Fauci Awarded $1 Million Israeli Prize For 'Speaking Truth To Power' Amid Pandemic: “America's top infectious disease official Dr. Anthony Fauci received a prestigious $1 million Israeli prize Monday, along with six other researchers who shared two additional $1 million prizes for their contributions to health and medicine.
The Dan David Prize, affiliated with Tel Aviv University, said it honored Fauci for his career in public health and ‘speaking truth to power’ during the politicized COVID-19 crisis.”
About COVID-19
AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to be trialed in young people for first time: “AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine development partner has announced that it will launch the first study to evaluate safety and immune responses of the AZD1222 candidate in children and adolescents aged six to 17 years. According to the University of Oxford, the new study would build on previous trials of the vaccine that have shown it produces ‘strong immune system responses and has high efficacy in all adults’…
The Phase II trial will recruit 300 paediatric volunteers, with up to 240 receiving AZD1222, while the remainder will be administered a control meningitis vaccine.”
Covid vaccine: Elderly show fewer post-vaccine symptoms than young: Study: “Elderly people in India have reacted with fewer symptoms after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to people in the age group from 20 to 40, reported The Economic Times…
The news source said women are also more likely than men to develop symptoms.”
Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine: “Israel's Clalit health maintenance organization says it has seen a 94% decrease in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of Pfizer's vaccine, as reported in the Financial Post…
The Clalit healthcare provider, which covers more than half of all Israelis, also said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe COVID-19.”
Effect of High-Dose Zinc and Ascorbic Acid Supplementation vs Usual Care on Symptom Length and Reduction Among Ambulatory Patients With SARS-CoV-2 Infection: They don’t work.
Hospitals face severe shortages as pandemic grinds forward: “Hospitals around the country say their supplies of crucial medical supplies including personal protective equipment (PPE) are lower than ever as demand for different items has soared to an all-time high.
Data detailing usage rates of PPE and other supplies analyzed by Premier, a company that consults for health care systems, revealed that usage of supplies for COVID-19 testing and treatment has reached the highest rate seen since the pandemic began last year."
Novavax to complete US vaccine trial enrolment in record time:”Novavax, one of the unexpected success stories of the Covid-19 vaccine race, is about to finish enrolling its US trial in record time, bringing it another step closer to fulfilling orders to inoculate 50m Americans.
The 30-year-old biotech — which has never before successfully brought a drug to market — has almost enrolled the 30,000 participants in its US trial, which began in late December, according to its chief executive, Stanley Erck.”
U.S. Enrolls in WHO’s ACT Accelerator Program for Pandemic Relief: “The U.S. has joined the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator program, a global effort to speed development and production of coronavirus vaccines, treatments and tests, and to help lower-income nations obtain them.
The WHO claims that the program is still in need of at least $26 billion to achieve its goals of delivering COVID-19 drugs and diagnostics to low- and middle-income countries.”
Covid-Linked Syndrome in Children Is Growing and Cases Are More Severe: “Doctors across the country have been seeing a striking increase in the number of young people with the condition Braden had, which is called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children or MIS-C. Even more worrisome, they say, is that more patients are now very sick than during the first wave of cases, which alarmed doctors and parents around the world last spring…
The reasons are unclear. The surge follows the overall spike of Covid cases in the United States after the winter holiday season, and more cases may simply increase chances for severe disease to emerge. So far, there’s no evidence that recent coronavirus variants are responsible, and experts say it is too early to speculate about any impact of variants on the syndrome.”
Keeping schools open without masks or quarantines doubled Swedish teachers’ COVID-19 risk: “A careful analysis of health data from Sweden suggests keeping schools open with only minimal precautions in the spring roughly doubled teachers’ risk of being diagnosed with the pandemic coronavirus. Their partners faced a 29% higher risk of becoming infected than partners of teachers who shifted to teaching online. Parents of children in school were 17% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those whose children were in remote learning.”
