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JoNel Aleccia was a senior correspondent for 51Ƶ Health News until October 2022.
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The private insurance market has proved wildly inadequate in providing financial security for millions of older Americans, in part by underestimating how many policyholders would use their coverage.
The top 12 states using antibody therapies produced by Regeneron and Lilly — which research shows don’t work against the omicron variant — include several Southern states with some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, but also California, which ranks among the top 20 for fully vaccinated residents.
The promising antiviral drugs to treat covid can halt hospitalizations and deaths, but only if they’re given to patients within three to five days of their first symptoms, a narrow window many people won’t meet. Here’s why.
A federal allocation plan meant to ensure equitable distribution of powerful monoclonal antibody treatments for high-risk patients fails to prioritize nursing home residents, a population that remains particularly vulnerable even after vaccination.
At issue is whether transplant patients who refuse the shots are not only putting themselves at greater risk for serious illness and death from covid-19, but also squandering scarce organs that could benefit others.
At least three promising antiviral treatments for covid-19 are being tested in clinical trials, with results expected as soon as late fall or winter.
The House oversight committee is requesting conflict-of-interest disclosure forms from a National Academies committee studying organ transplants. KHN previously reported on apparent conflicts among members of a committee studying drug waste.
Seattle’s Northwest Kidney Centers, which pioneered kidney failure treatment 50 years ago, now pairs dying patients with hospice services, without forcing them to forgo the comfort dialysis can provide.
Governors in Southern states, amid a surge of delta-variant infections, are rushing to provide an experimental antibody cocktail therapy, even as they oppose measures like mask mandates and vaccine passports that health officials say can prevent infection in the first place.
In another twist on covid vaccine hesitancy, blood centers say they are starting to hear from transfusion patients demanding blood from unvaccinated donors. Experts say the option is neither practical nor medically justifiable.
Doctors in Washington state used human body bags filled with ice and water to rapidly cool the sickest patients affected by record heat last month.
More than 46,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent to covid-19. Families say finding even basic grief counseling has been difficult and there’s been no coordinated effort to help these children access services or benefits.
With some 100 million Americans fully vaccinated, the U.S. is relying on a patchwork network of vaccine monitoring systems that lack the breadth and depth of large, population-based programs, experts said.
Nearly 60 organ transplants have been performed after the coronavirus “basically destroyed” patients’ hearts and lungs.
The once-promising therapy that infuses blood plasma from recovered covid-19 patients into newly infected people, theoretically to boost immunity, has suffered setbacks. But some proponents say it’s too early to abandon the treatment.
As experts race to get an approved test for covid variants, officials are severely restricted from sharing information about the cases. That makes it harder to protect others.
The first confirmed U.S. case of SARS-CoV-2 being transmitted through an organ transplant has prompted calls for updated transplant protocols and additional testing of samples from deep within donor lungs.
Hundreds of Americans suspect they contracted covid early in the pandemic and recovered, only to get infected again months later. But because the U.S. does so little genetic sequencing of covid samples, we don’t know much about reinfection rates.
Months after President Donald Trump credited monoclonal antibody therapy for his quick recovery from covid-19, only a trickle of the product has found its way into regular people. While hundreds of thousands of vials sit unused, sick patients who might benefit from early treatment have been left on their own to vie for access.
More than two dozen people who have received the new covid vaccines in U.S. hospitals and health centers suffered anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal allergic reaction. While such severe reactions are rare, experts warn that the drugstores and drive-thru clinics considered integral to the vaccine rollout must be prepared.
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