First Edition: October 26, 2021
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
KHN:
Direct Primary Care, With A Touch Of Robin Hood
Britta Foster and Minerva Tiznado are in different leagues as far as health care is concerned. Foster, who married into the family that owns the $2.5 billion Foster Farms chicken company, has Blue Shield coverage as well as a high-octane primary care plan that gives her 24/7 digital access to her doctor for a $5,900 annual fee that also covers her husband and two of their children. Tiznado is from Nayarit, Mexico, and has no insurance. She gets free primary care visits and steep discounts on prescription drugs, lab tests and imaging. (Wolfson, 10/26)
KHN:
Understaffed State Psychiatric Facilities Leave Mental Health Patients In Limbo
Many patients dealing with mental health crises are having to wait several days in an ER until a bed becomes available at one of Georgia’s five state psychiatric hospitals, as public facilities nationwide feel the pinch of the pandemic. “We’re in crisis mode,’’ said Dr. John Sy, an emergency medicine physician in Savannah. “Two weeks ago, we were probably holding eight to 10 patients. Some of them had been there for days.” (Miller, 10/26)
KHN:
Analysis: A Procedure That Cost $1,775 In New York Was $350 In Maryland. Here’s Why
For the past 18 months, while I was undergoing intensive physical therapy and many neurological tests after a complicated head injury, my friends would point to a silver lining: “Now you’ll be able to write about your own bills.” After all, I’d spent the past decade as a journalist covering the often-bankrupting cost of U.S. medical care. But my bills were, in fact, mostly totally reasonable. That’s largely because I live in Washington, D.C., and received the majority of my care in next-door Maryland, the one state in the nation that controls what hospitals can charge for services and has a cap on spending growth. (Rosenthal, 10/26)
The New York Times:
Moderna Says Vaccine Produces Powerful Immune Response In Those 6 Through 11
The coronavirus vaccine made by Moderna is safe and produces a powerful immune response in children 6 through 11, the company said on Monday. One month after immunization was complete, the children in Moderna’s trial had antibody levels that were 1.5 times higher than those seen in young adults, the company said. Moderna did not release the full data, nor are the results published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results were announced one day before an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration is scheduled to review data for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children 5 through 11. (Mandavilli, 10/25)
The New York Times:
Unvaccinated Children And Some People From Countries With Low Rates Will Be Exempted From New U.S. Travel Rules
Children under the age of 18 who are unvaccinated against the coronavirus, and a limited category of foreigners arriving from countries with low vaccination rates, are among the travelers exempted from forthcoming requirements that will determine who can enter the United States, Biden administration officials said on Monday. The Biden administration has announced that it would lift travel restrictions on Nov. 8 and reopen the United States to fully vaccinated international travelers who had been barred for nearly a year and a half from entering the country by air or crossing the land borders. (Kanno-Youngs, 10/26)
The Washington Post:
International Visitors With Proof Of Vaccination, Negative Test Soon Allowed To Enter U.S.
