About the public’s health
The effect of state-level stay-at-home orders on COVID-19 infection rates: Yes, stay-at-home procedures work. New cases of COVID-19 decreased by 58 percent in states that implemented the recommendation.
How risky is it to…? An interesting read from Politico that “provides a snapshot of where Americans see the most danger — and where they’re most out of sync with experts.” Differences are also apparent between Democrats and Republicans.
Some Countries Have Brought New Cases Down To Nearly Zero. How Did They Do It?: A good international survey of what successful countries did to curb COVID-19. Common elements were early identification of the problem, politically unified responses using prepared plans, and isolation procedures.
US cuts World Health Organization ties over virus response:”President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. will be terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization, saying it had failed to adequately respond to the coronavirus because China has “total control” over the global organization.
He said Chinese officials “‘gnored’ their reporting obligations to the WHO and pressured the WHO to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered.
He noted that the U.S. contributes about $450 million to the world body while China provides about $40 million.”
The Trump campaign is creating an alternate reality online about coronavirus | The Fact Checker: This youtube video (produced by the Washington Post fact checkers) details how the administration’s narrative changed the sequence of events in response to COVID-19.
Some Coronavirus Patients Test Positive For Weeks. Interpret Those Results With Caution: “RNA can… be present, and therefore, detected by PCR after a virus has broken down (i.e., become non-infectious) and released its genome into host cells or body fluids. From prior experience with other infectious diseases, we know that PCR tests can be positive for days or weeks after a patient has recovered from the illness and is no longer infectious.
As more testing is being performed for Covid-19, we are learning that some patients can test positive for weeks following their initial diagnosis.”
About health insurance
IRS sets 2021 limits for HSAs: The content is self-explanatory.
Pandemic upends state plans to expand health insurance: The high costs of COVID-19 responses have caused a number of states to halt or reconsider insurance expansion ,such as Medicaid eligibility/benefits/funding.
Association of State Medicaid Expansion With Hospital Community Benefit Spending:” In this study, Medicaid expansion was associated with a decrease in nonprofit hospitals’ burden of providing uncompensated care, but this financial relief was not redirected toward spending on other community benefits.”
About pharma
An open letter to Mehra et al and The Lancet: The letter was sent by a long list of international scientists who criticized the methodology of the hydroxychloroquine study that The Lancet recently published.
About healthcare IT
Where Microsoft is headed in healthcare: A brief discussion of MIcrosoft’s healthcare plans. For example: “The company reported 34 million healthcare interactions on Microsoft Teams during the pandemic and has co-developed healthcare-specific solutions with partners including the CDC, Allscripts, Humana, Renton, Wash.-based Providence, Walgreens Boots Alliance and Nuance.”
National Trends in the Safety Performance of Electronic Health Record Systems From 2009 to 2018: “These findings suggest that despite broad adoption and optimization of EHR systems in hospitals, wide variation in the safety performance of operational EHR systems remains across a large sample of hospitals and EHR vendors. Hospitals using some EHR vendors had significantly higher test scores. Overall, substantial safety risk persists in current hospital EHR systems.”
About diagnostics
FDA approves Eli Lilly’s Tauvid dye, its first for mapping Alzheimer’s tau tangles: “The FDA approved its first radioactive diagnostic dye designed to map out the characteristic tau protein tangles found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease—information that previously required an autopsy.” The dye is used with PET scans. This technology could be a major breakthrough in diagnosis if patterns are shown to be unique to this disease.
FDA greenlights ICU AI for predicting fatal COVID-19 complications:”The FDA granted an emergency authorization to CLEW Medical’s remote data monitoring system to help predict and identify COVID-19 patients under intensive care who are most at risk for respiratory failure or insufficient blood flow.
The company’s CLEWICU artificial intelligence software ingests a large range of patient data by linking to electronic medical records, connected medical devices and vital sign monitors, with no need for additional data entry by ICU staff.
In addition to alerting providers to a patient’s potentially deteriorating condition as a diagnostic aid, the system’s real-time risk classification model also predicts which patients may not require any interventions within an eight-hour period. “
Obviously this technology can be used for other diseases as well.