Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Biden To Unveil Strategy Aimed At Ending HIV Epidemic By 2030
CNN: Biden Will Mark World AIDS Day With New National HIV/AIDS Strategy
President Joe Biden will mark World AIDS Day on Wednesday by unveiling a new national HIV/AIDS strategy with the goal of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030, a senior administration official told CNN. The strategy -- something Biden had promised on the campaign trail -- will provide a "framework and direction for the administration's policies, research, the programs and planning through the year 2025 to lead us toward ending the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030," the official said. (Malloy and LeBlanc, 12/1)
USA Today: Biden's HIV/AIDS Strategy To Include New Emphasis On Older Americans
President Joe Biden will unveil Wednesday a strategy for combatting HIV/AIDS that the administration says will have a new focus on the growing population of people with HIV who are aging, along with other changes. More than half of the1.2 million people in the United States who are living with HIV are over age 50. The plan will also recognize racism as a serious health threat, expand the focus on addressing issues like homelessness that make it hard to fight HIV/AIDS and encourage reform of state HIV criminalization laws. (Groppe, 12/1)
Stat: Rates Of HIV Infection Among Black, Hispanic Men Unchanged In 10 Years
Despite numerous advances in the prevention of HIV, new data show that the rate of new infections among Black and Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men did not decline over the past decade. Officials say the finding, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, underscores the need to address underlying social issues and gaps in the distribution of care even as public health initiatives continue to try to reduce HIV rates. (Bender, 11/30)
NBC News: World AIDS Day: Is The World Closer To An HIV Vaccine In The Face Of Covid
As Covid-19 brought nearly every corner of the Earth to a halt early last year, researchers around the world scrambled to develop a vaccine to fend off the deadly respiratory coronavirus. And just several months later — in a process that normally takes years — several vaccines were ready for worldwide distribution. In comparison, about 40 years since the earliest reports of what became known as AIDS, scientists are still scratching their heads to develop a vaccine against the virus that causes the life-threatening disease — HIV. But as the anniversary of the first Covid-19 vaccine shots approaches, experts say the brisk development of the lifesaving and highly effective coronavirus vaccines may have brought researchers closer to cracking the code to develop an HIV vaccine. (Lavietes, 12/1)
Time: Two Patients Hint That It May Be Possible To “Cure” HIV
It’s the news that the HIV community has been waiting four long decades for: the hint that maybe, just maybe, HIV can be cured. Dr. Xu Yu, a principal investigator at the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard, as well as an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, had to check and recheck her results to be sure. In one of her patients, test after test to detect evidence of HIV in the woman’s blood came up empty. In addition to her lab’s results, “We had complementary assays in labs in Australia, D.C. and Argentina, where the patient is from, all trying to see if they find any evidence of active virus at all, and there was absolutely nothing,” says Yu. (Park, 11/30)