With less than two weeks to go before the United States lifts a travel ban on visitors from 33 countries, federal health officials offered more specifics for travelers and airlines before restrictions are lifted Nov. 8. Although vaccination won’t be required for children, most noncitizens and nonimmigrants arriving by air will have to show both proof of vaccination and proof of a negative coronavirus test taken at least three days before departure. Those under 18 will have to show proof of a negative coronavirus test before boarding a flight, according to rules outlined Monday by the Biden administration. (Jeong and Suliman, 10/26)
The Washington Post:
Biden Administration Looks To Speed Authorization Of Rapid Coronavirus Tests
The Biden administration announced additional steps on Monday to increase the availability of rapid at-home coronavirus tests and bring down their cost. The biggest change is a $70 million investment by the National Institutes of Health — using funds from the American Rescue Plan, which was passed earlier this year — to help manufacturers navigate the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory process. The NIH program aims to speed up the authorization process for new tests by helping manufacturers produce the data regulators need. It will also identify rapid tests that have the potential to be produced and distributed on a large scale. (Abutaleb, 10/25)
USA Today:
Facebook Says It’s Stopping Hate And Violence Against Black Americans. Its Own Research Shows Otherwise
Even as civil rights leaders and the Black community registered complaint after complaint about Facebook, internal documents reviewed by USA TODAY show that the company continued to combat a relentless wave of racially motivated hate speech with automated moderation tools that are not sophisticated enough to catch most harmful content and are prone to making mistakes. One Facebook employee estimated that 1 out of every 1,000 pieces of content on the platform are hate speech. With all of the company's enforcement efforts combined, less than 5% of all the hate speech posted to Facebook is deleted, the person said. (Guynn, 10/25)
AP:
People Or Profit? Facebook Papers Show Deep Conflict Within
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — not to mention the last shreds of its carefully crafted, decade-old image as a benevolent company just wanting to connect the world. Thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by a former employee depict an internally conflicted company where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions, much less the will to act on them, are halting at best. The crisis exposed by the documents shows how Facebook, despite its regularly avowed good intentions, appears to have slow-walked or sidelined efforts to address real harms the social network has magnified and sometimes created. They reveal numerous instances where researchers and rank-and-file workers uncovered deep-seated problems that the company then overlooked or ignored. (Ortutay, 10/25)
The Washington Post:
Additional Medicare, Medicaid Benefits May Be Whittled Or Cut As Democrats Woo Moderates
Democrats’ sweeping plans to bolster Medicare and Medicaid benefits have been scaled back amid an assault from industry groups and opposition from centrists like Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), with popular coverage expansions likely to be narrowed in hopes of reaching a deal this week. A proposal to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision benefits is in danger of falling from the tax-and-spending package rapidly taking shape in Congress. A framework to expand Medicaid to cover Americans in a dozen mostly Southern states has also been reworked. (Diamond, Roubein, Goldstein and Romm, 10/26)
The Hill:
Manchin Shutting Down Sanders On Medicare Expansion
But Manchin on Monday threw cold water on Sanders’s push to expand Medicare, warning the program faces insolvency in 2026. “My big concern right now is the 2026 deadline [for] Medicare insolvency and if no one’s concerned about that, I’ve got people — that’s a lifeline. Medicare and Social Security is a lifeline for people back in West Virginia, most people around the country,” Manchin warned. “You’ve got to stabilize that first before you look at basically expansion. So if we’re not being fiscally responsible, that’s a concern,” he added. (Bolton, 10/25)
The Wall Street Journal:
Democrats Negotiate Tax, Healthcare Provisions As Biden Seeks Deal This Week
Democrats are sprinting to wrap up negotiations over their social-spending and climate bill, hoping by this weekend to resolve disagreements on issues including tax policy and healthcare. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Monday there were three to four open issues. Lawmakers and aides said major policy areas, including the tax increases to pay for the package, Medicare and Medicaid provisions and a paid leave program, remain unresolved. The bill, initially drafted at $3.5 trillion, is now expected to cost between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. (Duehren and Peterson, 10/25)
The New York Times:
How 4 Weeks Of U.S. Paid Leave Would Compare With The Rest Of The World
