Pandemic roundup: Funeral aides weary; rural telehealth overview; stressed rural EMT knows all his passengers . . .

Here's a roundup of recent news about the pandemic and immunization efforts:

Many hospital workers try to get out of vaccination by claiming a religious exemption, saying it's wrong to take a vaccine developed with a cell line that began with a fetus aborted in the 1960s. In an attempt to fight vaccine misinformation, an Arkansas hospital system now requires staff to swear off common medications such as Tylenol in order to get a religious exemption. That's because those medications were also developed using fetal cell lines. In related news, a Texas megachurch preacher and Trump devotee said this week that there is no "credible religious argument" against getting the coronavirus vaccination. The head of the nation's largest Baptist seminary, a leading conservative, says likewise.

As Arizona's biggest hospitals fill with Covid-19 patients, small-town doctors say it's increasingly difficult to find beds there for critical rural patients. Oregon hospitals are so stretched thin that they've been forced to postpone surgeries and cancer care.

In 2020, Covid-stricken Alabama recorded more deaths than births for the first time in its recorded history. Read more here.

Mississippi has seen a surge in the frequency and intensity of new pediatric diabetes cases during the pandemic (both Type I and Type II). The pandemic could be at fault for a number of reasons, they say. Read more here.

Six of Kentucky's rural counties are in the top 10 nationwide for coronavirus infection rates. Health-care providers in a small-town Kentucky clinic share what that surge looks like on the ground. And a paramedic in rural Kentucky says work has been especially tough because he personally knows every Covid patient he's had to transport to the hospital. Meanwhile, some Kentucky hospitals, mostly the larger regional ones, have begun firing staff who refuse the coronavirus vaccine; others haven't, possibly for fear of staffing shortages.

Health-care workers aren't immune to Covid misinformation, and many have refused to get vaccinated, especially in rural areas. Health-care providers in rural Colorado worry vaccine mandates will create staffing problems. Another cause of rural hospital staffing shortages: RNs are being lured away by high-paying traveling nurse jobs.

It's well-known that the pandemic is taxing health-care workers, but funeral professionals are also having a hard time keeping up with increased demand. A Texas embalmer shares what it's like. Read more here.

Here's an overview of the state of rural telehealth during the pandemic, what the federal government is doing to help it expand, and challenges rural health-care providers face in implementing it. Patients and doctors who embraced telehealth during the pandemic worry it will become harder to access. Read more here and here.