WHO lists two additional COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use and COVAX roll-out: “WHO listed two versions of the AstraZeneca/Oxford COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for these vaccines to be rolled out globally through COVAX. The vaccines are produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India.”
Seven coronavirus variants potentially similar to UK type have been detected in US: study: “Seven variants of the COVID-19 virus have been detected in the U.S., and all or some of them may contain mutations similar to the qualities exhibited by a strain of extra-contagious COVID-19 spreading in the United Kingdom, a new study found.
The study, published Sunday on MedRxiv.org, found seven previously undiscovered variants of COVID-19 in U.S. patients, all of which are thought to have originated domestically…”
About pharma
2021 Medication Access Report: “CoverMyMeds conducted surveys of patients, providers and pharmacists over a two-month period during September and October 2020. We surveyed 1,000 patients, 400 providers and 328 pharmacists to achieve a 95 percent confidence interval and achieved a ±5 percent margin of error…
Over 40 percent of all patients said to stretch out their prescription, they skipped or reduced doses, potentially putting their health and adherence at risk.8 The proportion was even higher for uninsured patients, at 58 percent, and those on Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans, at 60 percent.”
Forty-three percent of patients said they checked a pharmacy comparison app to find cheaper medications prices, up from 28 percent the previous year.
Read the study for more details.
The top 10 biotech IPOs of 2020: FYI, with details on each.
Plavix partners Sanofi, Bristol Myers vow to appeal Hawaii's $834M marketing verdict: “Sanofi and Bristol Myers Squibb have spent years battling Plavix litigation—including state-level claims that the drugmakers didn’t adequately warn about the blood thinner's risks to certain patients.
Now, a judge in Hawaii has ordered each company to pay the state $417 million for failing to fully disclose its risks in non-white patients.”
Gilead lets local HIV community groups take the lead with $3 million grant: Gilead “is pledging $3.2 million over two years to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization in the U.S. The money will be distributed through the campaign's educational arm to support communities disproportionately affected by HIV, particularly communities of color.”
About healthcare IT
Mobile Health Apps Systematically Expose PII and PHI Through APIs, New Findings from Knight Ink and Approov Show: A recently released study showed that “fully 100 percent of the 30 popular mHealth apps analyzed by Alissa Knight, partner at Knight Ink, are vulnerable to API attacks that can allow unauthorized access to full patient records including protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII).” usage of the APIs put at least 23 million people at risk.
Third party breach exposed data on 35-million, Florida insurer says: “Hackers attacked Florida Healthy Kids Corp.'s web hosting vendor and inappropriately accessed and tampered with the addresses of some of the 3.5 million people affected.”
About health insurance
New enrollment window opens for health insurance shoppers: “A sign-up window opened Monday for government insurance markets and runs through May 15 in most states. It’s available for people who don’t have coverage through work, and it is expected to make finding a plan less of a hassle for those who lost a job.”
CVS' Lynch: Aetna planning to re-enter ACA exchanges in 2022: The insurer had pulled out of such markets in 2018 after sustaining losses. These markets are more stable now and easier for plans to analyze.
About hospitals and health systems
Association of Medicaid Expansion With Quality in Safety-Net Hospitals: “This difference-in-differences cohort study found that despite reductions in uncompensated care and improvements in operating margins, there appears to be little evidence of quality improvement among SNHs in states that expanded Medicaid compared with those in states that did not.” The question of what they do need to improve results is not clear- is it more money, expertise, or a combination?
About the public’s health
Recommended Adult Immunization Schedule, United States, 2021: Click on the chart to enlarge it.
About diagnostics
Guardant Health launches surveillance blood test for detecting colorectal cancer recurrence: “Guardant Health has launched a simple blood test to monitor patients after undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer to spot any early signs that tumor cells remain or to catch the disease before it returns.
The Guardant Reveal test, expected to turn around results in one week, is the company’s first liquid biopsy to help manage the treatment of early-stage cancer, and the company plans to make it available for other cancer types in the future.”