Congress is now considering four weeks of paid family and medical leave, down from the 12 weeks that were initially proposed in the Democrats’ spending plan. If the plan becomes law, the United States will no longer be one of six countries in the world — and the only rich country — without any form of national paid leave. But it would still be an outlier. Of the 185 countries that offer paid leave for new mothers, only one, Eswatini (once called Swaziland), offers fewer than four weeks. Of the 174 countries that offer paid leave for a personal health problem, just 26 offer four weeks or fewer, according to data from the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. (Cain Miller, 10/25)
Politico:
State Department Tested Diplomats For 'Directed Energy Exposure' Years Before Telling Congress
The State Department was zeroing in on directed-energy weapons as a possible source of U.S. diplomats’ mysterious brain injuries more than two years before detailing those suspicions to members of Congress, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. As early as mid-2018, the State Department was administering its own internal medical tests specifically designed to evaluate patients who experienced “directed energy exposure” on foreign soil, according to two victims’ disclosure forms for the examinations. Both of their test results led to their immediate return to the U.S. (Desiderio and Seligman, 10/25)
The Washington Post:
International Body For Pandemic Preparedness Issues Stark Warning In Latest Report
An international body that tracks preparedness for international health crises says in a new report that the current global system does not have the capacity to end the current covid-19 pandemic – let alone prevent the next pandemic – unless there are major changes. The report released by Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) on Tuesday states that as many as 17 million people may have died due to covid-19, but that “there is scant evidence that we are learning the right lessons from this pandemic” and that the pandemic has “exposed a world that is unequal, divided, and unaccountable.” (Taylor, 10/26)
Stat:
Congress’s Efforts To Prepare For The Next Pandemic Are Falling Behind
Addressing the federal government’s failures during the Covid-19 pandemic has fallen off the priority list in Congress this year, according to three lobbyists and a congressional aide following the talks. Though Congress looked poised for progress this spring — with rare, bipartisan interest in shoring up the nation’s pandemic infrastructure — that action has been delayed as Democrats tussle over massive bills containing President Biden’s domestic agenda and averting a government shutdown and financial crisis. If this Congress does eventually take action to improve public health response, it isn’t likely to happen until next year. (Cohrs, 10/26)
Stat:
Tracking The FDA Advisory Panel Meeting On Covid-19 Vaccines For Kids
The moment some parents have been anxiously awaiting for months is almost here: The Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 will likely be authorized for use in the next week, after completion of a four-step process that begins today.It is also a moment some portion of parents has been dreading for months. And over the weekend, they made their concerns known to experts on the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccines advisory committee, which meets today to review the evidence on the Pfizer vaccine’s safety and efficacy in kids ages 5 to 11. Members of the the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) were deluged by an organized email campaign urging them not to recommend the vaccine. (Branswell and Herper, 10/26)
The New York Times:
Are Vaccine Boosters Widely Needed? Some Federal Advisers Have Misgivings
Following a series of endorsements over the last month by scientific panels advising federal agencies, tens of millions of Americans are now eligible for booster shots of coronavirus vaccines. But the recommendations — even those approved unanimously — mask significant dissent and disquiet among those advisers about the need for booster shots in the United States. In interviews last week, several advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to the Food and Drug Administration said data show that, with the exception of adults over age 65, the vast majority of Americans are already well protected against severe illness and do not need booster shots. (Mandavilli, 10/25)
The New York Times:
AstraZeneca’s Vaccine Comes With A Slightly Higher Risk Of A Nerve Syndrome But Not Worse Than From Covid, A Study Finds
A study of more than 32 million Covid vaccine recipients in England published on Monday found that people given the AstraZeneca vaccine were at slightly increased risk of Guillain–Barré syndrome, a rare but potentially serious neurological condition.Even so, the coronavirus vaccine posed a far smaller risk of the disorder than did Covid itself, the researchers said.“The neurological complications of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are much rarer than the neurological complications of Covid-19,” said Dr. Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London. (Mueller, 10/26)
Bloomberg:
Vaccine Cash Incentives Don't Work, U.S. Study Shows
Financial incentives and other nudges by local governments and employers have failed to increase Covid-19 vaccinations among Americans who are hesitant about getting the shot, a new study shows. What’s more, financial incentives and “negative messages” actually decreased vaccination rates among some groups, underscoring fears about a public backlash, according to the paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research. (Pickert, 10/25)
Raleigh News & Observer:
What’s The Best Incentive For A COVID-19 Vaccine?
