About Covid-19
Coronavirus booster shots 'not a luxury', WHO Europe head says: “A third-dose booster shot of the COVID-19 vaccination is a way to keep the most vulnerable safe and ‘not a luxury"‘ the World Health Organization said on Monday.
The WHO said earlier this month data did not indicate a need for booster shots, while topping up already fully vaccinated people would further widen a vaccine-availability gap between rich and lower-income countries.”
Antibody Tests Should Not Be Your Go-To For Checking COVID Immunity: “On an individual level, antibody tests can be useful for picking up evidence of a past SARS-CoV-2 infection. They're also helpful to researchers studying the prevalence of the virus across a population or tracking the degree to which antibody levels wane over time. And the decline in antibody levels against the coronavirus among some people who got vaccinated late last year were cited as part of the scientific case for why millions of Americans need booster shots.
But scientists in the field say there's still considerable uncertainty about what these levels of detectable antibodies really mean when it comes to protection. And a lack of standardization among the commercially available tests for antibodies makes it even harder to decipher the results.”
Fauci backs COVID-19 vaccine mandate for U.S. school children: “Currently, children under 12 are not eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. But Fauci, in a separate interview on ABC’s ‘This Week’ program, said there should be enough data by early October for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to consider whether the shot is safe for children under that age.” And in a related article: Half of the adolescents in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, White House says.
Covid-19 hospitalizations top 100,000 as delta variant surges: “More than 100,000 people are hospitalized with Covid-19, according to data released Friday morning by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That means 1 in every 6 hospital beds nationwide has a Covid patient, according to NBC News data.
New admissions of patients with confirmed Covid-19 cases are at their highest levels since the start of the pandemic for all age groups under 50 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
High Pay for Covid-19 Nurses Leads to Shortages at Some Hospitals: “Fueled by intense demand, and paid for in part with federal emergency funding to hospitals, travel-nurse pay has skyrocketed. In December 2019, average gross weekly wages for a travel nurse were around $1,600 a week, according to data from Vivian Health, a healthcare recruiting company. One year later, average pay was more than $3,500 a week.”
The article has many examples of how wage disparities influence where nurses are going for jobs during the pandemic.
Comparison of SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Response Following Vaccination With BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273: “This study demonstrated a significantly higher humoral immunogenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine (Moderna) compared with the BNT162b2 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech), in infected as well as uninfected participants, and across age categories. The higher mRNA content in mRNA-1273 compared with BNT162b2 and the longer interval between priming and boosting for mRNA-1273 (4 weeks vs 3 weeks for BNT162b2) might explain this difference.”
About pharma
Four new drugs to watch in 2021: From Optum. The treated conditions range from rare to common.
Who's getting the most out of their R&D engine? Pharma's top 11, ranked: “Fierce Pharma took a close look at the recent approvals for 11 of the world's biggest drugmakers by revenue. Specifically, we're highlighting the dollar value of the industry's launches from the last five years and analyzing how the new meds fit into each company's overall portfolio…
On the value metric, the crown goes to Roche, which has eight launches to its name in the last five years worth a whopping $99.78 billion. Others with even fewer launches, such as AbbVie and AstraZeneca—each with five—boast similarly impressive net present values.”
Check the graphic for more details.
In reopening Tennessee penicillin plant, Jackson Healthcare relieves the US' dependence on China-made antibiotics: “Jackson Healthcare of Georgia is reopening the Bristol plant, which was formerly owned by Neopharma, under the name of USAntibiotics. The 360,000-square foot factory will churn out enough Amoxil and Augmentin to stockpile the U.S. for five years, the company said in a release. In all, it'll produce 2 billion tablets and 300 million capsules annually.
Last August, Neopharma of the United Arab Emirates declared bankruptcy and shuttered the 43-year-old plant, leaving the U.S. dependent solely on penicillin from China.”
Biotech co-founders admit to stealing trade secrets from Roche's Genentech, face possible prison terms: “After two former staffers at Roche’s Genentech pleaded guilty to stealing biologics trade secrets, their co-conspirators didn’t put up much of a fight before admitting to their roles in the scheme. The pair, former execs at Taiwanese company JHL Biotech, could now face prison sentences and hefty fines for the crimes.
Racho Jordanov and Rose Lin, the two co-founders and former top execs at JHL, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to steal trade secrets from Genentech and wire fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said.”
About health insurance
ACA navigators expected to quadruple in 2022 after $80M increase in funding: “The Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday it will provide $80 million in grant awards to 60 navigator organizations, which will be able to hire more than 1,500 navigators to aid consumers. The announcement comes as the Biden administration has made moves to bolster the ACA, including holding a special open enrollment period for those affected by the pandemic through Aug. 15.”
About the public’s health
How a once-obscure government database turned into a weapon for anti-vaxxers: “You may not be familiar with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. Co-managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, VAERS was established in 1990 to detect possible safety problems with vaccines.
Unfortunately, the anti-vaccine movement has used this once-obscure database to spread misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine.
VAERS is ripe for exploitation because it relies on unverified self-reports of side effects. Anyone who received a vaccine can submit a report. And because this information is publicly available, misinterpretations of its data has been used to amplify Covid-19 misinformation through dubious social media channels and mass media, including one of the most popular shows on cable news.”
The Best & Worst Cities for Mental Health in America: At the top are Denver and Salt Lake City.
4 of the bottom 10 cities are in Texas and another 4 in Florida. Look at the criteria for evaluation.
Report: 91% of Pennsylvania schools that tested drinking water found lead—only 9% removed it: “The report, published this month by the Pittsburgh-based health advocacy nonprofit Women for a Healthy Environment, looked at testing and cleanup practices for environmental health hazards including lead and other contaminants in drinking water; lead in paint and dust; radon; and mold in a randomized sample of 65 public school districts serving about 175,000 students across the state.
That's a small sample size—Pennsylvania's K-12 education system has about 500 school districts, so it represents about 10% of total school districts—but among the schools sampled, the report found that testing and cleanup procedures for environmental hazards are not performed consistently or uniformly as the state still lacks legal requirements.”
I am sure Pennsylvania is not alone in having this problem.
Effect of Salt Substitution on Cardiovascular Events and Death: The role of extra salt in the diet has, at times, been controversial. This study adds to the substantial literature that says lower salt intake is healthier.
”Among persons who had a history of stroke or were 60 years of age or older and had high blood pressure, the rates of stroke, major cardiovascular events, and death from any cause were lower with the salt substitute than with regular salt.”
About healthcare equipment
Baxter Is in Advanced Talks to Buy Hill-Rom for About $10 Billion: These talks resume recent conversations which were not successful.
CellMax Life’s Cancer Blood Test Designated FDA Breakthrough Device: “Molecular diagnostics company CellMax Life’s FirstSight pre-cancer and cancer detection blood test has received the FDA’s Breakthrough Device designation.
The test is designed to detect and measure colorectal neoplasia-associated epithelial cells and DNA markers in human blood. The results, combined with age and gender, are integrated into a proprietary algorithm to generate a result of either low or high-risk for advanced neoplasia.”
The question that needs answering are: Will it replace fecal testing and/or screening colonoscopies?
About healthcare IT
Overbooked and Overlooked: Machine Learning and Racial Bias in Medical Appointment Scheduling: “We demonstrate that state-of-the-art scheduling systems cause the black patients in our data set to wait about 30% longer than nonblack patients. Our race- aware methodology achieves both goals of eliminating racial disparity and obtaining a similar schedule cost as that obtained by the state-of-the-art scheduling method, whereas the race-unaware methodologies fail to obtain both efficiency and fairness.”