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Moderna Apples for Authorization of Its Covid Vaccine for Adolescents

Moderna Apples for Authorization of Its Covid Vaccine for Adolescents

Moderna applied to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday for emergency clearance to use its coronavirus vaccine in 12-17 year olds. If approved as expected, the vaccine would offer a second option to protect teenagers from the coronavirus and speed the return to normal for middle and high school students.

The company has already applied for approval from Health Canada and the European Medicines Agency and plans to apply for approval in other countries, CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. FDA approval usually takes three to four weeks.

Last month, the FDA expanded the emergency approval of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine for use in children ages 12-15. This vaccine was already available to anyone over the age of 16. About 7 million children under the age of 18 have received at least one dose of the vaccine to date, and about 3.5 million are fully protected.

Moderna’s vaccine was approved for use in adults in December. His application to the FDA for young teenagers is based on study results published last month. This clinical trial enrolled 3,732 children, ages 12-17, with 2,500 receiving two doses of the vaccine and the remainder receiving a saltwater placebo.

The study found no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 in fully vaccinated adolescents, which is 100 percent effectiveness, the same number that Pfizer and BioNTech reported for this age group. The study also found that a single dose of the Moderna vaccine was 93 percent effective. Participants did not experience any serious side effects beyond those seen in adults: injection site pain, headache, fatigue, muscle pain, and chills.

An independent safety monitoring committee will follow all participants for 12 months after their second injection to assess long-term protection and safety.

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Singapore to start out easing Covid restrictions as day by day infections fall

Singapore to start easing Covid restrictions as daily infections fall

A woman wearing a face mask as a prevention against Covid-19 walks along the promenade at Marina Bay in Singapore on May 9th, 2020.

Facebook Facebook logo Sign up on Facebook to connect with Roslan Rahman AFP | Getty Images

SINGAPORE – The Singapore government announced on Thursday that it would ease restrictions on Covid as the number of daily infections has decreased.

The Southeast Asian country tightened social distancing measures last month to curb a surge in local Covid-19 infections. These measures, which included eating out and small social gatherings, had been in place since mid-May.

Starting Monday, Singapore allows social gatherings of five people – an increase from the current two-person limit.

Restrictions on event attendees and operating capacity in places like public libraries and museums will also be relaxed, the government said.

We need to learn to live with the virus and then do our best to minimize transmission and minimize the risk of large clusters breaking out.

Lawrence Wong

Singapore Finance Minister

From June 21st, the restrictions will be further relaxed. Activities such as dining out and some mask-off activities in gyms and gyms are allowed to resume with some social distancing measures.

However, working from home remains the standard for those who can, the government said.

Local infections in Singapore have dropped to single digits in the past few days. Overall, the country has reported more than 62,000 cases since the beginning of last year, with 34 deaths on Wednesday, data from the health ministry showed.

However, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Wong, co-chair of Singapore’s Covid Task Force, said the country must be ready to see more cases as it opens. He added that the country needs to continue its vaccination and testing efforts to curb high rates of infection within the community.

“We will have to learn to live with the virus and then do our best to minimize transmission and minimize the risk of large clusters breaking out,” Wong said at a media briefing on Thursday.

Vaccination progress

Around 2.5 million people have received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to Singapore. That’s about 40% of the population.

Starting Friday, the country will allow people ages 12 to 39 to register for a vaccination.

Wong said Singapore aims to have 50% of its population fully vaccinated by August. By October, that number would hit 75% or more, he added.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said people who were vaccinated and who got Covid-19 had fewer severe symptoms than people without the vaccination.

Ong said that of all cases since April 11, about 9% of unvaccinated, infected people needed supplemental oxygen or intensive care. Less than 1% of fully vaccinated people who were infected needed supplemental oxygen or critical care, he added.

