The Covid19 pandemic has definitely hit all of us. It changed our lives in an instant. A lot of lives were lost worldwide and it gave a lot of challenges to our public health, food systems and work. It didn't only affect our lives, but it also affected our economy. Lots of people loose their jobs because of the closure of companies due to health protocols. And a lot are now at risk of falling into extreme poverty, and those undernourished...
As COVID-19 cases began to accelerate again this spring, federal data suggests the rate of breakthrough COVID infections in April was worse in boosted Americans compared to unboosted Americans — though rates of deaths and hospitalizations remained the lowest among the boosted.
The new data do not mean booster shots are somehow increasing the risk. Ongoing studies continue to provide...
As the midterm election season ramps up, the Biden administration wants rural Americans to know it'll be spending a lot of money to improve health care in rural areas.
It has tasked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack with delivering the message that the covid-19 pandemic exposed long-standing problems with health care infrastructure in remote parts of the country and pushed many rural health providers to the brink.
Vilsack spoke to KHN...
Months of confusing messaging, piled onto existing inequities, kneecapped America’s booster campaign before it had really started.
By this point in the pandemic, the benefits of boosters seem pretty darn clear. Boosters continue the immune system’s education on the coronavirus , upping the quantity of defensive fighters available, while expanding the breadth of variants that vaccinated...
WASHINGTON — When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures.
Winding down those policies could begin as early as the summer. That could force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients to find new sources of coverage, require...
There is no denying that the American health care system can provide quality care. However, it’s costly and riddled with a tedious, bloated bureaucracy. Experts estimate that more than a third of health care costs go to bureaucracy and administration nationwide.
Besides astronomical costs, there are preventable medical errors, personnel shortages, glaring procedural inefficiencies and severe lapses in transparency....
Pfizer and BioNTech pushed the pause button Friday on the process of authorizing its COVID-19 vaccine for the youngest children.
The companies said in a release that they want to wait until data becomes available on a third vaccine dose for children under 5, likely in early April.
They had originally said such data would become available in late March or early April and they would ask for vaccine authorization then.
But under...
How do we deal with global vaccine inequity? Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg via Getty Images
People in wealthier countries are far more likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Some countries have committed funds to help resolve global vaccine inequity, but others have not.
A new paper proposes a solution: a sliding-scale tax to be built into the price of vaccines and collected by manufacturers.
As of December...
The U.S. will roll out a new travel system in two weeks that will open borders up for millions of vaccinated international visitors.
The system launching Nov. 8 will end the U.S. travel ban that has been in place for dozens of countries since the start of the pandemic . It will also make reentry more challenging for unvaccinated U.S. citizens and...
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are falling and the number of new cases per day is about to dip below 100,000 for the first time in two months.
COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are coming down again, hospitalizations are dropping, and new cases per day are about to dip below 100,000 for the first time in two months — all signs that the summer surge is waning.
Not wanting to lose momentum, government leaders and employers are looking to...
As the Delta variant continues to account for the vast majority of cases of COVID in the United States, Google Trends data shows users are asking if natural immunity could protect against what is proving to be the most virulent strain of the virus.
The U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) currently estimates that the Delta variant is behind as much as 99.8 percent of the country's total COVID cases....
The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office for Civil Rights issued guidance today explaining that COVID-19 vaccine status would not be covered under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules.
Within its new guidance, HHS reminded that HIPAA does not apply to employer or employment records on the grounds that the rules only apply to HIPAA-covered entities like health care providers...