Excessive drinking persisted in the years after Covid arrived, according to a new data.Americans started drinking more as the Covid-19 pandemic got underway. They were stressed, isolated, uncertain — the world as they had known it had changed overnight.Two years into the disaster, the trend had not abated, researchers reported on Monday.The percentage of Americans who consumed alcohol, which had already risen from 2018 to 2020, inched up further in 2021 and 2022. And more people reported heavy or binge drinking,“Early on in the pandemic, we were seeing an enormous surge of people coming in to the clinic and the hospital with alcohol-related problems,” said Dr. Brian P. Lee, a hepatologist at the University of Southern California and the principal investigator of the study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine.“People assumed this was caused by acute stress, like what we saw with 9/11 and Katrina, and typically it goes back to normal after these stressful events are over,” he added. “But that’s not what we’re seeing.”Alcohol can be addictive, “and we know that addiction doesn’t go away, even if the initial trigger that started it has gone away,” Dr. Lee said.Rates of heavy drinking and of alcohol-related liver disease had been rising steadily for decades before the pandemic struck. But alcohol-related deaths surged in 2020, with one study reporting a 25 percent increase in a single year, said Christian Hendershot, director of clinical research at U.S.C.’s Institute for Addiction Science.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Covid inquiryBoris Johnson’s government blocked a request to fund another 10,000 hospital beds at the height of the Covid pandemic, the chief executive of NHS England has said.

Homeworkers are using the time saved by not commuting to stay longer in bed, new figures suggest.

People in clinically at-risk groups are being urged to get their free Covid-19 and flu vaccinations this winter.

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health BoardA health board executive member will resign after “deliberate” incorrect accounting was found in her department two years ago.

The monkeys escaped after a worker at a research center left an enclosure unlocked. One monkey was captured Saturday while the rest remain at large.One of the 43 monkeys that escaped an enclosure at a South Carolina research center was captured on Saturday while the rest remain at large, officials said.Dozens of rhesus macaques made a break for it on Wednesday after a caretaker at the research center, Alpha Genesis, failed to latch the door behind her after feeding the 50 monkeys and cleaning their enclosure.The police in Yemassee, about 60 miles west of Charleston, said on Facebook on Saturday that while only one monkey was recovered by Alpha Genesis, many of the others have not wandered far and remained near the research center. It was not clear where the one monkey was captured.Some escapees are interacting through a fence with their companions who remain at the research center, the police said.The Facebook post, quoting Greg Westergaard, chief executive of Alpha Genesis, said that the “recovery process is slow, but the team is committed to taking as much time as necessary to safely recover all remaining animals.”Alpha Genesis houses about 7,000 primates for biomedical studies and other scientific research.The police warned the public not to get near the animals and not to get too close to the research center, which is on 100 acres and surrounded by woods where some of the monkeys have been spotted in trees.The Facebook post also urged residents not to fly drones in the area.“A recent incident involving a drone led to the primates becoming spooked, which not only increased their stress but also complicated efforts for their safe return,” the post said.There is no risk to public health because the animals are too young to carry disease, according to Alpha Genesis.Gregory Alexander, the town’s police chief, said that it’s unlikely that the monkeys would be aggressive toward humans, though they are skittish. Each weighs six to seven pounds.The research center is using humane traps and fresh fruit and vegetables to bait the monkeys, which is an effective lure because the domesticated animals cannot easily find food in the wild. A couple of the escapees entered the traps, but did not go in far enough to make the doors close, the police said.The town’s 2,200 residents have been asked to keep their doors and windows closed, and to call the police if they spot a monkey.This is not the first time the town has dealt with escaped monkeys from Alpha Genesis.In 2014, 26 monkeys escaped and were recaptured within two days. In 2017, the company was fined $12,600 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for that episode and other failures to contain the animals.

