The British government is facing a Thursday afternoon deadline to hand over a sheaf of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s personal messages to the country’s COVID-19 pandemic inquiry — or face legal action from a probe that Johnson himself set up.
The notebooks, diaries and WhatsApp messages between Johnson and other officials form key evidence that the head of the probe, retired judge Heather Hallett, wants to see.
But the government is worried about the precedent that disclosing Johnson’s full, unredacted conversations might set. It has handed over incomplete versions, saying it cut personal and private information that was not relevant to the investigation.
Hallett, however, said “the entire contents of the specified documents are of potential relevance to the lines of investigation being pursued by the inquiry.”
Hallett — who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath — set a deadline of 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) Thursday for the government to hand over the documents, covering a two-year period from early 2020.
The issue has caused tension between Johnson and the current government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, which claimed this week that it did not have the material Hallett wanted.
On Wednesday, Johnson’s office said the former prime minister had given the government all the material and urged authorities to hand it to the inquiry.
The U.K. has recorded more than 200,000 deaths among people testing positive for COVID-19, one of the highest tolls in Europe, and the decisions of Johnson’s government have been endlessly debated. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold an inquiry after pressure from bereaved families.
Hallett’s inquiry is due to investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded and whether the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better.” Public hearings are scheduled to start June 13, and Johnson is among the senior officials due to give evidence.
U.S. births were flat last year, as the nation saw fewer babies born than it did before the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.
Births to moms 35 and older continued to rise, with the highest rates in that age group since the 1960s. But those gains were offset by record-low birth rates to moms in their teens and early 20s, the CDC found. Its report is based on a review of more than 99% of birth certificates issued last year.
A little under 3.7 million babies were born in the U.S. last year, about 3,000 fewer than the year before. Because the numbers are provisional and the change was small, officials consider births to have been “kind of level from the previous year,” said the CDC’s Brady Hamilton, the lead author of the report.
— The highest birth rates continue to be see in women in their early 30s. The number of births for women that age was basically unchanged from the year before. Births were down slightly for women in their late 20s, who have the second-highest birth rate.
— Births to Hispanic moms rose 6% last year and surpassed 25% of the U.S. total. Births to white moms fell 3%, but still accounted for 50% of births. Births to Black moms fell 1%, and were 14% of the total.
— The cesarean section birth rate rose slightly, to 32.2% of births. That’s the highest it’s been since 2014. Some experts worry that C-sections are done more often than medically necessary.
— The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it’s been sliding, and in 2020 dropped to about 1.6, the lowest rate on record. It rose slightly in 2021, to nearly 1.7, and stayed there last year.
More complete and detailed 2022 numbers are expected later this year. That data should offer a better understanding of what happened in individual states and among different racial and ethnic groups, Hamilton said.
It also may show whether births were affected by the U.S. Supreme Court decision last June overturning Roe v. Wade, which allowed states to ban or restrict abortion. Experts estimate that nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, so limits to abortion access could affect the number of births.
If such restrictions are having an affect on births, it didn’t show up in the national data released Thursday.
It’s possible the abortion restrictions will lead to higher births rates in 2023 — more likely among younger women than older moms, said Ushma Upadhyay, a reproductive health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. But even if there is a rise, it may not bring the nation back to pre-pandemic birth levels, given other trends, she added.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever get back there,” she said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A former Connecticut state representative was sentenced to 27 months in prison on Wednesday for stealing more than $1.2 million from the city of West Haven — most of it in federal coronavirus-related aid — and using a good chunk of it to fuel his gambling addiction.
“I stole that money. That is on me,” Michael DiMassa said as he apologized during his sentencing before Judge Omar Williams.
“It’s hard to find the word to express how I feel. I feel ashamed, embarrassed, mortified,” the West Haven Democrat said.
DiMassa, 32, had asked for leniency. He could have gotten more than four years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. He was ordered to report to prison on July 31 and remains free on bond.