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Jessica Morris, Whose Mind Most cancers Was Her Trigger, Dies at 57

Jessica Morris, Whose Brain Cancer Was Her Cause, Dies at 57

Through the nonprofit Our Brain Bank she founded, Ms. Morris encouraged more than just treating the tumor.

“If you are suddenly told that you have a disease that is considered incurable,” she said in the Human Guinea Pig Project podcast in 2019, “the only thing you urgently need is psychological support, and it’s not there.”

She also wanted to make sure patients had access to second opinions and funding so that those who were told by a doctor “nothing can be done” could take a more aggressive approach if they so wished. She herself took several novel approaches, her husband said, including an experimental therapy suggested by one of her doctors that injects herpes virus into the tumor in hopes of stimulating an immune response.

“Even if I don’t know exactly how certain treatments might work – and nobody really knows – it makes sense to block as many routes to cancer as possible,” Ms. Morris said on the podcast.

Another goal was to make it easier for glioblastoma patients to participate in clinical trials with drugs and therapies. Access to such studies can be tedious and frustrating for patients with limited life expectancy. And since glioblastoma is a complex disease in which each tumor has different characteristics, Ms. Morris and her organization have developed an app that patients can use to report symptoms and share information with each other and with medical professionals – to better understand the disease.

“Patient symptom data is a largely untapped pool of information that can inform researchers so they can better develop treatments,” Ms. Morris said during a 2019 panel discussion on patient-centered treatments. “Involving patients in this process has the added benefit of making people with the disease feel like they are dealing with the disease, and not the other way around.”

Jessica Jane Morris was born on July 22nd, 1963 in Greenwich near London. Her father Bill was an architect and her mother Elizabeth (Villar) Morris is an artist.

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Knowledgeable on U.S.-China competitors in vaccine diplomacy

Expert on U.S.-China competition in vaccine diplomacy

Workers unload boxes of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine donated by China at Damascus International Airport in the Syrian capital on April 24, 2021.

Loua Beshara | AFP | Getty Images

The competition between the US and China could heat up on another front: Covid-19 vaccine diplomacy.

China has been a major supplier of Covid vaccines to much of the developing world, an effort some experts said could strengthen Beijing’s global influence and deepen its ties with other nations.

But a health policy and policy expert told CNBC on Thursday that the US is now catching up as the White House lays out plans to donate millions of doses of Covid vaccine overseas and President Joe Biden appears to want to do more.

“We will see China face a more formidable competitor,” Yanzhong Huang, Senior Fellow on Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia.

In recent months, China has been “almost the only major player” sending Covid vaccines to other countries, said Huang, who is also a professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations.

This is especially true if India has stopped exporting vaccines to prioritize its domestic needs and Russia’s supply abroad remains very limited, he said.

Several reports have indicated that the US is stepping up its efforts to exchange Covid vaccines around the world.

Biden will reportedly announce in a speech at the G-7 summit on Thursday that the US will buy 500 million more doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine to share with COVAX, a global vaccine exchange initiative .

CNBC also reported Wednesday that the government is negotiating with Moderna to secure additional doses of vaccine to supply the world.

Origins of Covid-19

Relations between the US and China got off to a bumpy start under the Biden administration. The two sides have clashed on several issues, including the origins of the coronavirus, which was first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Biden said last month he ordered a closer look at the origins of the pandemic, including whether the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory. In response, China accused the US of a political “guilt game”.

Huang said the issue of the origins of Covid-19 is so politicized that it is likely to fuel further tension between the US and China if additional evidence emerges to the possibility that Covid-19 stems from a laboratory incident.

Without China’s cooperation, such evidence of “smoking weapons” may not be found, Huang said. In the West, however, the theory that the virus came from a laboratory has become an increasingly “credible, if not mainstream,” explanation for the origin of the pandemic, he said.

