Michigan State Auditor to Review Nursing Home COVID-19 Deaths

State Auditor Doug Ringler says he will review how many Michiganders died from COVID-19 in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

Ringler wrote the June letter to House Oversight Chair Steve Johnson, R-Wayland, over the concerns of inaccurately counted COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.

“We will be working with various departments’ databases to address your concerns, which will impact the timing of our work,” Ringler wrote. 

Read More

Demographers Warn of ‘Epochal Fall in Fertility’ Across the Globe

Baby covered with blanket

An “avalanche” of “expanding and accelerating” demographic forces is driving global birth rates down at alarming rates, demographers warned The New York Times.

“A paradigm shift is necessary,” German demographer Frank Swiaczny, former United Nations chief of population trends and analysis, told the Times. “Countries need to learn to live with and adapt to decline.”

The publication described ghost cities in northeastern China, South Korean universities scrambling for students, hundreds of thousands of demolished properties in Germany, and shut down maternity wards in Italy, and warned that countries like Hungary, China, Sweden and Japan are already pushing to balance the combination of “swelling” older populations with the needs of young people.

Read More

HHS Expected to Recommend Vaccine Distribution Extended to Elderly

The Trump administration is expected to alter its coronavirus vaccine distribution guidance, recommending that people aged 65 and older are made eligible to be inoculated, The New York Times reported.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense are expected to announce the new guidance at a noon press conference, an anonymous official briefed on the announcement told the Times. The change to the recommendations is intended to quicken the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, which has been far behind pace.

Read More