“Mr. DiMassa suffered from a debilitating gambling addiction at the time of the offense,” his lawyer, John Gulash, wrote in a court filing, “and his essentially unfettered access to a deep pool of federal funds and total lack of impulse control facilitated his precipitous downward spiral.”
The lawyer compared DiMassa to Howard Ratner, the gambler played by Adam Sandler in the movie “Uncut Gems.” He said he bet on things as frivolous as how long the national anthem would take to perform at the Super Bowl, or what color Gatorade would be poured on the winning coach.
He did much of his gambling and betting at the Mohegan Sun casino in eastern Connecticut.
At the time of the thefts, which began in mid-2020, DiMassa was both a state representative and an aide to the West Haven City Council, with authority to approve reimbursements for coronavirus-related expenses. He pleaded guilty in November to three counts of wire fraud conspiracy, admitting that he and others billed West Haven for legal, lobbying and consulting services that were never provided.
DiMassa and a business partner, John Bernardo, also a former West Haven city employee, pilfered nearly $637,000, prosecutors said.
Bernardo pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 13 months in prison in March.
In a second scheme, DiMassa and another business owner, John Trasacco, conspired to submit fraudulent invoices from Trasacco’s companies to the city, netting nearly $432,000 in COVID-19 aid. Nearly all of that went to Trasacco, who was sentenced to eight years in prison in March after a jury convicted him of fraud.
The final conspiracy involved DiMassa and his wife, Lauren DiMassa, and the theft of nearly $148,000, authorities said. The couple submitted phony requests for payments by the city related to a youth violence prevention program. Those pilfered funds were not federal coronavirus aid.
Lauren DiMassa, who is pregnant with the couple’s second child, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced in March to six months in prison. She recently reported to prison.
In addition to his prison sentence, Michael DiMassa was ordered to pay nearly $866,000 in restitution to the city of West Haven. His codefendants were ordered to pay restitution to make up the rest of the stolen money.
“The defendant was a public official elected to serve his constituents,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing documents. “Instead, he completely betrayed that trust by stealing public funds for his own benefit.”
DiMassa resigned from the Legislature and the city of West Haven after his arrest in 2021.
He had cited several reasons for leniency including his lack of any previous criminal record, his testicular cancer and being able to care for his children.
The report shows that a study by Florida Atlantic University found that the Sargassum seaweed clump has been carrying floating plastics that hold the bacteria.
The bacteria — identified by researches as Vibrio bacteria — can cause infections if exposed to open wounds, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. An “open wound” can include those from piercings, tattoos or recent surgery, among others.
The bacteria is especially common in brackish water, a combination of fresh and salt water that is found along Florida’s beaches, the CDC explained.
Infected wounds may also become necrotic, meaning that the flesh around the wound will end up dying and rotting away, Newsweek reports.
The CDC states that infections are typically treated with antibiotics, though symptoms include the following:
watery diarrheastomach crampingnauseavomitingfeverskin lesions and dangerously low blood pressure (in the case of bloodstream infections)discoloration and discharge (in the case of wound infections)
To prevent infection, the CDC suggests covering wounds in waterproof bandages if swimming in saltwater or brackish water. In addition, the CDC advises that swimmers wash their wounds and cuts with soap and water after coming into contact with brackish water.
Beyond the bacteria, researchers at FAU also announced earlier this year that a “toxic gas” found within the seaweed blob could pose health risks to coastal residents and visitors.
Now the inquiry wants to see, in full, what Johnson wrote to other U.K. officials as the outbreak raged — but the government is fighting a demand to hand over the material.
Inquiry chairwoman Heather Hallett, a retired judge, has asked the government to produce full copies of Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks, after initially being given redacted versions.
Government officials said they only cut out material that was “unambiguously irrelevant” to the investigation, but Hallett wants to be the judge of that. She said “the entire contents of the specified documents are of potential relevance to the lines of investigation being pursued by the inquiry.”
Hallett — who has the power to summon evidence and question witnesses under oath — set a deadline of 4 p.m. (1500 GMT) Tuesday for the government to hand over the documents, covering a two-year period from early 2020.
