First Edition: June 24, 2021

KHN: Black And Hispanic Americans Suffer Most In Biggest US Decline In Life Expectancy Since WWII 
Although James Toussaint has never had covid, the pandemic is taking a profound toll on his health. First, the 57-year-old lost his job delivering parts for a New Orleans auto dealership in spring 2020, when the local economy shut down. Then, he fell behind on his rent. Last month, Toussaint was forced out of his apartment when his landlord — who refused to accept federally funded rental assistance — found a loophole in the federal ban on evictions. (Szabo, 6/24)

KHN: Biden Quietly Transforms Medicaid Safety Net
The Biden administration is quietly engineering a series of expansions to Medicaid that may bolster protections for millions of low-income Americans and bring more people into the program. Biden’s efforts — which have been largely overshadowed by other economic and health initiatives — represent an abrupt reversal of the Trump administration’s moves to scale back the safety-net program. (Levey and Galewitz, 6/24)

KHN: Calming Computer Jitters: Help For Seniors Who Aren’t Tech-Savvy
Six months ago, Cindy Sanders, 68, bought a computer so she could learn how to email and have Zoom chats with her great-grandchildren. It’s still sitting in a box, unopened. “I didn’t know how to set it up or how to get help,” said Sanders, who lives in Philadelphia and has been extremely careful during the coronavirus pandemic. (Graham, 6/24)

NPR: The Pandemic Led To The Biggest Drop In U.S. Life Expectancy Since WWII, Study Finds
A new study estimates that life expectancy in the U.S. decreased by nearly two years between 2018 and 2020, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the declines were most pronounced among minority groups, including Black and Hispanic people. In 2018, average life expectancy in the U.S. was about 79 years (78.7). It declined to about 77 years (76.9) by the end of 2020, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal. "We have not seen a decrease like this since World War II. It's a horrific decrease in life expectancy," said Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and an author of the study released on Wednesday. (The study is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and includes simulated estimates for 2020.) (Aubrey, 6/23)

NBC News: U.S. Life Expectancy Decreased By An 'Alarming' Amount During Pandemic
Health experts anticipated life expectancy would drop during the pandemic, but how much it did came as a surprise. “I naively thought the pandemic would not make a big difference in the gap because my thinking was that it’s a global pandemic, so every country is going to take a hit,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, who led the new study. “What I didn’t anticipate was how badly the U.S. would handle the pandemic.” (Sullivan, 6/23)

Politico: FDA To Add Warning About Rare Heart Inflammation To Moderna, Pfizer Vaccine Fact Sheets 
FDA plans to "move rapidly" to add a warning to fact sheets for Pfizer and Moderna's Covid-19 vaccines about the rare risk of developing inflammatory heart conditions, an agency official said Wednesday. "Based on the available data, a warning statement in the fact sheets for both health care providers and vaccine recipients and caregivers would be warranted in this situation," Doran Fink, deputy director of FDA's vaccines division, said during a CDC advisory committee meeting on Covid vaccines. (Gardner, 6/23)

Stat: Officials See ‘Likely Association’ Between Covid Vaccines, Rare Heart Condition
U.S. scientists said Wednesday that there was a “likely association” between mRNA Covid-19 vaccines and an elevated risk of heart issues in adolescents and young adults, the strongest statement yet on the link between the two. The evidence presented Wednesday echoes what other experts and health officials in other countries have identified: that younger groups, particularly men under 30, have higher rates of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the lining around the heart) following vaccination with the shots from Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech. Most cases have occurred soon after the second shot of the two-dose regimens. (Joseph, 6/23)

NBC News: Teens, Young Adults Should Get Covid Vaccines, Despite Rare Heart Risks, CDC Advisers Urge
The benefits of Covid-19 vaccination far outweigh the risks of heart inflammation in young people, a panel of independent advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. Still, members of the group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, agreed that a warning about the potential risk should be added to the Food and Drug Administration's official fact sheets on the vaccines. (Miller, 6/23)

The Washington Post: Biden To Focus On Guns In Crime Strategy 
Responding to a spike in homicides across the country, President Biden on Wednesday laid out an anti-crime strategy from the White House that cracks down on gun stores that don’t follow federal rules, steps up programs for recently released convicts and provides more support for police departments across the country. The speech is an attempt by the White House to show it is being proactive on an issue that historically has been politically difficult for Democrats and to refocus attention on its efforts to beef up gun regulations. (Linskey, 6/23)