Guaranteed cash incentives for COVID-19 vaccination slowed the decline in vaccine rates by half at the clinics they were offered, North Carolina researchers concluded in a study published Monday. The study, authored by researchers from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, North Carolina Central University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, analyzed vaccination rates at select sites in Mecklenburg, Guilford, Rowan and Rockingham counties. (Sessoms, 10/25)
The Washington Post:
Cruises Will No Longer Be Required To Follow CDC Rules Starting In January
Authorities replaced an earlier ban on cruise travel with a “conditional sailing order” in October 2020, which laid out steps cruise companies had to take to sail with passengers from U.S. ports. That order — which required ships to sail with at least 95 percent of people vaccinated or perform a test cruise to demonstrate safety procedures — was set to expire on Nov. 1.Instead, the CDC will extend the order, with some tweaks, through Jan. 15. Those changes include new procedures for ships that come to U.S. waters after operating in other jurisdictions, new instructions for ships that want to switch from 95 percent of passengers vaccinated to a lower number and the end of required CDC travel advisories or warnings about cruising in marketing material. (Sampson, 10/26)
CIDRAP:
First Responders May Have Higher COVID-19 Risk Than Healthcare Workers
First responders' risk for COVID-19 infection is about 60% more than other essential workers, including healthcare workers (HCWs), according to a study published late last week in JAMA Health Forum. In Arizona, 1,766 HCWs, first responders, and other essential workers took weekly COVID-19 tests from July 2020 to March 2021 (23,393 person-weeks). First responder infection incidence was 13.2 per 1,000 person-weeks, versus 6.7 in HCWs and 7.4 in other essential workers. Compared with HCWs, first responders' adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR) was 1.60 (95% CI, 1.07 to 2.83), with similar results when compared with other essential workers. (10/25)
Modern Healthcare:
Federal Court Rules Against Nursing Homes In COVID-19 Cases
A ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week against two nursing homes in New Jersey is the first step in determining how COVID-19 cases will be handled by courts, lawyers say. In the ruling, the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit determined that negligence and wrongful death cases like those alleged against the Andover Subacute & Rehabilitation I & II nursing homes should be handled by the states and are not covered by the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, known as the PREP Act, which offers immunity to liability for COVID-19 countermeasures. (Christ, 10/25)
The New York Times:
What You Should Know About The Flu
We’ve had two light years in a row, which some experts worry could mean we’ll be in for a rough few months. (Wenner Moyer, 10/25)
NPR:
ERs Are Now Swamped With Seriously Ill Patients — But Most Don't Even Have COVID
Inside the Emergency Department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, staff are struggling to care for patients who are showing up much sicker than they've ever seen. Tiffani Dusang, the ER's nursing director, practically vibrates with pent-up anxiety, looking at all the patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the beige walls of the hospital hallways. "It's hard to watch," she says in her warm Texan twang. But there's nothing she can do. The ER's 72 rooms are already filled. (Wells, 10/26)
CIDRAP:
New Multistate Salmonella Outbreak Linked To Salami Sticks
The CDC announced over the weekend a new Salmonella outbreak linked to salami sticks sold at Trader Joe's grocery stores. So far 20 people have been sickened in 8 states, including 3 who needed hospitalization. No deaths have been reported. Patients range in age from 2 to 75 years, with a median age of 11. Eight of nine people interviewed by the CDC as part of the outbreak investigation said they ate Citterio brand Premium Italian-Style Salame Sticks, which are sold at Trader Joe's and other grocery stores. (10/25)
NPR:
Cannabis Vaping Among Teens Has Grown Sharply In Recent Years
Teen vaping of marijuana doubled between 2013 and 2020, indicating that young people may be swapping out joints, pipes or bongs for vape pens, according to a new study. Researchers also found that adolescents who say they vaped cannabis within the last 30 days increased 7-fold — from 1.6% to 8.4% — during the same period. The report was published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday by researchers who analyzed 17 studies involving nearly 200,000 adolescents in the U.S. and Canada. Overall, they say, the cumulative data points to what may be a shift in preference from dried herb to cannabis oil products, which is how marijuana is ingested via vaping. (Romo, 10/25)
Stat:
Latest Psilocybin Patent Highlights The Swirling Battle Over Psychedelics Intellectual Property
One of the leading companies racing to develop psychedelics as legal medicines was granted a patent last week for a formulation of psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound found in magic mushrooms — a decision that highlights the increasingly intense battle around intellectual property for potential medicines in this rapidly growing sector. (Goldhill, 10/26)
Stat:
Licensing Biotech Breakthroughs Is A Mess. Can It Be Fixed?
