‘Vaccine passports’ are on the way, but developing them won’t be easy
By Dan Diamond, Lena H. Sun and Isaac Stanley-Becker
WashingtonPost.com—The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials—often referred to as “vaccine passports”—that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.
The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden’s pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies—from cruise lines to sports teams—saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again.
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Startup collaborates with NewYork-Presbyterian, Vanderbilt to test video game therapy for COVID ‘brain fog’
By Heather Landi
FierceHealthcare.com—A startup is working with major academic medical centers to study whether a therapeutic video game can help patients suffering from “COVID brain fog.”
Although not a clinical term, brain fog is a phrase being used to describe the lingering mental and cognitive effects felt by people who had COVID-19.
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Black adults report bias in health care at higher rates than White and Latino people, study finds
By Nicquel Terry Ellis
CNN.com—Black adults were more likely than their White and Latino/Hispanic counterparts to report having been discriminated against or judged unfairly by a health care provider or their staff in the months leading up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new analysis finds.
The report was released this week by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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FDA grants first COVID-19 antibody green light for at-home, fingerprick blood test
By Andrea Park
FierceBiotech.com—Antibody testing just went DIY: The FDA has given the go-ahead to a COVID-19 test that can detect the virus’s antibodies in a dired blood spot sample taken at home and mailed to a lab.
The COVID-19 Self-Collected Antibody Test System, developed by Symbiotica Inc., is the first home-collected antibody test to receive the FDA’s emergenc use authorization, though 75 other antibody tests have been approved for use on samples collected in point-of-care settings.
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Woman Gets New Windpipe In Groundbreaking Transplant Surgery
By Richard Harris
NPR.org—A medical team in New York City says it has performed the first complete surgical transplate of a windpipe.
The trachea is basically a tube that transports air to and from the lungs, so you might think it would be easy to transplant.
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Nonprofit hospitals spend less on charity than for-profits, study finds
By Robert King
FierceHealthcare.com—Nonprofit hospitals spent less on charity care for the uninsured compared to for-profit and government hospitals, a new study found.
The study, published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, found nonprofits provided less charity care per dolar of expenses compared to for-profit and government-run hospitals.
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An Aging Baby Boomer Population Will Test the Healthcare System
By George O’Brien
HealthcareNews.com—As she talked about the massic Baby Boom generation, how its oldest members turn 75 this year, and about how almost all the Boomers could now be classified as senior citizens, Dr. Marua Brennan summoned a phase she attributed to her mother, but which she uses often as well: “No one gets out of life alive.”
She used those words to convey the thought that, while this Baby Boom generation may in many ways be healthier than those that preceded it—fewer smoker and more exercisers, for example—and it has enjoyed access to better healthcare an innumerable advances in treatment, from artificial joints, to improved cancer care, its members will eventually see their health decline, and they will need increasing amounts of care.
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Calls mount for Biden to track U.S. healthcare worker deaths from COVID
By Ed Pilkington, The Guardian
ModernHealthcare.com—Calls are mounting for the Biden administration to set up a national tracking system of covid-19 deaths among front-line health care workers to honor the thousands of nurses, doctors and support staffers who have died and ensure that future generations are not forced to make the same ultimate—and, in many cases, needless—sacrifice.
Health policy experts and union leaders are pressing the White House to move quickly to fill the gaping hole left by the Trump administration through its failure to create an accurate count of covid deaths among front-line workers.
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