Politico: Senators Say A Deal With The White House Is In Hand On Infrastructure 
A group of bipartisan senators said Wednesday evening that they had agreed with the White House on a framework for an infrastructure package and will brief President Joe Biden in person Thursday on the details. “I’m optimistic that we’ve had a breakthrough," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) after the latest in a series of huddles with White House aides. (Mintz, 6/23)

Stat: FDA’s Woodcock Is Just ‘Not That Concerned’ About The Aduhelm Criticism
The Food and Drug Administration has been without a permanent commissioner for six months. The agency is facing a barrage of criticisms over its approval of an as-yet-unproven Alzheimer’s drug. And now critics are calling for the ouster of the acting commissioner. But speaking to that acting FDA Commissioner, longtime agency vet Janet Woodcock, you’d think everything is peachy. (Florko, 6/24)

Stat: Senators Call On Congress To Examine Expensive New Alzheimer’s Drug 
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) want Congress to take a deeper look at how Biogen’s controversial and pricey new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, will affect the Medicare program, they wrote in a letter Wednesday. The bipartisan duo is pressing the Senate Finance Committee to take on “the vexing new questions and challenges that approval raises for the Medicare program and other health programs” the panel oversees, they wrote. (Florko, 6/23)

Stat: Crucial Question On Alzheimer's Drug: When Should Patients Stop Taking It?
For families and physicians grappling with the historic approval this month of the controversial Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, there’s no shortage of unanswered questions. But a critical one has largely been overlooked: Once patients start taking the medication, how will they know when it’s time to stop? (Molteni, 6/24)

The Boston Globe: State’s Second-Largest Health Insurer Slams Biogen For Costly Alzheimer’s Drug
The state’s second-biggest health insurer is threatening to limit or not cover Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, accusing the Cambridge biotech of putting “excessive corporate profits” ahead of patients by charging $56,000 a year for the controversial treatment. Michael Sherman, chief medical officer for Point32Health, the insurance company formed by the recent merger of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, said Biogen should cut the cost of the drug called Aduhelm by a factor of roughly 10, to $5,400, given the medicine’s questionable benefits and potential risks. (Saltzman, 6/23)

Stat: Key Democrats Slam FDA For Failing To Crack Down On Juul 
Congressional Democrats openly pressured acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Janet Woodcock to crack down on e-cigarette manufacturers Wednesday, with one powerful lawmaker blasting the agency for what they say is inaction on the issue. “Who is the cop on the beat to whom we entrust our children? It’s the Food and Drug Administration. And this agency has been timid and reluctant for way too long,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, who was testifying before the House hearing as a witness. “I worry the agency is going to fail again.” (Florko, 6/23)

Bloomberg: FDA Chief Ties E-Cigarette Maker To Youth Vaping Epidemic
The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suggested at a congressional hearing that e-cigarette maker Juul Labs Inc. has played a significant role in creating a youth vaping epidemic. Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock was asked at a Wednesday hearing of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy if Juul was “the e-cigarette company most responsible for creating this epidemic.” (Torrence, 6/23)

The Hill: Senate Democrats Call For FDA Action On High Levels Of Heavy Metals In Some Baby Food 
A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to step up efforts to eliminate toxic heavy metals that have been reported in some baby foods. Klobuchar, along with Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.), made the request in a Thursday letter to acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock that was shared with The Hill. (Castronuovo, 6/24)

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals Again Ask HHS For More Time To Spend Relief Funds
Hospitals are again pleading with the Biden administration for more time to spend COVID-19 relief grants received before June 30, 2020. HHS' latest guidance, released June 11, laid out four separate deadlines for when providers need to spend or return their Provider Relief Fund grants. But the deadline for returning money received before June 30, 2020 was unchanged: Providers will still have to give back any unspent money by June 30. In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra this week, AHA CEO Rick Pollack urged him to let providers keep PRF money distributed before June 30, 2020 until the end of the COVID public health emergency or June 30, 2022, the final deadline in HHS' most recent guidance. (Bannow, 6/23)

Modern Healthcare: HHS Watchdog: Lax Oversight Of IoT Creates Cybersecurity Risks For Hospitals
Medicare needs to keep a closer eye on the cybersecurity of hospitals' internet-connected medical devices, an HHS' Office of Inspector General report found Wednesday. The agency recommended that CMS change its hospital quality reviews to address the issue, noting that Medicare accrediting organizations, which CMS relies on to monitor hospital quality, rarely use their power to examine networked devices' cybersecurity during routine hospital surveys. "Such a requirement would allow the (accrediting organizations) to consistently and routinely review hospitals' cybersecurity protections for their networked devices," the report said. (Brady, 6/23)