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Biden to Ship Thousands and thousands of Pfizer Vaccine Doses to 100 Nations

Biden to Send Millions of Pfizer Vaccine Doses to 100 Countries

WASHINGTON – President Biden, under pressure to aggressively address the global coronavirus vaccine shortage, will announce Thursday that his government will buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine and deliver them to about 100 countries next year The donation will be made by people familiar with the plan.

The White House reached the deal just in time for Mr Biden’s eight-day tour of Europe, which will be his first opportunity to assert the United States as world leader and to re-establish ties that have been badly frayed by President Donald J. Trump.

“We have to end Covid-19, not just at home we do, but everywhere,” Biden told American troops after landing at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. “There is no wall high enough to protect us from this pandemic or the next biological threat we face, and there will be others. It requires coordinated multilateral action. “

People familiar with the Pfizer deal said the United States would pay for the cans at a “not for profit” price. The first 200 million cans will be distributed by the end of this year, followed by 300 million by next June, they said. The doses will be distributed through Covax, the international vaccine exchange initiative.

Mr Biden is in Europe for a week to attend the NATO and Group of 7 summits and to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin in Geneva. He will likely use the trip to urge other nations to step up vaccine distribution.

In a statement Wednesday, Jeffrey D. Zients, White House official in charge of developing a global vaccination strategy, said Biden will “bring the world’s democracies together to resolve this global crisis, with America leading the way, the vaccine arsenal that will be of vital importance in our global fight against Covid-19. “

The White House is trying to highlight its success in fighting the pandemic – especially its vaccination campaign – and using that success as a diplomatic tool, especially as China and Russia are trying to do the same. Mr Biden has insisted that unlike China and Russia, who share their vaccines with dozens of countries, the United States will not attempt to extort promises from countries that receive US-made vaccines.

The 500 million doses are still well below the 11 billion the World Health Organization estimates to vaccinate the world, but well above what the United States has promised so far. Other nations have asked the United States to give up some of its ample vaccine supplies. In some African countries, less than 1 percent of people are fully vaccinated compared to 42 percent in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Global health advocates welcomed the news but reiterated their stance that it is not enough for the United States to simply give away vaccines. They say the Biden government needs to create the conditions for other countries to manufacture vaccines themselves, including transferring technology to make the cans.

“The world desperately needs new productions to produce billions more doses within a year, not just pledges to buy planned inadequate supplies,” Peter Maybarduk, director of the Citizens’ Access to Medicines Program, said in a Explanation. He added, “We have not yet seen a US government or G7 plan with the ambition or urgency to add billions more doses and end the pandemic.”

The Pfizer deal has the potential to open the door to similar agreements with other vaccine makers, including Moderna, whose vaccine, unlike Pfizer’s, was developed with US taxpayers’ money. In addition, the Biden government has negotiated a deal whereby Merck will help manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, and those doses may be available for use overseas.

The United States has already signed a contract to purchase 300 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which requires two vaccinations to be distributed in the United States; the 500 million cans are on top of that, according to people familiar with the deal.

Biden in Europe

Updated

June 9, 2021, 8:50 p.m. ET

Neither Pfizer nor administrators would tell what the company is charging the government for the cans. Pfizer is also offering the Biden government the option to purchase an additional 200 million cans at cost to be donated overseas.

For Pfizer, the decision to sell so much of the supply to the Biden government for no profit is a significant step.

The vaccine accounted for $ 3.5 billion in sales for the first three months of this year, nearly a quarter of Pfizer’s total sales. By some estimates, the company made approximately $ 900 million in pre-tax income from the vaccine in the first quarter.

However, the company has also been criticized for disproportionately supporting wealthy nations, despite Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla promising in January to ensure that “developing countries have equal access to the rest of the world.”

The 200 million Pfizer cans the Biden government plans to donate accounts for about 7 percent of the three billion cans the company is expected to produce this year. Pfizer expects to deliver an additional 800 million doses to lower and lower middle income countries through other agreements with individual countries or Covax, a spokeswoman said.

