As the United States entered its third year of the pandemic, fewer Americans are reporting that they have been wearing masks in recent months, according to a poll released on Tuesday by The Associated Press and NORC.About 44 percent of Americans reported this month that they usually wore a mask outside their home, down from about two-thirds during the peak of the Omicron wave in January, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,082 U.S. adults from March 17 to March 21.Only about a third of Americans said this month that they still avoided others as much as possible, compared with over half of them just two months earlier. About 40 percent said in March that they continued to avoid nonessential travel, down from 60 percent in January.People 60 and older were most likely to report that they took precautions more than two years into the pandemic, according to the poll.Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the poll results reflected that the country was at a lull in the pandemic, with the U.S. caseloads at their lowest point since the winter Omicron surge.“Partly it’s fatigue,” he said, “and partly it’s that they’re being authorized to take fewer precautions by the C.D.C.”The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested in February that most Americans could stop wearing masks.Dr. Noymer added that the poll indicated that, now and in the years to come, “Americans are less interested in masking everywhere they go outside the home.”Going forward, the Covid vaccines will be one of the best ways to control the pandemic and lower caseloads, said Dr. Arnold S. Monto, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.Another solution, Dr. Noymer said, was to improve indoor air quality, which the Biden administration this month said would help lower the risk of indoor aerosol transmission, the primary driver of the pandemic.

The vaccine was only about 16 percent effective at reducing a person’s chance of getting a mild or moderate infection, the agency said. Experts said a good rate would be at least 50 percent.This season’s flu vaccine has offered little to no protection against getting a mild or moderate case of influenza, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.In a study of more than 3,600 Americans in seven states, the C.D.C. said in a report that the vaccine was only around 16 percent effective, a rate that it said was “not statistically significant.”“It’s not ineffective, but it’s clearly suboptimal in its efficacy,” Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, said on Thursday. He reviewed the report but was not associated with it.Still, despite the vaccine’s lackluster performance this season, which started in October and lasts through May, the C.D.C. suggested that people get inoculated, saying that it could “prevent serious outcomes.”Scientists had warned in 2020 that the flu season, if it was severe, could possibly converge with Covid to create a dreaded “twindemic.” But coronavirus restrictions — including working from home and the use of masks — along with a high flu vaccine rate may have helped reduce caseloads the last few seasons, during which, the C.D.C. said, cases have been at a record low.Still, even a mild flu season can be devastating. The C.D.C. estimated that during the 2019-20 flu season, around 22,000 people in the country had died and 400,000 had been hospitalized.This season, the agency said, “influenza activity” declined in December and January, during the worst of the Omicron surge, but increased in early February.In October and November of 2021, the agency investigated a flu outbreak at the University of Michigan, where there were 745 cases, mostly involving students who had not been vaccinated against the flu. Investigators there also found that the vaccine did not offer much protection.Dr. Goodman said that this season’s results showed how much flu vaccines could be improved.“The next pandemic could be an influenza pandemic,” Dr. Goodman said, “so we need better vaccines.”Every year, scientists decide whether they need to update the flu vaccine to protect against the strains that they predict will dominate the upcoming season.The low efficacy rate this season, Dr. Goodman said, “suggests that there was a mismatch between the strains of virus in the vaccine and what’s circulating.”Scientists updated this season’s vaccines to offer protection against four flu viruses, including H3N2, which ended up being this season’s dominant strain, the report said. H3N2 was also dominant during the 2017-18 flu season, which experts had said was “moderately severe.”Since the agency began calculating the vaccine’s effectiveness in 2004, the efficacy rate has been as high as 60 percent — for the 2010-11 season — and as low as 10 percent, during the first season the C.D.C. tracked it. Dr. Goodman said he would consider a rate between 50 and 80 percent to be good.The flu is a life-threatening respiratory illness that can fill up hospital beds. It shares symptoms with Covid, including fever, coughing, a sore throat and fatigue. Adults 65 and older, pregnant people, immunocompromised people and children under 5 are most at risk of the flu.