But hours before the deadline, the government asked for more time, claiming it didn’t have Johnson’s WhatsApp messages or notebooks. Hallett denied a request to move the deadline to Monday, but agreed to extend it by 48 hours, until Thursday.
The inquiry said if the WhatsApp messages and notebooks can’t be produced, the government must provide witness statements from senior officials setting out what efforts have been made to find them.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who took office after Johnson left office in September – to be succeeded, for a few weeks, by Liz Truss — said the government had already handed over tens of thousands of documents to the inquiry and was “considering next steps carefully.” The government is worried about the precedent that disclosing Johnson’s full, unredacted conversations might set.
Bob Kerslake, a former head of the civil service, said that the government was likely resisting disclosure “to save embarrassment of ministers” — an approach he called “misguided.”
The U.K. has recorded more than 200,000 deaths among people with COVID-19, one of the highest tolls in Europe, and the decisions of Johnson’s government have been endlessly debated. Johnson agreed in late 2021 to hold an inquiry after pressure from bereaved families.
Hallett’s inquiry is due to investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded, and whether the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better.” Public hearings are scheduled to start in June, and Johnson is among the senior officials due to give evidence.
The inquiry has already landed Johnson in hot water. Johnson was one of dozens of people fined last year for breaking his own government’s pandemic lockdown rules in the so-called partygate scandal. Earlier this month, government-appointed lawyers helping Johnson prepare his submissions and testimony came across evidence of more potential breaches of COVID-19 restrictions.
The new evidence relates to alleged visits to Chequers, the prime minister’s official country retreat, as well as potential breaches in the leader’s Downing Street residence.
Civil servants reported the information to police, which say they are assessing the new evidence. Johnson denies wrongdoing.
About 10% of people appear to suffer long COVID after an omicron infection, a lower estimate than earlier in the pandemic, according to a study of nearly 10,000 Americans that aims to help unravel the mysterious condition.
Early findings from the National Institutes of Health’s study highlight a dozen symptoms that most distinguish long COVID, the catchall term for the sometimes debilitating health problems that can last for months or years after even a mild case of COVID-19.
Millions worldwide have had long COVID, with dozens of widely varying symptoms including fatigue and brain fog. Scientists still don’t know what causes it, why it only strikes some people, how to treat it -– or even how to best diagnose it. Better defining the condition is key for research to get those answers.
“Sometimes I hear people say, ’Oh, everybody’s a little tired,'” said Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Langone Health, one of the study authors. “No, there’s something different about people who have long COVID and that’s important to know.”
The new research, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, includes more than 8,600 adults who had COVID-19 at different points in the pandemic, comparing them to another 1,100 who hadn’t been infected.
By some estimates, roughly 1 in 3 of COVID-19 patients have experienced long COVID. That’s similar to NIH study participants who reported getting sick before the omicron variant began spreading in the U.S. in December 2021. That’s also when the study opened, and researchers noted that people who already had long COVID symptoms might have been more likely to enroll.
But about 2,230 patients had their first coronavirus infection after the study started, allowing them to report symptoms in real time -– and only about 10% experienced long-term symptoms after six months.
Prior research has suggested the risk of long COVID has dropped since omicron appeared; its descendants still are spreading.
The bigger question is how to identify and help those who already have long COVID.
The new study zeroed in on a dozen symptoms that may help define long COVID: fatigue; brain fog; dizziness; gastrointestinal symptoms; heart palpitations; sexual problems; loss of smell or taste; thirst; chronic cough; chest pain; worsening symptoms after activity and abnormal movements.
The researchers assigned scores to the symptoms, seeking to establish a threshold that eventually could help ensure similar patients are enrolled in studies of possible long COVID treatments, as part of the NIH study or elsewhere, for apples-to-apples comparison.
Horwitz stressed that doctors shouldn’t use that list to diagnose someone with long COVID — it’s a potential research tool only. Patients may have one of those symptoms, or many -– or other symptoms not on the list — and still be suffering long-term consequences of the coronavirus.
Everyone’s doing studies of long COVID yet “we don’t even know what that means,” Horwitz said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