Students, employees, and professors at a research institution generally pledge that in the event they make some interesting, potentially money-making discovery, they’ll notify their institution’s tech transfer office. This office can go by many different names; some are “technology licensing offices,” others will throw an “innovation” or “knowledge” in there for good measure. But they all serve similar purposes: to ensure the institution and the public will benefit from the intellectual property created under its auspices. (Sheridan, 10/26)
Modern Healthcare:
Cedars-Sinai, Houston Methodist To Deploy New Tools From Amazon
Amazon on Monday unveiled a new voice offering for hospitals and health systems, representing yet another step in the Seattle tech giant's push into healthcare. Amazon's Alexa voice assistant next month will offer applications designed for patients to use during a hospital stay as part of Alexa Smart Properties, a division that sells Alexa devices and voice tools to property owners to deploy and centrally manage throughout their organizations. That includes apartments, hotels and senior-living facilities. BayCare in Tampa, Florida; Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles; and Houston Methodist are among health systems that are implementing tools from Alexa Smart Properties. (Kim Cohen, 10/25)
CIDRAP:
US Hospitals Took Huge, Unequal Financial Hit During COVID, Studies Show
Three new studies describe how the COVID-19 pandemic cratered the finances of many US hospitals, one finding that most federal relief funds went to the already best-resourced facilities and the other two showing the devastating monetary effects of delaying or canceling surgeries. In a study published late last week in JAMA Health Forum, RAND Corp. researchers traced High-Impact Distribution Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to 952 hospitals. Data, which were taken from hospital cost reports in the Healthcare Cost Report Information System, were analyzed from December 2020 through June 2021. (Van Beusekom, 10/25)
Bloomberg:
Novartis May Spin Off Or Sell Ailing Sandoz Generics Unit
Novartis AG may spin off or sell its Sandoz generic-drug unit after it consistently failed to meet expectations, with U.S. sales plummeting this year amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The Swiss pharma giant gave itself until the end of next year to decide what to do with the business, which has suffered from price erosion and tough competition. The move comes more than two years after Novartis started making the generics unit more independent, splitting off manufacturing and support functions. (Kresge, 10/26)
The Wall Street Journal:
CVS Health Launches $25 Million Ad Campaign Focused On ‘Healthy’
CVS Health Corp. is introducing its first major ad campaign aiming to show the breadth of its health services and the role that the company played during the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s important to make a statement as a brand on where we think healthcare is going and how we are positioning ourselves,” said Michelle Peluso, executive vice president and chief customer officer at CVS Health, which owns CVS Pharmacy, insurance giant Aetna and other products and services like CVS Kidney Care. “What the pandemic did for us is it forced us to reimagine a lot of things in a really fast timeline,” she said. “We never stepped back to say, what has CVS Health become?” (Bruell, 10/25)
The Wall Street Journal:
New York City Inches Toward Covid-19 Becoming Endemic
Each wave of Covid-19 patients that has crashed through the doors of Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens has been more manageable than the last. In the spring of 2020 and the following winter, the hospital needed extra spaces to care for Covid-19 patients in need of oxygen and struggling to breathe. At the height of the Delta surge this summer and fall, Covid-19 patients didn’t fill its ICU. “We’re seeing it more as a chronic problem than as an immediate, huge pandemic problem like we were before,” said Mangala Narasimhan, a critical-care pulmonologist and director of critical-care services at Northwell Health, a large health system in the New York region that includes Long Island Jewish Medical Center. (Abbott, 10/25)
The New York Times:
New York City Police Union Sues Over Vaccine Mandate
The largest police union in New York City asked a judge on Monday to allow unvaccinated police officers to continue working, despite the city’s recently imposed vaccine mandate, which requires all municipal workers to have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose by Nov. 1. In a lawsuit filed in Staten Island, which is home to many police officers and has a vaccination rate that lags behind the citywide average, the Police Benevolent Association of New York said it opposed a vaccine mandate for police officers that does not allow the option of being tested weekly instead of being vaccinated. (Otterman and Goldenstein, 10/26)
Politico:
Florida's Surgeon General Nominee Won't Share Covid-19 Vaccine Status