The pandemic has been relentless for mothers, many of whom have been stuck in an endless cycle of work and child care. Some Massachusetts mothers gathered to do something about it.In Boston, many mothers were exhausted. The pandemic had been so draining that they wanted to scream.But they had to hold it in because they had children to raise, careers to build and chores to finish. For nearly two years, they have been trapped.But on a night this month, about 20 mothers ditched their duties. They left their children and homes behind and headed to a high school football field.One by one, they emerged from the shadows and gathered at the 50-yard line.They stood in a circle under the soft lights, and for 20 glorious minutes they screamed and screamed and screamed, said Sarah Harmon, a therapist, yoga teacher and mother who organized the gathering.Their voices, which carried years of pain and rage that they could finally release, merged into an anguished chorus, according to videos of the gathering. Meghan B. Kelly/WBUR“It was so nice to feel out of control for the first time,” one mother told Ms. Harmon, who lives in Boston.One of the participants, Jessica Buckley, said many of the mothers were unaware of The New York Times’s primal scream hotline, which is available to mothers who want to yell, laugh, cry or vent for a solid minute.Ms. Harmon, 39, first held what she called a primal scream gathering last year, after her clients had suggested it. She counsels mothers who, like herself, have gone through varying stages of despair, anger and anxiety as the pandemic has lingered.Ms. Harmon, a mother of 3- and 5-year-old daughters, said that her children were driving her “absolutely nuts” during the pandemic.At the gathering on Jan. 13, which was previously reported by the radio station WBUR and The Boston Globe, she said a lot of the mothers were feeling bitter.They questioned why the pandemic was still going on and why children under 5 could not be vaccinated, said Ms. Harmon, the founder of the School of MOM, a mindfulness website for mothers. (Children under 5 have still not been approved to get a coronavirus vaccine.)That is why the gathering was so cathartic, she said. For once, the mothers could just let go.“It’s just amazing how light you can feel after you do that,” she said on Sunday. “I slept better.”At the football field, Ms. Harmon signaled the start of a new round of screaming by raising two light-up unicorn wands that belong to her daughters.The gathering, she said, unfolded in five parts, the first four of which were a normal scream, a round of swearing, a “free-for-all” of screams or shouts, and a scream in honor of the mothers who were too busy to attend.Some of the mothers put their all into the screaming, hunching over and throwing their arms back, according to videos Ms. Harmon shared.The fifth part was a contest to see who could scream the longest. The winner, who screamed for about 30 seconds, was Ms. Buckley, a 36-year-old therapist and mother of two.“I probably could’ve kept screaming,” she said on Sunday. “It’s been a really, really tough time.”She said that, as a mother of 2- and 4-year-old daughters, she felt left behind.“We’re still trying to navigate quarantines and stuff when the country seems to have moved on,” she said.She is one of millions of mothers in the United States who have confronted a mental health crisis during the pandemic. So many mothers have been brought to the breaking point as they juggle more child care and domestic work along with their own lives.Everyone has been touched by the pandemic in some way, but mothers often have no place to escape and no time to take a break, said Dr. Ellen Vora, a psychiatrist in Manhattan.Mothers, unlike their children, usually do not have the time or the space to have a meltdown, Dr. Vora said.“If you have two to three years of pent-up pressure,” she said, “going and being in a community of other moms and having a big release in the form of a scream is really healthy.”Ms. Harmon said that she had received an overwhelming response to the gathering from other mothers. Many older mothers told her they used to scream alone in a closet.But she says a new generation of mothers have normalized the frustrations of their roles — leading to screaming in an open field.Groups across Massachusetts have now invited Ms. Harmon to lead primal screams.“The scream resonated for people because it normalized their anger,” she said. “It’s been very powerful and quite healing.”

