After falling for the first time since late June, COVID-19 cases are again increasing in the U.S., according to the CDC's COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review published Sept. 17.

Kathryn Ivey, RN, a critical care nurse in Nashville, Tenn., detailed her experience as a new nurse starting amid the pandemic — with no baseline for what "normal nursing" looked like — in an op-ed published by Scientific American.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, dozens of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis case reports have deemed the coronavirus as the trigger, NBC News reported Sept. 16.  

An off-duty nurse at Lansing, Mich.-based Sparrow Hospital helped deliver a baby in the elevator of the hospital's parking lot Sept. 13, reports the Lansing State Journal.

Sept. 17 is World Patient Safety Day — a campaign established by the World Health Organization in 2019 to raise awareness about adverse patient safety events. 

Here are the rates of positive COVID-19 tests in each state, along with the number of new cases most recently reported and number of tests conducted per 100,000 people. 

In recent years, cases of Valley fever have been on the rise in the southwestern region of the U.S., Grist reports. 

About 60 million Americans living in rural areas rely on small, local hospitals for care. The pandemic is exacerbating every pitfall rural hospitals face, draining resources already in short supply — such as nurses, according to NBC News.

While many physicians are reporting an uptick in children requiring hospitalization for COVID-19, researchers say it's still unclear whether the delta variant is causing more severe infections, NBC News reported Sept. 16. 

Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., became the youngest American to visit space when SpaceX's all-civilian flight took off Sept. 15, according to USA Today.

New COVID-19 cases and resulting hospitalizations are decreasing slightly across the U.S., though outbreaks are still occuring in some areas. Here are the latest trends for cases, hospitalization rates, deaths and vaccinations.

More than half of states in the U.S. have passed laws during the COVID-19 pandemic that reduce government authority to protect public health, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of hundreds of pieces of legislation.

New York City-based NYU Langone has received nearly $470 million from the National Institutes of Health to build a national study cohort of tens of thousands of people to accelerate research on the long term effects of COVID-19. 

At least 35 percent of residents had obesity in 16 states in 2020, up from nine states in 2018, according to the CDC's 2020 Adult Obesity Prevalence Maps. 

The federal government can play an influential role in reducing racial disparities in maternal health outcomes, according to a Sept. 15 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.  

Women's heavy breathing during labor could increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission, underscoring the importance of ensuring healthcare workers in obstetrics and gynecology have proper personal protective equipment, according to a study published Sept. 9 in Obstetrics & Gynecology. 

Nearly 4 million new COVID-19 cases were reported globally from Sept. 6-12, marking the first decline in weekly cases in more than two months, the World Health Organization reported in a Sept. 14 update. 

A choir of nurses from Northwell Health was one of five groups to compete in the America's Got Talent finals Sept. 14.

President Joe Biden is set to urge global leaders to newly commit to combating the pandemic, including fully vaccinating 70 percent of the global population by next September, according to a list of targets obtained by The Washington Post.

SCL Health and Olive have partnered to use clinical intelligence to improve surgical value. The goal is to reduce the unwarranted variation in surgical supply costs by leveraging advanced AI and data analytics.