Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: Will We Ever Learn The Origin Of Covid-19?; US Needs To Drastically Increase At Home Testing
The Atlantic: Lab-Leak Versus Wet-Market: Competing Pandemic Theories
The evolutionary virologist Michael Worobey is trying to bring the pandemic-origins debate back to where it started: with the notion that the coronavirus made the jump to humans at the Huanan seafood market, in Wuhan, China. Last week, he argued in Science that, contrary to official timelines of infection, the “first known” patient was a market vendor selling shrimp. For Worobey, it’s telling—to say the least—that this confirmed case, and most of the other very early ones, was linked to Huanan. In an interview with Jane Qiu, whose excellent rundown of the new analysis appeared on Friday in the MIT Technology Review, he calls a natural spillover in this spot “vastly more likely than any other scenarios based on what we now know.” (Daniel Engber, 11/24)
The Washington Post: Rapid Covid-19 Testing At Home Should Be Cheap And Easy
As a strategy to slow the pandemic, vaccination offers many advantages: protection before infection, high efficacy, shots free and widely available. But the United States needs to build a parallel strategy of inexpensive, rapid at-home diagnostic testing that will spot viral infections early on, and thus help stop the spread. (11/23)
Stat: As Vaccination Efforts Falter, Get Serious About Covid-19 Testing
As the U.S. heads into Thanksgiving and the holiday season beyond, new cases of Covid-19 are as high as they were in the first week of November 2020 and are quickly rising after two months of steady decline, even though the pandemic toolbox is fuller today than it was then. One year ago this week, the Food and Drug Administration had just authorized the first at-home test and the first monoclonal antibody treatment, and there were no authorized vaccines. Hotspots flared across the nation as different states took different approaches to curbing the virus by requiring masks and limiting public gatherings. (Atul Grover and Heather Pierce, 11/24)
Los Angeles Times: Another COVID Thanksgiving — Sigh
COVID-19 is still infecting and killing people, and cases have started rising across the nation, even as protection from vaccines received earlier this year is waning. Despite the best efforts of public health officials, less than 60% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, leaving many millions unprotected. Kids under 5 can’t be vaccinated yet, and millions of older children who are eligible for a shot haven’t received one. Though they are less likely to get seriously ill than other age groups, thousands of children have been hospitalized, and hundreds have died. Things can get worse. (11/23)