For Mr Biden, the deal shows that his government is ready to intervene deeper in the treasury to help poorer countries.

Last week, Mr Biden said the United States would be distributing 25 million doses to countries in the Caribbean and Latin America this month; South and Southeast Asia; Africa; and the Palestinian Territories, Gaza and the West Bank.

These cans are the first of 80 million that Mr Biden intended to send abroad by the end of June; three quarters of these are sold by Covax. The rest will be used to address urgent and urgent crises in countries like India, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, government officials said. Many of the 80 million cans were manufactured by AstraZeneca and are still subject to a complex review by the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr Biden has also pledged to support a waiver of an international intellectual property treaty that would make it difficult for companies to refuse their technology. But European leaders are blocking the proposed exemption, and pharmaceutical companies are firmly against it. The World Trade Organization’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Council meets this week to review the derogation.

The president’s promise of vaccines for the world market comes as he prepares on Thursday for a meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has urged leaders to pledge to feed everyone in the world by the end of 2022 vaccinate. Mr Biden’s announcement is likely welcome news to Mr Johnson, whose critics have questioned where the money will come from to keep his promise.

“The truth is, world leaders have been stepping down the street for months – to the point where they ran out of streets,” Edwin Ikhouria, executive director for Africa at ONE Campaign, a nonprofit that dedicated to eradicating global poverty, said in a statement on Wednesday.

About 64 percent of adults in the United States are at least partially vaccinated, and the president’s goal is to increase that number to 70 percent by July 4th, following an accessibility strategy and incentives to reach Americans who have not yet received any injections.

Despite these efforts, there are unused doses of vaccine that could be wasted. Once thawed, cans have a limited shelf life and millions could expire within two weeks, according to federal officials.

Equal access to vaccines has become one of the most persistent challenges in containing the pandemic. Wealthier nations and private corporations have pledged tens of millions of doses and billions of dollars to sustain global supplies, but the disparities in vaccine allocations so far have been stark.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, warned this week that the world is facing a “two-pronged pandemic” with countries short of vaccines struggling with virus cases even as better-served countries return to normal.

These lower-income countries will largely depend on wealthier ones until vaccines can be distributed and produced on a more equitable basis, he said.

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed the coverage from New York and Michael D. Shear from Plymouth, England.

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Covid Delta variant not speedy risk to U.S.

Covid Delta variant not immediate threat to U.S.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Wednesday he believes enough Americans are fully vaccinated to delay the risk presented by the Delta Covid variant.

“The question is: Are there enough unvaccinated people that this could get into the population and start spreading more widely? I happen to think it’s unlikely that this is going to be a threat until the fall, perhaps,” the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner said on “Squawk Box.”

Gottlieb’s comments come as speculation grows that the U.K. could delay the lifting of all lockdown measures in England, set for June 21, due to the increasing prevalence of the Delta variant, which was first discovered in India.

The most severe cases involving the Delta variant appear to be in unvaccinated people or those who are only partially vaccinated, Gottlieb said. “It does seem to be a more dangerous variant. That said, two doses of the vaccine seem to be very protective.” 

“People who are fully vaccinated, I think, are pretty well protected against this new variant based on the accruing evidence,” added Gottlieb, who led the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. He’s now on the board of vaccine maker Pfizer.

On Tuesday, the White House’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, stressed the importance of Americans becoming fully vaccinated to protect against the Delta variant. Currently, Fauci said it accounts for more than 6% of the U.S. coronavirus infections that scientists have genetically sequenced.

The Delta variant, meanwhile, is becoming the dominant variant in the United Kingdom. The U.S. and U.K. now have around 53% of adults fully vaccinated against Covid. However, Gottlieb said England’s decision to delay the administration of second doses in order to give more people initial shots “probably opened the door to this spreading a little bit more widely.” 