With all the uncertainty around the Omicron variant, vaccine guidelines are evolving.As evidence grows that the Delta and Omicron variants of the coronavirus are causing breakthrough infections in people who were once considered “fully vaccinated,” momentum seems to be growing to change the definition of that term to include booster shots.Some workplaces and college campuses are now mandating that vaccination include boosters. The governor of New York said that state officials planned to change the definition of “fully vaccinated” to include receiving a booster dose, and Britain’s government won’t be far behind. The N.F.L. last week issued a booster shot mandate for team staff members who work closely with players.And the speculation is growing that we may have to get boosters regularly in future years as new variants emerge.A few months ago, confirming full vaccination status was as simple as showing a card or QR code with proof that the required number of shots had been completed within six months. But in a world of multiple vaccines with varying effectiveness, and a variety of mixing and matching strategies, it will soon be harder to say who is “fully vaccinated.”A consensus will eventually emerge. But here is what some health experts had to say as another year of living with the pandemic was nearing a close.What is the official definition of ‘fully vaccinated’?For now, U.S. health officials say you are fully vaccinated two weeks after your second shot of a two-dose vaccine like Pfizer’s or Moderna’s or after a single-dose vaccine like Johnson & Johnson’s. They have not (yet) expanded that definition to include a booster shot.At a White House press briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the agency is “continuing to follow” the science around Omicron before it decides to expand the definition. However, the agency does recommend that people get booster shots.So does Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, who said at the same press briefing, “If you are unvaccinated, get vaccinated. And particularly in the arena of Omicron, if you are fully vaccinated, get your booster shot.”Other countries, like Britain and South Africa, also do not require booster shots for someone to be considered “fully vaccinated.”This was always going to change.As it became clear that the immunity conferred by the initial rounds of vaccines was waning, Israel announced in October that it would make a booster dose a requirement for its vaccine passport. It was believed to be the first country to do so, though it wouldn’t be the last.In late November, just before Omicron fast-forwarded booster programs around the world, the European Union began to discuss adding a nine-month expiration date to its digital certificates, a move it formally adopted this week.Some of the E.U.’s member nations, like Austria, had already enacted an expiration date for their residents. In France, where the certificates expire seven months after a second dose, all adults have until Jan. 15 to receive a booster, or their passes will no longer allow them access to places like restaurants and museums.A waiter checking a customer’s vaccine verification at a cafe in Paris in September. Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesDo I need a booster shot to fend off Omicron?Early research indicates that the Omicron variant is somewhat less vulnerable to the body’s immune defenses. Booster shots help bolster your antibody response, said Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York.So, yes, you should get that additional jab, said Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration.“This booster dose has really protected people better against Delta,” he said. “Even without Omicron, there’s good reason to get the booster dose.”You can still get infected even after a booster, but the shot will probably protect you against severe illness or death, he said.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4The Omicron variant.

Coronavirus cases in children in the United States have risen by 32 percent from about two weeks ago, a spike that comes as the country rushes to inoculate children ahead of the winter holiday season, pediatricians said.More than 140,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus between Nov. 11 and Nov. 18, up from 107,000 in the week ending Nov. 4, according to a statement on Monday from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.These cases accounted for about a quarter of the country’s caseload for the week, the statement said. Children under 18 make up about 22 percent of the U.S. population.“Is there cause for concern? Absolutely,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, the vice chair of the academy’s infectious diseases committee, said in an interview on Monday night. “What’s driving the increase in kids is there is an increase in cases overall.”Children have accounted for a greater percentage of overall cases since the vaccines became widely available to adults, said Dr. O’Leary, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Colorado.Though children are less likely to develop severe illness from Covid than adults, they are still at risk, and can also spread the virus to adults. Experts have warned that children should be vaccinated to protect against possible long-Covid symptoms, Multi-system Inflammatory Syndrome and hospitalization.At the end of October, about 8,300 American children ages 5 to 11 have been hospitalized with Covid and at least 172 have died, out of more than 3.2 million hospitalizations and 740,000 deaths overall, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.At a news conference on Friday, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said hospitalizations and deaths among 5- to 11-year-olds were “really startling.”Dr. O’Leary said it did not help that many schools had softened their safety protocols in the last few months.“So any protection that might be happening in schools is not there,” he said.Vaccinations of younger children are likely to help keep schools open. Virus outbreaks forced about 2,300 schools to close between early August and October, affecting more than 1.2 million students, according to data presented at a C.D.C. meeting on Nov. 2.Dr. O’Leary said that he was especially concerned about case increases in children during the holiday season.With the pace of inoculations stagnating among U.S. adults, states are rushing to encourage vaccinations for children 5 through 11, who became eligible earlier this month after the C.D.C. authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for that age group. In May, the federal government recommended making the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine available to children ages 12 to 15. Teenagers 16 and older became eligible in most states a month earlier.The White House estimated on Nov. 10 that nearly a million young children had gotten vaccinated; 28 million are eligible. They receive one-third of the adult dose, with two injections three weeks apart.All of the data so far indicates that the vaccines are far safer than a bout of Covid, even for children.Still, about three in 10 parents say they will definitely not get the vaccine for their 5- to 11-year-old child, according a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Only about three in 10 parents said they would immunize their child “right away.”

