Coronavirus
Trump administration starts surge coronavirus testing in Florida, Louisiana and Texas
Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post
In what Department of Health and Human Services officials are calling surge testing, the government is sending in contractors and arranging laboratory services to provide 5,000 diagnostic tests per day each in Baton Rouge, La.; Edinburg, Tex.; and Jacksonville, Fla. The sites will last five to 12 days in each place unless state officials want to keep them going. People will not be charged for the tests.
Pence, Azar reassure governors Trump won’t end virus emergency declaration
Rachel Roubein and Adam Cancryn, Politico
Vice President Mike Pence and HHS Secretary Alex Azar strongly indicated to governors that the Trump administration will extend the coronavirus public health emergency before it expires later this month, providing the firmest assurances yet the administration won’t pull back the declaration as infections continue to surge.
Trump breaks with Fauci: US in ‘good place’ in fight against virus
Justine Coleman, The Hill
President Trump broke with top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Tuesday by saying the U.S. is in a “good place” in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
WHO acknowledges ‘evidence emerging’ of airborne spread of COVID-19
Stephanie Nebehay et al., Reuters
The World Health Organization on Tuesday acknowledged “evidence emerging” of the airborne spread of the novel coronavirus, after a group of scientists urged the global body to update its guidance on how the respiratory disease passes between people.
Nearly 90 percent of COVID-19 cases at meat plants were minority workers: CDC
Jessie Hellmann, The Hill
At least 17,000 meat and poultry processing facility workers in the U.S. have been infected with COVID-19, the vast majority being racial and ethnic minorities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed in a new analysis released Tuesday.
Puerto Rico, Still Reeling From Old Disasters, Is Slammed by Covid-19
Alejandra Rosa and Frances Robles, The New York Times
As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the globe, shutting businesses, killing the vulnerable and crippling economies, Puerto Rico has taken one of the country’s hardest economic hits. Gov. Wanda Vázquez was the first governor in the nation to order businesses to close and people to stay home.
Florida invited the nation to its reopening — then it became a new coronavirus epicenter
Cleve R. Wootson Jr. et al., The Washington Post
As the coronavirus savaged other parts of the country, Florida, buoyed by low infection rates, seemed an ideal location for a nation looking to emerge from isolation. The Republican National Convention moved from Charlotte to Jacksonville, the NBA eyed a season finale at a Disney sports complex near Orlando and millions packed onto once-empty beaches.
Payers
Startup PBM Capital Rx, Walmart partner to shed light on specialty, mail-order drug prices
Paige Minemyer, FierceHealthcare
Capital Rx provides PBM services to employers and health plans through its “clearinghouse” model, in which they provide unit costs for drugs upfront to clients. The model is also designed to prevent “spread pricing,” in which a PBM charges a payer significantly more than a pharmacy’s price for a drug to reap profits.
Providers
Hospitals feeling strain of coronavirus surge
David Hogberg, Washington Examiner
As the coronavirus surges across many parts of the United States, hospitals are feeling the strain. The intensive care unit beds are at 100% capacity in some hospitals and are fast approaching that number in others.
New York Nurses Union Files Labor Charges, Seeking Coronavirus Data on Hospital Staff
Shalini Ramachandran, The Wall Street Journal
New York’s largest nurses union filed charges of unfair labor practices against several hospitals in the state, seeking the number of nurses who had been infected with the coronavirus.
Florida oncology group will return $2.3 million to VA for drug overpayments
Tara Bannow, Modern Healthcare
An oncology group in Fort Myers, Fla. has agreed to pay more than $2.3 million to settle the federal government’s claim that the Department of Veterans Affairs overpaid for drugs.
Pharma, Biotech and Devices
Drug prices steadily rise amid pandemic, data shows
Sarah Owermohle, Politico
Pharmaceutical companies logged more than 800 price increases this year, and adjusted the cost of 42 medicines upward by an average of 3.3 percent so far in July, according to GoodRx, which tracks the prices consumers pay at pharmacies. While the size of that increase is not out of line with past years, the number of branded drugs seeing hikes this month was higher than last year.
‘Desperation science’ slows the hunt for coronavirus drugs
Marilynn Marchione, The Associated Press
Desperate to solve the deadly conundrum of COVID-19, the world is clamoring for fast answers and solutions from a research system not built for haste. The ironic, and perhaps tragic, result: Scientific shortcuts have slowed understanding of the disease and delayed the ability to find out which drugs help, hurt or have no effect at all.
With a clinical hold, off-the-shelf CAR-T hits a new safety concern
Damian Garde, Stat News
The Food and Drug Administration has placed a clinical hold on one of Cellectis’s off-the-shelf CAR-T trials after one patient died of cardiac arrest, a worrying development for a technology thought to be safer than the approved alternative.
The ‘Covid Cocktail’: Inside a Pa. nursing home that gave some veterans hydroxychloroquine even without covid-19 testing
Debbie Cenziper and Shawn Mulcahy, The Washington Post
For more than two weeks in April, a drug regimen that included hydroxychloroquine was routinely dispensed at the struggling center, often for patients who had not been tested for covid-19 and for those who suffered from medical conditions known to raise the risk of dangerous side effects, interviews, emails and medical notes and records obtained by The Washington Post show.
Health IT
Virus-Tracing Apps Are Rife With Problems. Governments Are Rushing to Fix Them.
Natasha Singer, The New York Times
Norway is one of many countries that rushed out apps to trace and monitor the coronavirus this spring, only to scramble to address serious complaints that soon arose over extensive user data-mining or poor security practices. Human rights groups and technologists have warned that the design of many apps put hundreds of millions of people at risk for stalking, scams, identity theft or oppressive government tracking — and could undermine trust in public health efforts.
Proving predictions wrong, health tech funding keeps climbing
Juliet Isselbacher, Stat News
The report, from health-tech-focused venture firm Rock Health, projects that 2020 will shatter annual records for investments, number of deals, and the average size of such deals. That projection counters previous predictions that the uptick in investments seen earlier this year would subside as the pandemic continued to take a toll.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Staying Healthy in a Pandemic: The Growing Need for Telemedicine in America
Sunil Budhrani, Morning Consult
This crisis has made it clear that there is an opportunity for the American health care system to provide alternatives for patients seeking care while staying at home. As we continue to socially distance, we need to move forward and make telemedicine our initial instinct, rather than our last resort.
Research Reports
2020 Midyear Digital Health Market Update: Unprecedented funding in an unprecedented time
Nina Chiu et al., Rock Health
In the midst of a global pandemic and a US recession, US digital health companies raised $5.4B in venture funding across the first six months of 2020. The sector is on track to have its largest funding year ever.
General
Patient Is Reported Free of H.I.V., but Scientists Urge Caution
Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times
A 36-year-old man in Brazil may be the first to experience long-term remission from H.I.V. after treatment with only a specially designed cocktail of antiviral drugs, researchers said on Tuesday.
US government launches campaign to reduce high suicide rates
Hope Yen, The Associated Press
The federal government launched a broad national campaign Tuesday aimed at reducing high suicide rates, urging the public to reach out to others, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, and acknowledge daily stresses in people’s lives.
U.S. Futures Drift, European Stocks Extend Slide: Markets Wrap
Constantine Courcoulas, Bloomberg
U.S. equity futures fluctuated and European stocks slid amid new tensions between Washington and Beijing and worries that consumer spending will lag during the pandemic.
|