The Hill: Biden Nominates Cindy McCain As Ambassador To UN Food Agency
McCain will need to be approved by the Senate in order to serve in the role, which involves representing the U.S. at a specialized U.N. agency focused on ending hunger and making sure people worldwide have access to good-quality food. (Chalfant, 6/23)

The Washington Post: The Under-The-Radar Fight Over A New Health Agency 
There’s at least one proposal leftover from the Trump administration that President Biden is set on reviving: the creation of the Advance Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). In the administration’s debut budget proposal, the National Institutes of Health received $6.5 billion to launch the new agency modeled after the military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). ARPA-H would accelerate the development of medical treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and more. But there’s a battle brewing over where exactly the agency should be housed — and how it should be structured to have the most impact.  (Alemany and Rji, 6/23)

The Washington Post: FEMA Pressed On Historically High Rejection Rates For Disaster Survivors 
At a time of worsening natural disasters and with the Biden administration leaning more heavily on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to handle a host of crises, the head of the agency was called before Congress on Wednesday to explain to a key subcommittee why FEMA’s approval rates for disaster survivors who apply for help have fallen to historic lows. “Survivors who have lost literally everything should not have to go through a rigmarole to try to prove eligibility for often meager FEMA assistance. It’s demoralizing,” said Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Transportation subcommittee on transportation and infrastructure, at Wednesday’s hearing. (Dreier, 6/23)

The Washington Post: White House Prepares Final 30-Day Extension Of Eviction Moratorium
Federal officials are expected to extend a national moratorium on evictions by 30 days, although no final decision has been made, according to two people familiar with the matter. The decision will be made by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which first implemented the moratorium. The eviction moratorium was set to expire June 30. (Stein, 6/23)

CBS News: Americans Most Likely To Be Evicted Are The Least Likely To Be Vaccinated 
As COVID-19 vaccination rates across America creep up, landlords are calling for an end to tenant protections, arguing that the public health crisis that led federal health authorities to freeze evictions is over. But data on evictions tell a different story. Across nine major U.S. cities, the neighborhoods with the highest rates of eviction lawsuits are also the areas with the lowest rates of vaccination, according to research from Princeton University. (Ivanova, 6/23)

ABC News: US Had Nearly 17 Million Undiagnosed COVID-19 Cases In Early Months Of Pandemic: Study
There may have been nearly 17 million undiagnosed COVID-19 cases in the United States in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new National Institutes of Health study. The study suggests that the prevalence of COVID-19 in the spring and summer of 2020 "far exceeded" the number of confirmed cases -- especially in people who were asymptomatic. (Delios, 6/23)

CIDRAP: US COVID-19 Cases In First Pandemic Wave May Have Been 5 Times Higher
During the first US wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, there may have been almost 17 million undiagnosed COVID-19 infections in addition to the known 3 million cases, or about five times more than officially reported, according to a study in Science Translational Medicine yesterday. The researchers conducted enzyme-linked immunoassay serologic tests for COVID-19 antibodies on 8,058 undiagnosed US adults from May 10 to Jul 31, 2020, and found that 304 (4.6%) had COVID-19 antibodies. This indicates that there were 4.8 undiagnosed infections for every diagnosed case during this period, the researchers say, adding about 16.8 million infections to the country's total. (6/23)

The Washington Post: Delta Variant Spread In U.S. Exposes Poorly Vaccinated Regions To Renewed Danger 
The rapid spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus is poised to divide the United States again, with highly vaccinated areas continuing toward post-pandemic freedom and poorly vaccinated regions threatened by greater caseloads and hospitalizations, health officials warned this week. The highly transmissible variant is taxing hospitals in a rural, lightly vaccinated part of Missouri, and caseloads and hospitalizations are on the rise in states such as Arkansas, Nevada and Utah, where less than 50 percent of the eligible population has received at least one dose of vaccine, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. (Cha, Adam, Guarino and Bernstein, 6/23)

CIDRAP: Alpha SARS-CoV-2 Variant Tied To More Severe Outcomes
Infection with the Alpha (B117) SARS-CoV-2 variant may pose a heightened risk of poor COVID-19 outcomes, according to two observational studies from England and Denmark published yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. ... Of the 198,420-person primary care group, 59.4% were infected by Alpha, 0.4% were admitted to a critical care unit (CCU, similar to a US intensive care unit), and 0.4% died by 28 days. Of the 4,272 CCU patients, 62.8% were infected by Alpha, and 15.5% died in the hospital. (Van Beusekom, 6/23)

