Hospitals in at least 25 states are critically short of nurses, doctors, and other staff as coronavirus cases surge across the United States, according to the industry’s trade association and a tally conducted by STAT. The situation has gotten so bad that in some places, severely ill patients have been transferred hundreds of miles for an available bed — from Texas to Arizona, and from central Missouri to Iowa.

Many of these hospitals spent months building up stockpiles of medical equipment and protective gear in response to Covid-19, but the supplies are of little use without adequate staffing.

“Care is about more than a room with a hospital bed. It’s about medical professionals taking care of patients,” said John Henderson, chief executive of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH). “If you don’t have the staff to do that, people are going to die.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday that most California counties will soon be in the state's most restrictive COVID-19 tier amid a surge in cases and that the state is considering a curfew.

"California is pulling an emergency brake," he said in announcing that 41 counties, which comprise over 94% of the state's population, will be in the purple tier, effective Tuesday. Last week, 13 counties were in the state's most restrictive tier.

“We are sounding the alarm,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is experiencing the fastest increase in cases we have seen yet -- faster than what we experienced at the outset of the pandemic or even this summer. The spread of COVID-19, if left unchecked, could quickly overwhelm our health care system and lead to catastrophic outcomes."

When counties are in the purple tier, indoor operations for places like museums, houses of worship, gyms and restaurants are not allowed. When counties move into the less restrictive red tier, they can resume indoor operations at several businesses -- but with modifications.

Taking a quick dip in a river or creek is a nice way to spend a warm afternoon, and rarely would you imagine that hopping into some seemingly freshwater could result in severe sickness or death days later. For an increasing number of very unfortunate people in North and South Carolina, that’s become a troubling reality.

Reports out of the Carolinas reveal that the prevalence of a bacteria called Vibrio is increasing steadily and has been over the past decade or more. A person can become infected after swimming in or touching water that is contaminated with the bacteria, but it’s what the bacteria does once it’s in your body that is truly frightening.

Teens are dying by suicide at an alarming rate. Public health officials call it a crisis. Researchers have identified several clusters nationwide. The survivors in this Arizona community are fighting back

Ten states reported their highest single-day tallies of new Covid-19 infections Friday, and the country reported its highest one-day total since July, as experts say a dangerous fall surge of coronavirus infections is well underway.

"This really is a harrowing time, and people have to be careful," epidemiologist Dr. Abdul El-Sayed told CNN on Saturday.

"When we saw this kind of transmission earlier in the pandemic, in March and April, the virus hadn't seeded everywhere ... This surge has the potential to be way worse than it was than either the spring or the summer," El-Sayed, Detroit's former health director, said.

The US reported more than 69,100 new Covid-19 infections Friday -- the most in a single day since about 71,300 were reported July 29, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

In a matter of months, the foster care system found itself drowning in hundreds of new cases. By 2017, the state needed space for 6,000 additional foster children – an influx equivalent to the size of the entire foster population of the state of New Jersey.

But lawmakers, child welfare leaders and Scott did not hire more caseworkers or increase the money paid to foster families to make more homes available. And they failed to tackle the root problems driving most of the removals: lack of access to drug treatment, mental health care and domestic violence services for parents.

Instead, they stood by as foster care agencies packed children into overcrowded homes and sent nearly 200 boys and girls to foster parents previously accused of abusing or neglecting the children in their care, a USA TODAY investigation found.

During this pandemic, people in the United States are dying at rates unparalleled elsewhere in the world.

A new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that in the past five months, per capita deaths in the U.S., both from COVID-19 and other causes, have been far greater than in 18 other high-income countries.

"It's shocking. It's horrible," says Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a professor of health policy and medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the study.

"The United States really has done remarkably badly compared to other countries," he says. "I mean, remarkably badly."

Historic wildfires which ravaged California throughout August and September may cause 3,000 early deaths, according to research from academics at Stanford University.

This year there have been over 8,100 wildfires that have burned well over 3.7 million acres in California. Since August 15, when California's fire activity elevated, there have been 26 fatalities and over 7,000 structures destroyed.

On Sunday, 17,000 firefighters were still at work, battling 25 wildfires in the state.

Now academics have concluded that the wildfires, from August 1 to September 10, were responsible already for at least 1,200 deaths in California - and may, over the next month, cause a total of 3,000 deaths.

On top of the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic, which is limiting the ways families and professionals can live, work and take care of each other, many people are now contending with environmental threats like wildfires and hurricanes. And that’s with everything else going on in 2020.

The understandable physical stress all this causes makes doing work, at times, impossible. Lara Hogan is a management coach based in Portland, Oregon, which in the second week of September recorded the worst air quality in the world among major cities as fires raged nearby. Towards the end of that week, Hogan was feeling lightheaded, experiencing a “weird cough,” and could not focus on her job, she said.

