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TUESDAY, July 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- About one-third of people prescribed drugs to prevent HIV stopped taking the medications when they were forced to stay home due to the coronavirus pandemic, a new survey finds. The reason, they said: They weren't having sex. Many discontinued the drugs without their doctor's say-so, which has experts concerned. "Reducing the number of new HIV transmissions and ensuring access to critical HIV prevention services must remain a public health priority during this challenging time," said Bruce Packett, executive director of the American Academy of HIV Medicine. The online survey included more than 400 people at high risk of HIV infection who were using what's called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to protect them from the AIDS-causing virus. Of...

TUESDAY, July 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The rate of COVID-19 in U.S. prisons is nearly six times higher than in the general population. And the COVID death rate among prisoners is likely tripled, researchers report. "While these numbers are striking, we actually think the disparities within prisons is much greater," said study lead author Brendan Saloner, associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Some prisons are not reporting any cases, others are not even testing inmates, so the need for policies to protect incarcerated populations is more important than ever," Saloner added in a Hopkins news release. The researchers analyzed coronavirus cases and deaths from March 31 to June 6. The rate of COVID-19 among prisoners...

TUESDAY, July 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- With several potential COVID-19 vaccines now in clinical trials, U.S. policymakers need to plan for the next hurdle: Ensuring Americans actually get vaccinated. That's according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It lays out recommendations for winning the public's trust of any future vaccine, and helping them access it as easily as possible. The U.S. government's so-called Operation Warp Speed has laid its goal out: Deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine by January 2021. As of July 11, 22 vaccines were in some stage of human clinical trials, according to The New York Times coronavirus vaccine tracker. The race to develop a safe, effective vaccine against the new coronavirus has been...

TUESDAY, July 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- California and Oregon rolled back their reopenings on Monday, two of several states across the country that are struggling to get surging coronavirus case counts under control. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered the statewide closure of all bars and halted the indoor operations of restaurants, wineries, theaters and a handful of other venues, the The New York Times reported. "We're going back into modification mode of our original stay-at-home order," Newsom said Monday. "This continues to be a deadly disease." California's two largest public school districts, in Los Angeles and San Diego, said on Monday that all teaching would remain online in the fall, the Times reported. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown again banned private indoor...