Health officials said there was little risk that the virus, which causes a rare but potentially serious illness, would spread. Both cases this year were identified in travelers who had returned from Nigeria.A case of monkeypox, a rare but potentially serious viral illness, was identified in a Maryland resident who had recently returned from Nigeria, making it the second case in the United States this year, health officials said. They said the risk that the virus would spread was low.The person was in isolation with mild symptoms but was not hospitalized, the Maryland Department of Health said in a statement on Tuesday. The agency did not identify the traveler.This is the second confirmed case of monkeypox in the United States within the past few months. The first infection was discovered in July in a Texas resident who had also returned from Nigeria, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at the time.In a statement on Wednesday, the C.D.C. said it was working with an unidentified airline and with health officials to reach anyone who may have been in contact with the Maryland traveler. However, the agency said, fellow passengers had a low chance of having contracted the virus through respiratory droplets because they were required to wear masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.“No special precautions are recommended at this time for the general public,” the Maryland health authorities said in the statement, adding that they had identified and are following up with people who may have been in contact with the traveler.Monkeypox — so named because it was first identified in laboratory monkeys — occurs mostly in Central and Western Africa, although it caused an outbreak in the United States in 2003 after it spread from imported African rodents to pet prairie dogs, the C.D.C. said.During that outbreak, 47 confirmed and probable cases of monkeypox were identified in six states, the C.D.C. said. Those who were infected reported symptoms such as fever, headaches, muscle aches and rash. No deaths were reported.Monkeypox is in the same family of viruses as smallpox, but it causes milder symptoms, according to the C.D.C. The illness typically begins with flulike symptoms and swelling of the lymph nodes and develops into a widespread rash on the face and body. Most infections last two to four weeks.In this case, laboratory testing at the C.D.C. showed that the patient had been infected with a strain of monkeypox most commonly seen in parts of West Africa, including Nigeria. Infections with that strain are fatal in about 1 in 100 people, the C.D.C. said, although rates may be higher in people with weakened immune systems.The C.D.C. said it had been supporting Nigeria’s response to monkeypox since 2017, when the disease re-emerged in that country after a period of more than 40 years with no reported cases. Since that time, 218 cases have been identified in Nigeria and eight have been reported in international travelers from the country, including the ones in Texas and Maryland.There are no specific treatments available for monkeypox infections, according to the C.D.C., although one vaccine has been licensed in the United States to prevent monkeypox and smallpox.Monkeypox is commonly found in animals such as rats, mice and rabbits, but it can infect people who are bitten or scratched by an animal; who prepare wild game; or who come in contact with an infected animal or, possibly, animal products, the C.D.C. said.The virus can spread between people through bodily fluids, sores or items contaminated with bodily fluids, but it is generally transmitted through large respiratory droplets that do not travel more than a few feet. As such, prolonged face-to-face contact is generally necessary for the virus to spread, the C.D.C. said.

A growing number of Asian Americans have overcome a cultural stigma attached to seeking mental health treatment, experts said.Even before the coronavirus pandemic, life was not as easy as it looked for Julian Sarafian. He was the valedictorian of his high school, a White House intern and a Harvard Law School graduate, but he was also in a yearslong battle with anxiety.Then, in November of last year, he came down with symptoms of Covid-19, and his girlfriend tested positive for the virus. The illness, on top of his anxiety, months of social isolation and his fear for the safety of his Asian family members, made him depressed.“It was just kind of the icing on the cake that was, like, the middle finger of 2020,” he said.Mr. Sarafian, 27, who is from Sacramento, went to therapy a month later, but it was not as simple as making a phone call. He had to explain to his parents, including his Vietnamese mother, the reasons he needed extra care.After a few months of therapy, he said, he “hit a point where it’s looking a lot brighter than ever before.”Mental health is heavily stigmatized among Asian Americans, whose older generations, like the older generations of other cultures, tend to see therapy as undignified or a sign of weakness, experts said. But the pandemic and the specter of hate crimes by those who tied the coronavirus to China have prompted a growing number of Asian Americans to overcome the stigma and turn to therapy for help, according to more than a dozen therapists, psychiatrists and psychology professors.“People were just stuck in their homes with their thoughts and their worries, and there wasn’t an outlet,” said Lia Huynh, a psychotherapist in Milpitas, Calif.More than 40 percent of Asian Americans were anxious or depressed during the pandemic, up from less than 10 percent before the virus struck, according to the Asian American Psychological Association. The Kaiser Family Foundation found similar rates for all adult Americans, but experts said the figures for Asian Americans were most likely higher than reported because some Asian Americans are uncomfortable talking about mental health.More than a year and a half into the pandemic, the fear of hate crimes hasn’t decreased for a quarter of Asian adults in the United States. They reported that, in the last few months, they still feared being threatened or physically attacked, according to a poll released this week by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.For Jess Stowe, 35, and Terry Wei, 36, Covid was scary enough, but now they worried about being attacked.