“It was much harder to do that work, like thinking, speaking, answering questions, normal stuff,” Hogan said. She asked herself, “Can I do a good job for the people I’m trying to support?”

Gender reveal parties are a form of domestic terrorism

One dead grandmother-to-be. A downed plane. An incinerated car. Several terrifying explosions. An altercation at Applebee’s. A massive wildfire that burned 47,000 acres of Arizona forest and resulted in an estimated $8m worth of damage.

All that’s just a small snapshot of the manslaughter and mayhem unleashed by gender reveal parties over the last couple of years. And that’s before you factor in the latest nightmare ignited by the terrible trend: the El Dorado fire in California. The fire, which was caused by a “smoke-generating pyrotechnic device” set off at a gender reveal party, has burned more than 13,000 acres of forest so far and prompted the evacuation of 3,000 residents.

It’s worth pausing here for a moment to fully absorb the fact that, as well as resulting in a woman’s death, gender reveal parties have destroyed at least 60,000 acres of land in the last three years. (To put this in perspective, the area of Manhattan is around 14,600 acres.) We all know that the police are fond of a bit of profiling; based on these statistics alone they ought to be implementing stop-and-frisk tactics on all heterosexual couples who come within five miles of a heavily wooded area. If the woman’s got a baby bump and the man’s got a dad bod then law enforcement should search them for explosives, stat.

A Popeyes employee has been fired after a cop in Texas claimed his food had been tampered with.

According to the San Antonio Police Department Officer A. Martinez said he heard the fast food restaurant worker making derogatory remarks about members of law enforcement while getting his meal of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy at the drive-thru.

The cop claims that he had already begun to eat the meal then saw 'ACAB' – an abbreviation for 'all cop are b*****ds' - written inside in black marker and noticed what looked like saliva on his food.

A rare “singing” dog native to New Guinea was rediscovered in the wild after scientists had believed the breed had gone extinct for over 50 years.

The breed—known for its unique vocalizations similar to the song of the humpback whale—was first studied in 1897.

Researchers say that due to inbreeding in captivity and because both breeds were separated for several decades, the “singing” dog and the highland wild dog have no identical genomes. But this does not mean that they are different breeds.

"The New Guinea ‘singing’ dog that we know of today is a breed that was basically created by people," Dr. Elaine Ostrander, a distinguished investigator for the National Institutes of Health and senior author of the study, wrote.

The number of coronavirus cases linked to an indoor wedding in Maine earlier this month has risen to 123, state health officials confirmed to CBS News.

The Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said early this month that a total of 24 people had contracted COVID-19 linked to the wedding. That number progressively increased to 53, then 87, and now 123 linked infections.

The wedding has also been linked to one death last week from the virus so far.

The Aug. 7 reception was attended by about 65 people, surpassing the state’s 50-person limit. Officials are also investigating if the venue, Millinocket’s Big Moose Inn Cabins and Campground, was in compliance with state health guidelines.

Dear Prudence,

I’ve been low-contact with my abusive dad for several years now, and my mental health has drastically improved as a result. I’m a queer trans person (they/them) and would be happiest never speaking to him again. I am in contact with my mother, who occasionally gives me updates on his life. I know my mother was victimized by him in her own right, but she also enabled and justified his abuse of me and my siblings. Now my mother is currently dying of a chronic illness, and her prognosis is only another year or two. I live across the country, although I plan to move to be closer to her this fall. But I’m already thinking about her funeral: I don’t want to go when it finally happens.

Growing up, I was mercilessly mocked for being too “sensitive” by my relatives. The environment was incredibly homophobic and transphobic. I don’t like showing emotion in front of them. I haven’t seen any members of my extended family in years and don’t want to. I have one sibling I sometimes commiserate with about how messed up our childhood was, but we’re not otherwise close. I realize not attending would likely destroy my relationship with my remaining relatives, but I don’t want to maintain that relationship anyways. I do feel guilty about not wanting to stay close sometimes, but I’d rather grieve with my partner and my friends, who accept me and love me for who I am. Based on previous interactions, I worry that attending might trigger a mental health crisis. But I also know these people think I’m overdramatic, selfish, and attention-seeking. The last time I tried to bring up my panic attacks to my mom, she told me to “just close my eyes if I get scared,” so I dropped the subject. What are my obligations here? How do I take care of myself when skipping your mother’s funeral is pretty universally seen as an awful thing to do?

—Can’t Grieve Together

Two black bears have been killed and another two injured after being hit by cars in Yosemite National Park in the last three weeks alone, after park closures during coronavirus lockdowns led wildlife to freely roam the roads in recent months.

Rangers are begging visitors to California's sprawling park to slow down after the four bears were struck by vehicles leaving at least two of the creatures dead.

The two other bears were seriously injured after vehicles speeding faster than the 25 mph limit plowed into them, according to the National Park Service's Bear Team Blog.