HealthDay -
October 18, 2021
All international travelers who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus will be able to enter the United States beginning Nov. 8, an official at the White House told The New York Times. The announcement came on the heels of news on Wednesday that the United States would reopen its land borders to fully vaccinated travelers from Canada and Mexico for the first time since pandemic closures began 19 months ago.
CNN -
October 14, 2021
Vaccine advisers to the FDA meet Thursday and Friday of this week to tackle the next round of questions about booster vaccines for Covid-19 -- and they'll see the first trickle of data on mix-and-match boosters. On Thursday, they'll focus on Moderna's application to add a booster dose to its two-dose vaccine schedule. On Friday, they'll consider Johnson & Johnson's request for boosters. Only after they've decided those two questions will members of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, turn to mix-and-match boosters.
NPR -
October 14, 2021
If you got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as your first COVID-19 shot, a booster dose of either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine apparently could produce a stronger immune response than a second dose of J&J's vaccine. That's the finding of a highly anticipated study released Wednesday. And if you started out with either Pfizer or Moderna, it probably doesn't matter that much, the research suggests, as long as you get one of the two mRNA vaccines as a booster.
USA Today -
October 14, 2021
[The] disease was the country's second-leading cause of death last month. … Even though COVID-19 has been waning in the fall, it claimed the lives of 49,000 Americans in September, the report estimates. That trails only heart disease among the nation's leading killers, and it was actually No. 1 in the 35-54 age group, which has a lower vaccine uptake than seniors.
TIME -
October 14, 2021
From Nov. 2020 to Sept. 2021, Ravkoo filled at least 340,000 prescriptions, amounting to an estimated $8.5 million in drug costs, according to recently hacked data published by The Intercept. Nearly half the prescriptions were for ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, according to the hacked data; another 30% were for zinc or azithromycin…
CNN -
October 14, 2021
Covid-19 deaths and hospitalizations are expected to decline over the next four weeks, according to ensemble forecasts from the CDC published Wednesday. The latest forecast predicts 740,000 to 762,000 reported deaths by November 6. It's third consecutive week of a projected decrease in newly reported deaths.
CBS News -
October 14, 2021
Montana, the first state to ban COVID-19 mandates for employees, has one of the lowest vaccination rates and the highest hospitalization rates in the country. Some hospitals have reached the point of not accepting new patients and are preparing to ration care. The intensive care unit at Billings Clinic is operating at 175% capacity.
NPR -
October 14, 2021
The survey he helped run found that nearly 1 in 5 U.S. households reported not being able to get treatment for a serious illness in the past few months; most of them said they had negative health outcomes because of that. … This data, he says, shows that health care systems need to boost their capacity ahead of the next pandemic or serious natural disaster.
AP -
October 12, 2021
Moderna has no plans to share the recipe for its COVID-19 vaccine because executives have concluded that scaling up the company’s own production is the best way to increase the global supply, the company’s chairman said Monday. In an interview with The AP, Noubar Afeyan also reiterated a pledge Moderna made a year ago not to enforce patent infringement on anyone else making a coronavirus vaccine during the pandemic.
CNBC -
October 12, 2021
Millions of Americans will be one step closer to receiving a Covid booster shot when a key FDA panel meets this week to debate extra doses of the Moderna and J&J vaccines. The Biden administration hopes boosting the U.S. population will ensure long-term and durable protection against severe disease.
NPR -
October 12, 2021
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Monday to prohibit any entity, including private business, from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on workers and called on state lawmakers to pass a similar ban into law. The move comes as the Biden administration is set to issue rules requiring employers with more than 100 workers to be vaccinated or test weekly for the coronavirus.
BuzzFeed News -
October 12, 2021
Conservative figures and politicians opposing vaccine and mask mandates have blamed more than 2,000 recent flight cancellations by Southwest Airlines on vaccine mandates, but both the airline and pilots union have said the massive number of flight disruptions had nothing to do with it.
NPR -
October 12, 2021
Americans have fallen way behind. The rent's overdue and evictions are looming. Two-thirds of parents say their kids have fallen behind in school. And one in five households say someone in the home has been unable to get medical care for a serious condition. These are some of the main takeaways from a new national poll by NPR, the RWJF and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
ABC News -
October 12, 2021
The British government waited too long to impose a lockdown in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, missing a chance to contain the disease and leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths, a parliamentary report concluded Tuesday.
Kaiser Health News -
October 12, 2021
Hospital executives were already attuned to workplace violence before the pandemic struck. But stresses from covid have exacerbated the problem, they say, prompting increased security, de-escalation training and pleas for civility. And while many hospitals work to address the issue on their own, nurses and other workers are pushing federal legislation to create enforceable standards nationwide.
NBC News -
October 7, 2021
Getting at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine increased the risk of a rare type of heart inflammation, especially in young males, according to a large new study from researchers in Israel. However, the diagnosed cases were usually mild, and most of the patients were sent home without ongoing need for treatment. … Researchers identified 54 cases of myocarditis among more than 2.5 million people ages 16 years and older who got at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. All but three of them occurred in males. Ages were from 21 to 35, with a median of 27.