevent disease progression in those at risk of moderate to severe complications from the virus.
Some recent studies have suggested that using the antiviral during the acute phase of infection lowered risk of later developing long COVID. This is the first known study to formally look at Paxlovid as a treatment in patients with established long COVID.
The average age of participants was 42 years, and 153 of 155 reported having the primary COVID-19 vaccine series. The mean time between index SARS-CoV-2 infection and randomization was 17.5 months. Of the long-COVID patients, 102 received Paxlovid.
At 10 weeks post-intervention, participants were assessed on six main areas of long-COVID symptoms: fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, body aches, gastrointestinal symptoms, and cardiovascular symptoms. Participants were asked to rate the severity of each symptom in the past 7 days.
Although a 15-day course of Paxlovid was found to be safe, it didn't demonstrate a significant benefit in improving symptoms.
"Considering the 6 core symptoms together (fatigue, brain fog, body aches, cardiovascular symptoms, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal symptoms), there was no statistically significant difference in the pooled symptom severity," the authors said.
There was no statistically significant difference in the pooled symptom severity
Measurements of secondary outcomes, including a 1-minute sit-to-stand test and orthostatic vital signs, also showed no significant differences between the groups from baseline to 10 weeks.
"With the urgent need to find therapies for PASC, exploratory studies such as ours have pushed forward to simultaneously assess efficacy and safety while investigating biomarkers. We underscore the need to establish validated clinical and biological end points for PASC," the authors concluded.
The so-called Blue Economy of 10 marine- and ocean-sector industries continued to grow out of the Covid-19 pandemic despite massive disruptions to the broader economy, according to statistics recently released by NOAA and the Bureau of Economic Affairs.
Marine activities accounted for $476 billion in economic impact in 2022 and generated $777 billion in sales, according to the annual Marine Economy Satellite Account. Thats a 1.8 percent increase from 2021. Marine sector employment was up 5 percent over the previous year, to 2.4 million jobs, outpacing the national economy.
The marine living resources sector, which includes commercial seafood harvest, processing and sales, as well as aquaculture and marine-based pharmaceuticals, was down 6.7 percent from 2021, to $31 billion, but well above 2020 levels.
These figures show how essential the Blue Economy is to American prosperity, NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement Friday. The ocean and the Great Lakes are integral to the overall health of Americas economy, and they impact our lives in numerous ways.
Cuomo says New Yorkers 'should be very proud' on COVID-19, but 'federal government failed'
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., said there are "two very different opinions on what happened during COVID," June 11, 2024. (Pool via CNN Newsource)
WASHINGTON (WSTM-WTVH)
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill, testifying about how he handled the COVID-19 pandemic. He has been accused of misrepresenting the number of deaths reported inside state nursing homes during the pandemic.
Cuomo was peppered with questions from reporters as he walked into the closed interview with the Oversight Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo maintains New York committed no wrongdoing following investigations by the Department of Justice.
Cuomo was the face of New York's response to the pandemic at its height in the spring of 2020 when the virus ravaged the country and hit New York particularly hard.
Tuesday, Congressional Republicans grilled Cuomo about the March 2020 advisory which barred New York nursing homes from rejecting patients who tested positive for COVID-19. Some people say they lost family members because of the policy.
Cuomo aimed to defend himself from accusations the nursing home directive led to the needless death of nursing home patients.
The former governor insists the state followed directives issued by the Trump administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Former%20Gov.%20Andrew%20Cuomo,%20D-N.Y.:%20%E2%80%9CNew%20Yorkers%20did%20a,%20in%20my%20opinion,%20a%20great%20job%20should%20be%20very%20proud%20of%20what%20they%20did%20because%20the%20results%20matter,%E2%80%9D%20June%2011,%202024.%20(Pool%20via%20CNN%20Newsource)
"CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] and CDC did very extensive instructive guidance," he said, "and the investigations say New York followed the federal guidance."
Former%20Gov.%20Andrew%20Cuomo,%20D-N.Y.:%20%E2%80%9CI%20think%20the%20federal%20government%20failed%20this%20nation%20and%20it%20was%20abysmal,%E2%80%9D%20June%2011,%202024.%20(Pool%20via%20CNN%20Newsource)
Cuomo also claimed there are "two very different opinions on what happened during COVID," saying New York performed well, but not the federal government.