Florida surgeon general nominee Joseph Ladapo, who has publicly questioned the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, will not say if he’s been vaccinated against coronavirus after he was booted last week from the office of a cancer-stricken state senator. Gov. Ron DeSantis picked the controversial Ladapo last month because of his reticence toward Covid-19 pandemic safety measures such as wearing face masks and relying on vaccines to slow down spread, which are in line with the Republican governor. Yet when asked on Monday if Ladapo himself was vaccinated, Florida Department of Health spokesperson Weesam Khoury said that information is private. (Sarkissian, 10/25)
Miami Herald/ProPublica:
Audit Rips Apart Florida Program Created To Aid Brain-Damaged Kids
Case managers at Florida’s $1.5 billion compensation program for catastrophically brain-damaged children didn’t consult specialists to determine whether medications, therapy, medical supplies and surgical procedures were “medically necessary” to the health of children in the plan. They relied on Google instead. That was one of the findings of a state audit released this week of the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA. The audit was ordered after the Miami Herald and ProPublica detailed how NICA has amassed nearly $1.5 billion in assets while sometimes arbitrarily denying or slow-walking care to severely brain-damaged children. (Marbin Miller and Chang, 10/25)
The Washington Post:
Arizona, Catching Up With New York In Coronavirus Deaths Per Capita, Worries Experts
Arizona has caught up to New York when it comes to reported deaths per capita — even though the latter was ravaged by the coronavirus early in the pandemic before treatments or vaccines were developed. Some health experts worry Arizona could be headed for a deepening crisis as winter approaches. Although average daily deaths from covid-19 remain much lower than during the state’s second wave in January, Arizona experienced a 138 percent increase in the seven-day rolling average of daily new deaths per 100,000 people last week, according to data collected by The Washington Post. (Timsit, 10/25)
AP:
Federal Judge Rejects Bid To Stop Washington Vaccine Mandate
A federal judge in Eastern Washington on Monday denied a bid by firefighters, state troopers and others to halt Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state workers and emergency responders. A group of workers is suing Gov. Jay Inslee, Spokane Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer, Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste and others. The workers say their civil rights are being violated by the requirement they get vaccinated to continue in their jobs. The plaintiffs filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, but KXLY reports U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice denied the motion. (10/26)
AP:
Louisiana Governor To Announce If He'll Lift Mask Mandate
Gov. John Bel Edwards on Tuesday will announce whether he’ll keep Louisiana’s indoor mask mandate for another month or let it expire since the state has emerged from its latest coronavirus spike and is seeing lower rates of COVID-19 infection. The Democratic governor seems poised to let the face covering requirement he reenacted in August fall off the books for most public indoor locations when it’s set to expire Wednesday, letting individual businesses decide whether they want their customers masked up. (Deslatte, 10/26)
Modern Healthcare:
HCA Names New Chief Clinical Officer
Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare on Monday announced the system had promoted Dr. Michael Cuffe to chief clinical officer and executive vice president. Beginning Jan. 1, Cuffe—who joined HCA Healthcare as president and CEO of physician services in 2011—will lead the clinical agenda for the for-profit hospital chain's 183 hospitals and roughly 2,000 ambulatory care sites. That includes leading the system's clinical quality, nursing, care transformation and clinical informatics teams, as well as continuing his oversight of physician services. (Kim Cohen, 10/25)
USA Today:
After Auburn Announces Vaccine Requirement, Alabama Gov. Says She Won't Enforce Federal Mandate
In response to Auburn University's recently announced vaccine mandate for all employees, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued an executive order of her own Monday, instructing all state agencies to not enforce the federal vaccine mandate issued by President Joe Biden that applies to companies employing 100 or more people. In a tweet, Ivey said: "The federal government's overreach has given us no other option." Auburn announced Friday that all university employees have to be vaccinated by Dec. 8. (Durando, 10/26)
Reuters:
Rise In Human Bird Flu Cases In China Shows Risk Of Fast-Changing Variants: Experts
A jump in the number of people in China infected with bird flu this year is raising concern among experts, who say a previously circulating strain appears to have changed and may be more infectious to people. China has reported 21 human infections with the H5N6 subtype of avian influenza in 2021 to the World Health Organization (WHO), compared with only five last year, it said. Though the numbers are much lower than the hundreds infected with H7N9 in 2017, the infections are serious, leaving many critically ill, and at least six dead. (Patton, 10/26)