They’ve been an unmarried couple for almost 20 years. Both widowed, and now in their 90s, they maintain separate residences in Florida but mostly live together in her home — an increasingly important issue because, a few years ago, she began developing memory loss.Sometimes, she forgets to eat. She has taken some falls, too.“His presence is helpful and supportive,” said Jenna Wells, one of her relatives and a Cornell University psychologist. “He takes her to the doctor. He takes her out to dinner.”But he knows he will have trouble caring for her as they both age and her condition deteriorates. So he proposed to her family that the two of them move together into a continuing care retirement community, where residents can shift from independent to assisted living, then to nursing and memory care units.If they wait too long, he points out, a facility could insist that she enter memory care directly, and he won’t be able to live there with her.The woman’s daughter, who holds her power of attorney, opposes that plan. “She doesn’t like her mother’s gentleman friend, as we call him,” Dr. Wells said. “They’ve never gotten along. There’s mistrust about his living in her house.”For now, with a decision on hold, the couple is managing with home care aides.“As we see this shift, with less of a focus on marriage in older people, this is going to come up a lot,” Dr. Wells said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Californians voted for tougher penalties for dealers. Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota rejected proposals to legalize marijuana. Massachusetts denied a measure allowing possession of psychedelics.An electorate that has grown increasingly restive over flagrant drug use and public disorder sent a sharp message through the ballot box on Tuesday.In state and local elections, voters approved tougher drug penalties and rejected measures to legalize recreational marijuana and psychedelics. San Francisco, one of the most progressive cities in the country, elected a mayor with no government experience who vowed to move aggressively against drug dealers.The results are the latest indications that the American public, besieged by a deadly addiction crisis decades in the making, is growing weary of experiments with more permissive drug policies and their visible impact on residential neighborhoods and downtown businesses.It is a sentiment that President-elect Donald J. Trump echoed on the campaign trail. “Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares, surrendered to the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged,” he said in one speech. “We are making the many suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few.”The latest election results continue a trend seen across the country this year. In March, San Francisco voters approved proposals to screen welfare recipients for drug use and to expand police powers. New measures in cities and states across the country, such as Idaho, West Virginia and Philadelphia, clamped down on programs that distribute safe drug supplies, like sterile syringes, to prevent users from dying.“The philosophy that the only people who matter in drug policy are people who use drugs, and the only thing that matters for them is just making sure they can continue using without overdosing, has been completely rejected,” said Keith Humphreys, a professor at Stanford who is an expert on drug policy and treatment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A ban on baby milk price promotions should be overturned to stop parents “paying over the odds” for formula, a government watchdog has said.

Twenty five years ago, cancer was almost a different disease. Despite the so-called War on Cancer, declared in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, treatments had mostly remained the same blunt instruments — brutal chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. It seemed as if cancer had won the war.Now, cancer medicine is in a new place. An increasing array of treatments precisely target the cancer itself. And for some cancers, researchers have learned to direct the immune system to kill the malignant cells. Cures are possible for some cancers that had seemed incurable. Many patients can live longer and better lives than ever seemed possible. Cancer death rates have been plunging, and researchers attribute most of that to improved treatments.Overseeing this change at the Food and Drug Administration has been Dr. Richard Pazdur, currently the director of the Oncology Center of Excellence. Trained as an oncologist, he leads the agency and its cancer specialists in determining how cancer drugs are tested and approved.Through 25 years at the agency in a variety of roles, he has been present from the start of the new era and has seen firsthand how scientific discoveries completely changed the prospects for many cancer patients. In two edited and condensed conversations, he discussed what he has seen, and what he hopes for.What was it like to be a cancer doctor when you first began, and what has changed?When I started in medical oncology in 1979, we had less than 40 oncology drugs for all cancers. I came to the F.D.A. in 1999, thinking that most drug development would be done by the National Cancer Institute. I thought industry would have very little interest because most drugs were short course with excessive toxicity and many patients had a poor prognosis.I couldn’t have been more wrong. For many patients, things have changed dramatically. From 1999 until the present, we approved 201 cancer drugs. When I came to the F.D.A. there were about 10 medical oncologists at the agency. Now there are 100.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.