Former%20Gov.%20Andrew%20Cuomo,%20D-N.Y.:%20%E2%80%9CWe%20needed%20the%20federal%20government%20to%20actually%20act,%E2%80%9D%20June%2011,%202024.%20(Pool%20via%20CNN%20Newsource)
The former governor called the criticism purely political, saying only blue states were investigated and not red states, which issued the same directives.
"It's ironic today that you hear complaints about the weaponization of the justice system, when they nuclearized the justice system against Democratic states," he insisted.
Republican representatives Claudia Tenney and Elise Stefanik of New York criticized Cuomo on social media on the eve of his testimony.
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Pediatric patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 or the related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) experience new neurologic problems and/or impaired function at rates of 18.0% and 24.8%, respectively, an international group of researchers suggests inJAMA Network Open.
In a secondary analysis of the Global Consortium Study of Neurologic Dysfunction in COVID-19 study, investigatorsstudied the rates of newsevere neurologic conditions among 3,568 COVID-19 or MIS-C patients younger than 18 years hospitalized from January 2020 to July 2021 at 46 centers in 10 countries. The Pediatric Cerebral Performance Category scale was used to define new neurocognitive disorders, and the Functional Status Scale determined functional impairment.
The median patient age was 8 years, 45.6% were girls, 42.5% had no underlying condition, 23.0% were Black, 28.7% were Hispanic, 63.6% were non-Hispanic, 54.0% were White, and 24.9% were another race.
"Children with the SARS-CoV-2related condition multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) often require critical care due to multisystem organ dysfunction, with high survival rates but with risk of postcritical illness sequelae," the researchers wrote. "In particular, neurological manifestations of pediatric SARS-CoV-2related conditions have been associated with morbidity and mortality in prior studies."
Most patients (83.5%) had severe COVID-19, and 16.5% had MIS-C.Of the patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19, 18% had a serious neurologic condition, as did 24.8% of those with MIS-C. COVID-19 patients with serious neurologic disease were more likely than those without such a condition to have new neurocognitive disease or functional impairment at hospital release (27.7% vs 14.6%).
The most common new neurocognitive disorders or functional impairments in COVID-19 patients were acute encephalopathy (brain dysfunction; 61.9%), seizures or status epilepticus (40.7%), and delirium and coma (7.5%). Among MIS-C patients,acute encephalopathy (76.0%), delirium (11.6%), dysautonomia (disrupted autonomic nervous system;10.9%), and seizures or status epilepticus (9.6%) were most common.
A total of 28.0% of MIS-C patients with severe neurologic illness or functional impairment at hospital release had new neurocognitive manifestations and/or impaired function, compared with 15.5% without serious neurologic problems.
Future studies should aim to better understand the pathophysiology behind the severe neurological manifestations and to investigate the role of surveillance, treatment, and follow-up of these patients with high risk of neurocognitive and/or functional morbidities.
COVID-19 patients with severe neurologic disorders were less likely to be Hispanic (26.7% vs 30.4%), more likely to have at least one chronic condition (46.6% vs 32.5%), and more likely to have a preexisting neurologic condition (45.7% vs 16.3%) than those without a severe neurologic disorder. Similarly, patients with MIS-C and a severe neurologic condition were more likely to have a preexisting neurologic condition than those without severe neurologic manifestations (11.6% vs 5.9%).
After adjustment, among patients with severe neurologic problems, those with acute COVID-19 infection and those with MIS-C were more likely to have new neurocognitive and/or functional impairment at hospital release (odds ratios, 1.85 and 2.18, respectively).
Of COVID-19 patients with severe neurologic conditions, 4.8% died in the hospital, compared with 0.3% of those without such conditions.Similarly, among MIS-C patients, those with severe neurologic disorders had a much higher in-hospital death rate (4.9%) than those without such a disorder (0.5%). COVID-19 and MIS-C survivors with severe neurologic problems were also more likely to need physical and occupational therapy and rehabilitation consultations.
"The results of this study suggest that children and adolescents with acute SARS-CoV-2 or MIS-C and severe neurological manifestations may be at high risk for long-term impairment and may benefit from screening and early intervention to assist recovery," the study authors wrote."Future studies should aim to better understand the pathophysiology behind the severe neurological manifestations and to investigate the role of surveillance, treatment, and follow-up of these patients with high risk of neurocognitive and/or functional morbidities."
In a relatedcommentary, Michael Wolf, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the study highlights the critical need for neurologic monitoring in hospitalized children with COVID-19 or MIS-C.
