Primary virus

Unable to contact his local health center, where calls went unanswered and online appointments were booked up for the following week, he turned to a hospital emergency room for confirmation. After waiting three hours to be seen, health workers there agreed with his self-diagnosis but provided no PCR test to ensure a more reliable result.

Overwhelmed by people wanting tests, requiring medication or needing certificates to excuse their absence from work, primary health care services in Spain are operating well past their limit during the current phase of the coronavirus pandemic. The omicron variant has fueled the latest surge of infections, although data shows it produces less-severe disease than earlier strains. Family doctors are usually the first stop for health care in Europe.

They and primary care nurses are viewed as vital to helping prevent sickness, keeping the pressure off hospitals and providing continuity of care. Nearly 2, were in ICUs, the most in almost five months. Caroline Berchet, a health economist at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, says primary health care in Europe has been underfunded and understaffed for a long time.

The pandemic has simply exposed the resulting frailties in the system. In France, years of funding cuts to the public health system are blamed for shortages of doctors in rural areas. Repila, the Spanish union spokeswoman, said authorities should be worried about the consequences. Even the daily figures that provide headlines and inform the response by experts and policymakers are once again out of sync, like they were at the beginning of the pandemic.

Health Minister Carolina Darias last week appealed for people to report their positive tests, even when they show no symptoms or if they decide to stay at home with mild ones. Unions and other professional groups say medical personnel cannot cope with the number of phone calls, video-assisted consultations and requests for tests, advice, treatment or issuing certificates for people who need to justify an absence from work.

Contact tracing, once viewed as a key to halting the pandemic, is something that has been long forgotten. Primary care has been out of the media and public attention for much of the pandemic, when most of the concern was focused on the capacity to cope with the flow of patients into hospitals and intensive care units.

But labor groups and professional associations say the problems began much earlier, the result of years of underfunding that has led to many temporary contracts for medical staff and poor health facilities. After the European debt crisis, a conservative government in Spain imposed strict austerity measures that meant significant budget cuts for the public health system.

Similar cuts occurred elsewhere in Europe. Critics said the move was overdue. Log in to leave a comment. Sign in Join. DeWine said this week that the state struck a middle-ground approach when compared with other states, pointing out that factories and construction companies were allowed to remain open. A handful of far-right legislators called for DeWine's impeachment, and in March the Republican General Assembly handed the governor his first veto override involving legislation that restricted Ohio ability to respond to emergencies such as the coronavirus pandemic.

The mask order was finally lifted last summer, and DeWine resisted calls to renew it, saying Ohio now had the tools with the vaccine to combat the coronavirus.

A big reason why some Republican voters grew angry with DeWine was because they saw him putting in restrictions that ran counter to what they were hearing from President Donald Trump and conservative governors in other states, said Christopher Devine, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Dayton. Still, he thinks that DeWine's critics are a vocal minority and that the governor will be hard to beat in the primary. DeWine told The Associated Press that government should not be in the business of either requiring vaccines — as President Joe Biden is trying to do with his big employer mandate — or prohibiting vaccine mandates, as Ohio House Republicans want to.

Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. The head of the Nebraska Hospital Association said the number of hospitalized patients could double in the next two to three weeks.

Starting Saturday, private health insurers will be required to cover up to eight home COVID tests per month for people on their plans. The health system said the move is an effort to protect employees from the fast-spreading COVID omicron variant. Nebraska doctors are warning that treatments effective against the COVID omicron variant are in such short supply that not all who qualify for them are getting them.

A temporary falloff in the number of gun deaths is over; a study shows a link between a COVID vaccination and a change in menstrual cycle length; and more health news. As we enter a new year laden with uncertainty, our mental health and sense of well-being are tested again.

Here are insights to help you tackle Transient global amnesia is an enigmatic form of memory loss that doctors still can't explain 65 years after it was first described. Please subscribe to keep reading. You can cancel at any time. Already a subscriber?