At a White House briefing Tuesday, Fauci called out as examples Covid vaccines from Pfizer and AstraZeneca — which is used in the U.K. but not the U.S. — saying they were around 33% effective in protecting against the Delta variant after one dose. For Pfizer, that rose to 88% efficacy after the second shot, Fauci said, while AstraZeneca’s vaccine was 60% effective, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“It does appear that two doses of the vaccine are more important against these variants than they were against the old strain of the virus,” Gottlieb said.

Despite vaccination progress in the U.S., Gottlieb acknowledged there could be worrisome situations in the country involving the Delta variant. “If you have a community where there’s a lot of unvaccinated people and you have a super-spreading event with Delta … you could get an outbreak here.”

Covid cases in the U.S. continue to fall. The country’s seven-day average of daily new coronavirus infections is around 14,400, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s about 17% lower than it was a week ago. It also represents an over 60% decline from roughly a month ago. The highest single day of new cases in the U.S. was 300,462 on Jan. 2.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”

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AstraZeneca Photographs Carry Barely Larger Danger of Bleeding Drawback, New Research Says

AstraZeneca Shots Carry Slightly Higher Risk of Bleeding Problem, New Study Says

People who received the Covid vaccine, made by Oxford-AstraZeneca, were at a slightly increased risk of developing a bleeding disorder and possibly other rare blood problems, researchers reported Wednesday.

The results of a study of 2.53 million adults in Scotland who received their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine or the vaccine obtained from Pfizer-BioNTech were published in Nature Medicine. About 1.7 million of the shots were from the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The study found no increased risk of blood disorders with the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is not approved in the United States, but it has been approved by the European Medicines Agency, the top drug agency in the European Union, as well as many countries outside the bloc. However, reports of rare coagulation and bleeding disorders in younger adults, some of which were fatal, led a number of countries to restrict the use of the vaccine to the elderly and a few to discontinue it altogether.

The new study found that the AstraZeneca vaccine was linked to a slight increase in the risk of a condition called immune thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP, which can cause bruising in some cases but severe bleeding in others. The risk was estimated to be 1.13 cases per 100,000 people who received their first dose up to 27 days after vaccination. This estimate would be in addition to the typical pre-vaccine incidence in the UK, which has been estimated at six to nine cases per 100,000.

The condition is treatable, and none of the cases in vaccine recipients have been fatal, the researchers said. They stressed that the vaccine’s benefits far outweigh the low risk, noting that Covid itself is much more likely than the vaccine to cause ITP

However, the researchers also wrote that while the risks of the AstraZeneca vaccine are low, “alternative vaccines for those at low risk of Covid-19 may be warranted if supplies allow”.

It wasn’t surprising to find ITP in a few vaccine recipients, the researchers said, noting that the risk also increased slightly with those vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella, as well as those vaccinated against hepatitis B and flu.

In a comment published with the study, blood disease experts said ITP could be difficult to diagnose and that the possible association needed further analysis. But they wrote, “Still, the risk of vaccination-induced ITP appears to be far less at the suggested rate than the many risks associated with Covid-19 itself.”

The study in Scotland also found a very small increased risk of arterial clots and bleeding that may be associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the researchers said there wasn’t enough data to conclude that the vaccine has been linked to a rare type of blood clot in the brain called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Earlier this year, reports of these brain clots resulted in some countries suspending or restricting use of the vaccine.

The researchers said they couldn’t rule out a link to the brain clots, but there weren’t enough cases to analyze them.

The brain clots are “as rare as chicken teeth,” said Prof. Aziz Sheikh, lead author of the study from the University of Edinburgh, during a press conference.

Similar concerns have been raised about a rare condition associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is approved in the US and other countries, particularly in younger women with brain clots and bleeding. Six U.S. cases, including one fatality, prompted federal health officials to order an interruption in use of the vaccine in April. The break was lifted after 10 days and the vaccine was reinstated with a label to warn consumers of the risk of clots and the availability of other vaccines. Several more cases were later identified and doctors were advised to avoid using heparin, a standard treatment, in these cases as it can make the condition worse.