“The hate against Asians is more terrifying than the global pandemic,” said Ms. Wei, who is a host of the podcast “unModeling Minorities” with Mrs. Stowe. “I can’t change what people fear.”That fear was stoked, in part, by President Donald J. Trump’s racist characterizations of the virus, which spread the false narrative that Asian American people were responsible for the pandemic.A third of Asian Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center in April said they feared being attacked. Anti-Asian hate crimes in the country’s largest cities skyrocketed 164 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the first quarter of last year, according to researchers at California State University, San Bernardino. Hate crimes overall increased last year by 2 percent, the researchers said.Asian Americans, African Americans and Hispanic people tend to see mental health as more stigmatized than European Americans, according to a study published last year in the journal BMC Public Health.But that view changed for some Asian Americans on March 16, when six Asian women, who were targeted because of their race, were murdered in shootings at spas in the Atlanta area. Asian American communities had talked about anti-Asian violence, but that dialogue became a part of the national conversation after the shootings.Suddenly, many Asian Americans realized that hate crimes were a life-threatening reality, mental health professionals said.After a year of dealing with racist microaggressions and health concerns, and enduring a lifetime of institutional racism and mental health stigmas, the shootings were the impetus for many Asian Americans to sign up for therapy.“It finally broke the stigma open because people were in that much pain,” said Diana Liao, a mental health counselor and psychotherapist in New York..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c 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a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Some Asian therapists were inundated with requests from companies and organizations that wanted to host support groups for employees, said Catherine Vuky, a clinical supervisor at South Cove Community Health Center in Boston.Satsuki Ina, a psychotherapist, said some older Japanese Americans have come to her because the hate crimes evoked memories of when the U.S. government locked them in internment camps during World War II.Ms. Huynh, the psychotherapist from California, said she has been receiving a lot of calls from patients who are struggling to find a therapist who understands their culture. “People are like, ‘I just want someone that understands that I can’t just talk back to my parents,’” she said.The mental toll of threats and assaults was challenging for some to balance against the principle of “saving face,” an idea shared among many Asian immigrants that people will gain a bad reputation if they do not maintain their dignity.Therapy traditionally can be seen in Asian cultures as a way to lose face, said Kevin M. Chun, a psychology professor at the University of San Francisco.There is also a generational barrier to mental health care, said Doris Chang, an associate professor of psychology at New York University. Younger people are less likely to have an internalized stigma about mental health, and older people are more inclined to think they can resolve their issues without help.While a new generation of Asian Americans can forge a different conversation about mental health, measures like therapy cannot solve a problem they did not start, said Sherry C. Wang, an associate professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University.“If everybody pitched in to say, ‘Stop anti-Asian hate’ and advocated for Asian American belonging, we would all be safer and healthier and happier,” she said.

A police bulletin seeking information on a man recorded shoplifting packages of diapers drew fresh attention to a continuing crisis of access to the product, according to the National Diaper Bank Network.“Anyone recognize him?” the police in Winter Haven, Fla., asked on Facebook last month.Photos with the post showed a man walking out of a Walmart without paying for his items after several of his credit cards were declined, the police said. Among the items in his cart were boxes of diapers.“When your card is declined and you try another one with the same result, that is NOT license to just walk out with the items anyway,” read the Facebook post, which was later deleted.The Winter Haven Police Department drew swift criticism for the post from people wondering why the department had gone after a man who had stolen basic necessities for his children, also pictured in the surveillance photos.“That’s a good father in a hard spot,” one Facebook user said in response to the department’s follow-up post. “Have some empathy.”After the incident, which was previously reported by WFTS-TV in Tampa, Fla., the store asked the police not to prosecute the man, according to a waiver of prosecution the Winter Haven Police Department provided to The New York Times. Walmart and the man did not respond to requests for comment.It’s possible the man was among the one in three American families who struggle with diaper need, according to a February 2020 report by the National Diaper Bank Network, an organization that provides diapers to children. Joanne Samuel Goldblum, the network’s founder and chief executive, said she suspects that figure probably rose during the coronavirus pandemic as diaper prices increased and supply plummeted.“Diaper need is a topic that’s so swept under the rug,” she said on Friday. “Covid really laid it bare for us.”The pandemic has upended global supply chains and created a run on many products, including diapers. Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble, two of the country’s largest diaper manufacturers, increased the prices of baby products this year. A typical package of 100 diapers costs $30 to $50 from most online retailers.Even a small price increase can put a strain on families, many of whom pay around $75 for a month’s worth of diapers for one baby, according to the National Diaper Bank Network. Many parents have to choose between buying diapers or other necessities, and some will leave their child in a soiled diaper because they can’t afford a replacement.For the families who make it to the store, diapers aren’t always in stock.Amanda Trussell, the mother of a 2-year-old boy, said that diapers had been hard to find near her home in Junction City, Kan., even before the pandemic started and that store shelves had only gotten more empty in the last year and a half.“At one point, we went to three or four different stores to find a pack and had to settle on a size bigger because there were just none in his size,” she said on Saturday.When her family runs low on diapers, Ms. Trussell, 24, puts her son in a reusable cloth diaper. That’s why she hasn’t had to go to a diaper bank, which offers supplies to low-income parents.Diaper banks across the country have reported recent surges in families who couldn’t afford diapers. WestSide Baby, which is based in Seattle, distributed 2.4 million diapers last year, up 60 percent from 1.5 million in 2019, according to Sarah Cody Roth, the organization’s executive director. WestSide Baby is on track this year to meet or exceed last year’s total, she said.Diaper banks in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania have reported similar trends. Many banks give families 50 diapers per month, which covers about two weeks, said Cathy Battle, the executive director of the Western Pennsylvania Diaper Bank. That’s often not enough for families who can’t afford diapers.A lack of diapers can seriously harm a family’s physical and mental health, said Megan V. Smith, the senior director of community health transformation at the Connecticut Hospital Association. Many parents who can’t afford diapers feel like ineffective caregivers, she said.“If you have to worry about where you’re going to get the next diaper, you can’t focus on singing and reading and playing with your child,” said Dr. Smith, who has researched diaper need and maternal mental health.Many day cares require parents to supply their children with enough diapers to get through the day. That means mothers and fathers who can’t buy diapers have to miss work to watch their child, Dr. Smith said, which makes them even less likely to have money for diapers.The federal government does not provide funding for diapers, but that may change if Congress passes the End Diaper Need Act of 2021, which would funnel grant money to social services that support low-income families and adults with disabilities.States have taken different approaches to get diapers into the hands of parents. A Colorado law passed this summer earmarked $2 million to create a statewide diaper distribution program. Connecticut allocates part of its state budget to the Diaper Bank of Connecticut. California, which leads the country in diaper-funding efforts, is one of several states that do not tax the product, and it offers diaper reimbursements to parents participating in CalWorks, the state’s welfare-to-work program.Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who shepherded the CalWorks diaper reimbursement into law, said that diaper need was just as important an issue as hunger insecurity.“There’s a number of women that can at least breastfeed their child,” she said on Friday. “You can’t have a child and not diaper them.”Isabella Grullón Paz

The voluntary recall comes after the Agriculture Department linked three cases of listeriosis to the cooked chicken products, including one death.Tyson Foods is recalling nearly 8.5 million pounds of frozen chicken that may have been contaminated with listeria, the Agriculture Department said.The voluntary recall was issued after Agriculture Department investigators were notified last month about two people who had been sickened with listeriosis, the department said in a statement on Saturday.An investigation found evidence linking those cases to frozen chicken from Tyson Foods, the agency said. Investigators eventually identified three cases linked to the recalled products, including one death, the department said.Symptoms of listeriosis, an infection caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, include fever, convulsions, muscle aches and gastrointestinal issues, according to the Agriculture Department.The recalled products were frozen, fully cooked chicken produced between December and April, the department said. The products include chicken strips, chicken pizza and pulled chicken breasts that were sold under brand names including Tyson, Jet’s Pizza and Casey’s General Store.The packages have the “establishment code” P-7089 printed on them, the department said.In a statement, Tyson Foods said the recalled products were produced at a plant in Dexter, Mo. The company distributed the chicken to stores, hospitals, schools, restaurants and other locations, the Agriculture Department said.“We’re committed to providing safe, healthy food that people rely on every day,” Scott Brooks, senior vice president for food safety and quality assurance at Tyson Foods, said in the statement. “We are taking this precautionary step out of an abundance of caution and in keeping with our commitment to safety.”The Agriculture Department said it would continue its investigation to determine if additional listeriosis cases were linked to the recalled products.The department urged people to throw away or return the recalled chicken. Pregnant women, adults over 65 and people with weakened immune systems are most susceptible to a serious case of listeriosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Symptoms usually develop one to four weeks after eating food contaminated with listeria.