SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It’s not COVID-19 or the flu, but a respiratory virus has been hammering Northern California cities including Sacramento and Davis, testing shows.

WastewaterSCAN data shows “high concentrations” of human metapneumovirus, or HMPV, in Sacramento and Davis, along with San Francisco, Marin, Vallejo, Napa, Novato and ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania had 12 confirmed cases of measles among state residents and another two involving visitors to the state as of Tuesday, the state Department of Health said.

Eight cases are associated with an outbreak in Lancaster County, where the state declared an outbreak involving five cases a month ago.

The latest case was ...Read more

In Johnson County, Iowa, the number of tuberculosis cases has increased in recent years — and so has the cost of containing it.

The cost of contact tracing and surveillance, traveling each day to patients’ homes to ensure they take their meds or booking hotel rooms to quarantine patients, has surged from $17,000 in 2020 to $65,000 last ...Read more

Earlier this year, Justin and Amy Miller packed their vehicles with three kids, two dogs, a pet bearded dragon, and whatever belongings they could fit, then drove 2,000 miles from Wisconsin to British Columbia to leave President Donald Trump’s America.

The Millers resettled on Vancouver Island, their scenic refuge accessible only by ferry or ...Read more

COLUSA, Calif. — Early on, Jean Franklin got some career advice she followed religiously: “Pay yourself first.” So she did, socking away hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement savings by the time she became a stay-at-home mom at age 41.

She and her husband, Charles, a former high school teacher who goes by Chaz, planned to retire ...Read more

DENVER — Colorado may have improperly paid more than $75 million to autism service providers and could be on the hook to return more than half that sum to the federal government, a new report found.

The Office of the Inspector General estimated the state’s Medicaid program overpaid $77.8 million for applied behavior analysis services in ...Read more

RALEIGH, N.C. — Rex Healthcare has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a federal lawsuit that claimed it discriminated against an employee who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 for religious reasons.

Rex had granted the employee a religious exemption for the flu vaccine in 2019 and 2020, according to the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday he was prepared to claw back state funds from 10 counties he said had not made sufficient progress to treat people struggling with their mental health, homelessness, and substance use disorder.

Newsom labeled San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, Kern, Riverside, Yolo, Monterey,...Read more

Since President Donald Trump issued a July 2025 executive order aimed at “ending crime and disorder on America’s streets,” national attention has increasingly focused on involuntary treatment as a response to visible homelessness and drug use.

A few months later, in September 2025, officials in Utah announced plans for a 16-acre...Read more

A well-designed 10-minute online exercise can spark small reductions in depression. That’s the key finding of my team’s paper, published in Nature Human Behaviour.

Many people believe that to start overcoming depression, they need a therapist, medication or a radical change in their environment. However, our study shows that ...Read more

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — At around 2 a.m., 7-year-old twin brothers arrived at Mission Hospital in Asheville. Both had a fever, a cough, a rash, pink eye, and cold symptoms.

The boys sat in one waiting room and then another. Two hours and 20 minutes passed before the two were isolated, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services records ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — For years, Cathleen “Cat” Brown, a Philadelphia obstetrician and gynecologist, would listen to patients complaining of hot flashes, brain fog, and painful sex and prescribe estrogen as a safe option for easing their menopausal symptoms.

But when the women read the drug label and pharmacy package insert, they’d recoil at a...Read more

The number of bills directly targeting and undermining the existing legal rights of transgender and nonbinary people in the U.S. has been escalating, with sharp increases since 2021 and with each consecutive year. Kansas dealt the most radical blow yet on Feb. 26, 2026, as a law that immediately invalidates state-issued driver’s licenses, ...Read more

BOSTON — Bay State health officials have confirmed the first measles cases of the year amid a large national outbreak of the life-threatening virus.

The first case was reported in a school-aged Massachusetts resident who was exposed and diagnosed out-of-state, and remains out of state during the infectious period, according to the state ...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: I've noticed that sometimes my heart races or skips a beat. What causes this? Is there treatment for it?

ANSWER: What you're experiencing may be an abnormal heart rhythm, also known as an arrhythmia. Arrhythmias fall into two categories: too fast or too slow. A racing heart or a skipped beat typically falls into the "too fast"...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota has reported 10 measles cases so far in 2026 amid a declining vaccination rate that’s left more people vulnerable to the highly infectious disease and its characteristic head-to-toe rash.

The case cluster is raising concerns when considering that Minnesota had 26 infections in total last year. All 10 people were ...Read more

FRESNO, Calif. — A new California bill co-authored by a Fresno-area legislator intends to reopen Medi-Cal applications for undocumented adults who lost access to the program because of cuts made to the state’s budget last year.

The Medical Access Restoration Act, known as SB 1422, would end the Medi-Cal enrollment freeze that took effect ...Read more

In Colorado, from 2016 to 2020, 33 women who were pregnant or had recently given birth died from accidental overdoses. That’s more than died from traditional obstetric complications like infection, high blood pressure or bleeding combined.

More recent data shows an encouraging turnaround. The number of maternal overdose deaths ...Read more

Ten Democratic-leaning states are using their own money to help people buy Obamacare health plans, at least partially replacing the federal tax credits that expired at the end of last year.

The state assistance, some of it offered through programs that existed before the federal subsidies expired, is helping hundreds of thousands of people ...Read more