The risk of clotting has led Denmark to reject the use of the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson’s vaccines both use so-called viral vectors to deliver genetic material into the recipient’s cells, and some researchers have suggested that the vectors can lead to the rare blood diseases. It is not known whether there is a connection.

The Scotland study authors said they did not know if their results on the AstraZeneca vaccine had any effect on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which they did not study.

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High worldwide well being officers fear about new Covid variants that might be able to evade vaccines

Top international health officials worry about new Covid variants that may be able to evade vaccines

A medical worker injects a man with a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Accra, capital of Ghana, May 19, 2021.

Seth | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

Top health officials in Europe and Africa said Wednesday they are worried about the potential emergence of new Covid variants that could render current vaccines useless.

Dr. John Nkengasong, director of Africa’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said he is “very concerned” about the emergence of a vaccine-resistant variant as the Delta variant first detected in India continues to spread around the world. Studies have shown that current vaccines work against the new variant, although not as well as they do against the original wild type virus.

“It is increasingly concerning that this pandemic will be driven by the cycle of occurrence and reoccurrence of different variants,” Nkengasong said at The Wall Street Journal’s Health Tech conference. “The speed at which these viruses overtake the existing viruses is amazing.”

The Delta variant was first identified by scientists in October has since spread to more than 62 countries, dominating the U.K. and now responsible for more new infections in the country than the Alpha variant — which was first detected in the U.K.

Dr. Sharon Peacock, executive chair of Covid-19 Genomics U.K. Consortium, said the Delta variant is about 40% to 50% more transmissible than the Alpha variant, formerly called B.1.1.7, a strain that emerged from the U.K. last fall and was more contagious than the original virus.

“So, given that level of transmissibility, I would anticipate that (the Delta variant) would’ve actually spread around the world,” she said at the conference. Peacock added the Delta variant is already present in most U.S. states, but the spread is at an early stage.

White House senior medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci told reporters yesterday that the U.S. needs to vaccinate more people before the Delta variant takes hold in the country.

The Alpha variant is currently the dominant variant in the U.S., but the Delta variant could soon take over like it did in the U.K. “We cannot let that happen in the United States,” Fauci said yesterday.

“I would be concerned … that this will be something that will be able to out-compete other circulating variants in the way that we’ve observed in the United Kingdom,” Peacock said. She also said that variants are more likely to emerge in partially vaccinated areas. Some states in the U.S. have vaccination rates higher than 70%, while others lag behind at 40%.

Scientists in the U.S. are currently sequencing just 1.6% of new infections, Peacocks said. She and Nkengasong agreed that increased genomic surveillance is an important way to track the spread of new variants before they take hold.

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Authorities Warns Medical doctors and Insurers: Don’t Invoice for Covid Vaccines

Government Warns Doctors and Insurers: Don’t Bill for Covid Vaccines

The New York Times is investigating the costs associated with coronavirus testing, treatment, and vaccination. You can read more about the project and submit your medical bills here.

The Biden government is reminding doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and insurers that it is illegal to bill patients for coronavirus vaccines, a letter received from The Times shows.

The new warning responds to concerns from unvaccinated Americans that they could get a bill with their shot. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about a third of unvaccinated adults weren’t sure if insurance covered the new vaccine.

“We understand that there are costs associated with administering vaccines – from training staff to storing vaccines,” wrote Xavier Becerra, the health and social services secretary, in a letter to vaccinators and insurers. “Providers cannot bill patients for these expenses, but can request reimbursement through Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, or other applicable coverage.”

The letter warns that billing patients could lead to state or federal “enforcement action” but does not specify what the penalty would be.

The federal government has written strong consumer protection to ensure patients don’t have to pay for coronavirus vaccines.

In the economic legislation last spring, insurers were prohibited from charging patients co-payments or deductibles for vaccines. The same law also created a fund that would cover the cost of vaccinating uninsured Americans.