"As Francoeur et alobserve and emphasize, patients younger than 18 years with new functional and neurocognitive impairments require resource-intensive multidisciplinary care before and after hospital discharge," he wrote. "While programs for structured follow-up are uncommon, there exists a growing focus on long-term, patient-centered outcomes for children recovering from critical illness."
"Lessons learned from large cohorts of patients with sepsis, acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, MIS-C, and other systemic illnesses should deepen clinicians' appreciation of the links between short-term disease manifestations and long-term consequences for the most vulnerable pediatric patients," he added.
NEW YORK -- The mysterious death of a man in Mexico who had one kind of bird flu is unrelated to outbreaks of a different type at U.S. dairy farms, experts say.
Heres a look at the case and the different types of bird flu.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MEXICO BIRD FLU CASE?
A 59-year-old man in Mexico who had been bedridden because of chronic health problems developed a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea in April. He died a week later, and the World Health Organization this week reported it.
The WHO said it was the first time that version of bird flu H5N2 had been seen in a person.
WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING IN THE U.S. WITH BIRD FLU?
A different version of bird flu H5N1 has been infecting poultry flocks over the last several years, leading to millions of birds being culled. It also has been spreading among all different kinds of animals around the world.
This year, that flu was detected in U.S. dairy farms. Dozens of herd have seen infections, most recently in Iowa and Minnesota.
The cow outbreak has been tied to three reported illnesses in farmworkers, one in Texas and two in Michigan. Each had only mild symptoms.
WHAT'S DO THE LETTERS AND NUMBERS MEAN IN BIRD FLU NAMES?
So-called influenza A viruses are the only viruses tied to human flu pandemics, so their appearance in animals and people is a concern. These viruses are divided into subtypes based on what kinds of proteins they have on their surface hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N).
Scientists say there are 18 different H subtypes and 11 different N subtypes, and they appear in scores of combinations. H1N1 and H3N2 are common causes of seasonal flu among humans. There are many versions seen in animals as well.
H5N1, the version that has worried some U.S. scientists lately, historically has been seen mainly in birds, but has in recent years has spread to a wide variety of mammals.
WHAT IS H5N2?
H5N2 has long been seen in Mexican poultry, and farms vaccinate against it.
It's also no stranger to the United States. An H5N2 outbreak hit a flock of 7,000 chickens in south-central Texas in 2004, the first time in two decades a dangerous-to-poultry avian flu appeared in the U.S.
H5N2 also was mainly responsible for a wave outbreaks at U.S. commercial poultry farms in 2014 and 2015.
HOW DANGEROUS IS H5N2?
Over the years, H5N2 has teetered between being considered a mild threat to birds and a severe threat, but it hasn't been considered much of a human threat at all.
A decade ago, researchers used mice and ferrets to study the strain afflicting U.S. poultry at the time, and concluded it was less likely to spread and less lethal than H5N1. Officials also said there was no evidence it was spreading among people.
Rare cases of animal infections are reported each year, so it's not unexpected that a person was diagnosed with H5N2.
"If youre a glass half full kind of person, youd say, This is the system doing exactly what its supposed to do: detecting and documenting these rare human infections, where years ago we were stumbling in the dark, said Matthew Ferrari, director of Penn State's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.
Indeed, Mexico Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer said kidney and respiratory failure not the virus actually caused the man's death.
Some experts said it is noteworthy that it's not known how he caught the man caught H5N2.
The fact there was no reported contact (with an infected bird) does raise the possibility that he was infected by someone else who visited him, but its premature to jump to those conclusions, said Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER TYPES OF BIRD FLU?
At this point, H5N2 is still considered a minor threat compared to some of the other kinds of bird flu out there. Most human illnesses have been attributed to H7N9, H5N6 and H5N1 bird flu viruses.
From early 2013 through October 2017, five outbreaks of H7N9 were blamed for killing more than 600 people in China. And at least 18 people in China died during an outbreak of H5N6 in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
H5N1 was first identified in 1959, but didn't really began to worry health officials until a Hong Kong outbreak in 1997 that involved severe human illnesses and deaths.
H5N1 cases have continued since then, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected animals. Globally, more than 460 human deaths have been identified since 2003, according to WHO statistics that suggest it can kill as many as half of the people reported to be infected.
Like other viruses, H5N1 as evolved over time, spawning newer versions of itself. In the last few years, the predominant version of the virus has spread quickly among a wide range of animals, but counts of human fatalities have slowed.
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Associated Press writer Mara Verza in Mexico City contributed to this story.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
