Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Airplane Wastewater Screening Among Tools Used To Keep Up With Variants
Politico: Airplane Lavatories Deliver New Hope For The CDC’s Variant Hunt
As Covid-19 cases explode in China and new viral threats loom, the Biden administration is ramping up surveillance of biological samples from international passengers arriving at U.S. airports to scan for new virus variants and other hazards to Americans’ health. (Mahr, 1/16)
NPR: U.S. Airport Screening For COVID Variants Expanded
It's early morning at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C.,and Ana Valdez is already hard at work at one of the international gates. "Hello everybody. Welcome," she shouts with a big smile as arriving travelers flood through two large swinging doors. "Do you like to help the CDC to find new variants for COVID?" Valdez works for a year-old program that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently expanded to try to spot new variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, coming into the country. The most recent expansion was prompted by China's abrupt decision to abandon its zero-COVID policy. (Stein, 1/14)
CIDRAP: Almost A Fourth Of Air Passengers Screened From China Had COVID-19, Report Reveals
Italian officials who screened 556 airline passengers from two Chinese provinces in late December found that almost a quarter of them tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, with one flight having 42% of passengers infected, according to a report yesterday in Eurosurveillance. (Wappes, 1/13)
In related news from China —
Bloomberg: China Finds No New Covid Variants But Mutation Threat Lingers
China has yet to detect any dangerous Covid mutations in the six weeks since the virus was unleashed on the country’s 1.4 billion people after the abandonment of the rigid curbs that held the pathogen largely at bay. (Fay Cortez, 1/13)
Reuters: In China, Doctors Say They Are Discouraged From Citing COVID On Death Certificates
During a busy shift at the height of Beijing's COVID wave, a physician at a private hospital saw a printed notice in the emergency department: doctors should “try not to” write COVID-induced respiratory failure on death certificates. Instead, if the deceased had an underlying disease, that should be named as the main cause of death, according to the notice, a copy of which was seen by Reuters. (Pollard and Tham, 1/17)
Reuters: In China, No Easy Way To Get Pfizer's COVID Drug Paxlovid
Chinese authorities have acknowledged that supplies of Paxlovid are still insufficient to meet demand, even as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said last week that thousands of courses of the treatment were shipped to the country last year and in the past couple of weeks millions more were shipped. (Yu and Pollard, 1/15)
The Washington Post: China’s Population Shrinks For First Time In 60 Years
China’s population shrank last year for the first time since the immediate aftermath of a devastating famine in the Mao era, in a clear sign that the country is facing a looming demographic crisis worsened by decades of coercive policy that limited most families to a single child. (Shepherd, 1/17)