Layered on top of these legal safeguards are the contracts doctors and hospitals have signed to get vaccines. These documents stipulate that vaccinations cannot charge patients for the service.

The stronger protection seems to have worked. While many patients have come across coronavirus bills for testing, only a handful have come with vaccines.

Still, the rules aren’t foolproof, and some patients have been illegally charged. In April, the Inspector General’s Office of Health and Human Services released a letter saying it was “aware of patient complaints about fees from providers to get their Covid-19 vaccines.”

Some patients have submitted bills with surprising fees for a Times project that collects patient bills for tests, treatments, and vaccinations. Fees range from $ 20 to $ 850. If you’ve received an invoice for your coronavirus vaccine, you can submit it here.

Patients who are billed for coronavirus vaccines can dispute the fee. Health insurers can turn to their plan to ask why they got a bill when two federal laws – the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the CARES law – prohibit it.

A small part of health insurance is exempt from the law. These “grandfather” plans existed prior to the Affordable Care Act and are not subject to requirements to fully cover the coronavirus vaccine or other preventive services.

But these patients, too, are still protected by the contract that the doctors concluded, excluding any invoicing. Doctors can send the outstanding fees to a new Coverage Assistance Fund created by the Biden administration last month to fill gaps in patient care.

Uninsured patients can instruct their providers to bill for the uninsured Covid-19 program that was set up to cover those without insurance.

If an insurer or doctor is unwilling to withdraw a bill, patients can seek help from state regulators. State insurance departments typically handle complaints about whether health insurances are not adequately covering medical care, while attorneys general tend to file complaints about possible inappropriate bills from doctors and hospitals.

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Aspirin doesn’t enhance survival for Covid sufferers: UK research

Aspirin does not improve survival for Covid patients: UK study

A patient suffering from COVID-19 will be treated on May 20th, 2021 in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Darmstadt Clinic in Darmstadt.

Kai Pfaffenbach | Reuters

LONDON – The cheap and widely available drug aspirin does not improve the survival of patients hospitalized with Covid-19, a UK study found.

Oxford University researchers had hoped the blood-thinning drug could help hospitalized Covid-19 patients who are at increased risk of blood clots forming in their blood vessels, particularly in the lungs, but found that aspirin was not helped prevent deaths.

On the study – part of a larger “RECOVERY” study that looked at various possible treatments for people hospitalized with coronavirus, nearly 15,000 patients were hospitalized with the virus. About half of the patients received 150 mg of aspirin daily compared to the other half who received only the usual treatment.

The study found that “there was no evidence that aspirin treatment reduced mortality” and “no significant difference” in the number of people who died, with 17% of people in both groups dying after 28 days in the hospital.

“The data shows that aspirin was not associated with a reduction in 28-day mortality or the risk of progression to invasive mechanical ventilation or death in patients hospitalized with Covid-19,” said Peter Horby , Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at the University of Oxford and lead investigator of the RECOVERY study, said the study.

“While aspirin was associated with a slightly increased chance of a live discharge, that does not appear to be enough to justify its widespread use in patients hospitalized with Covid-19.”

Martin Landray, professor of medicine and epidemiology in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford and a lead researcher on the study, described the results as “disappointing”.

“There was strong evidence that blood clotting could be responsible for deterioration in lung function and death in patients with severe Covid-19. Aspirin is inexpensive and is often used in other illnesses to reduce the risk of blood clots, so it is disappointing that it did. ”Did not have much of an impact on these patients. That’s why large randomized trials are so important – to find out which treatments work and which don’t. “

The RECOVERY study has already made several life-saving discoveries, including that dexamethasone, a cheap and widely used steroid, was able to save lives in seriously ill Covid-19 patients.

The results of the latest aspirin study will be published shortly on the pre-print site medRxiv and have been submitted to a leading peer-reviewed medical journal.