CIDRAP: Young Adults With Mild Acute Infection May Be At Risk For Long COVID
More than 60% of 312 COVID-19 patients had symptoms persisting after 6 months, including 52% of older teens and young adults with mild acute infections, according to a Nature Medicine study today. The cohort consisted of 312 patients from Bergen, Norway, identified from Feb 28 to Apr 4, 2020, or about 82% of the city's total cases. About 80% were outpatients and the remaining were hospitalized; the median age was 46 years. Those hospitalized tended to be older, have a higher body mass index, and have more comorbidities. (6/23)

USA Today: New York City To Provide In-Home Vaccinations For All
New York City residents who want a vaccination now can get a house call. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that the city will provide in-home inoculations in an effort to get more New Yorkers vaccinated. The mayor said the new plan is ideal for people "for whom it's been a challenge to get to a vaccination site or they haven't been sure" if the want the vaccine. City officials already had been offering the service to homebound residents and are expanding it to include everyone. The city has counted more than 9 million jabs thus far. (Aspegren and Bacon, 6/23)

AP: Ohio Ends Incentive Lottery With Mixed Vaccination Results
Ohio, the state that launched the national movement to offer millions of dollars in incentives to boost vaccination rates, planned to conclude its program Wednesday — still unable to crack the 50% vaccination threshold. The state’s not alone in mixed results for prize giving. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s May 12 announcement of the incentive program had the desired effect, leading to a 43% boost in state vaccination numbers over the previous week. But numbers of vaccinations have dropped since then. (Welsh-Huggins, 6/24)

Los Angeles Times: Did Newsom's California COVID Vaccine Lottery Boost Doses?
California has long been a leader in vaccinations. But the uptick in recent weeks offers an early suggestion that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s elaborate — and, in some corners, derided — program offering the chance at cash prizes to those who got vaccinated may have reaped some rewards. While it’s impossible to say for certain why each individual resident decided to get inoculated, the timing is nevertheless striking, and some suggest the state’s $116.5-million incentive program probably sparked renewed interest in the shots. (Lin II, Money and Stiles, 6/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Will Require All City Workers To Be Vaccinated. Those Who Don't Could Be Fired
San Francisco will require all 35,000 city employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus once a vaccine receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, city officials said Wednesday. The new policy makes San Francisco the first city or county in California — and probably the U.S. — to mandate COVID vaccinations for all government employees. (Allday, 6/23)

AP: 2 Private WVa Schools Will Require Student Vaccination
At least a couple of private West Virginia schools are requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 this fall. The University of Charleston and Bethany College both say vaccinations will be required for the upcoming school year. University of Charleston President Marty Roth told news outlets that it is the school’s responsibility to provide a healthy environment for the 1,500 students expected at the Charleston campus and 200 at the Beckley campus. The way to do that is to require students to be vaccinated, he said. (6/24)

Houston Chronicle: 'Inappropriate' Or A Relief? How Houston Methodist Patients, Workers Feel About Vaccination Firings
A day after Houston Methodist finalized the terminations and resignations of 153 workers who had refused the COVID-19 vaccine, opinions swirled across one of Houston's largest hospital systems: "Dramatic." "Good patient care." "It's their choice." Although some patients and workers thought the first-in-the-nation firings went too far, they also felt safer going to the hospital knowing that their doctors and nurses were inoculated against the virus. Alex Chamorro, director of Houston Methodist’s central business office, was fully vaccinated by mid-January, a choice she made after she was hospitalized for COVID-19 last summer and lost her husband to the infection. (Wu and Zong, 6/23)

Fox News: Pete Buttigieg Says Federal Government Should 'Encourage' Vaccine Passports
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said that the federal government should "encourage" private businesses to implement vaccine passports when he was asked this week about Texas's ban on the practice. "If a company, a business wants to take steps to keep their workers and their passengers safe, I would think that, from a government perspective, we want to do everything we can to encourage that," Buttigieg told KDFW FOX 4 in Dallas on Monday. "And that’s certainly our view at the federal level." (Best, 6/23)

AP: Unvaccinated Missourians Fuel COVID: 'We Will Be The Canary'
As the U.S. emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, Missouri is becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of the country: It is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated. Intensive care beds are filling up with surprisingly young, unvaccinated patients, and staff members are getting burned out fighting a battle that was supposed to be in its final throes. (Hollingsworth, 6/23)

The New York Times: Scientist Finds Early Coronavirus Sequences That Had Been Mysteriously Deleted
About a year ago, genetic sequences from more than 200 virus samples from early cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan disappeared from an online scientific database. Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences — intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans. The new analysis, released on Tuesday, bolsters earlier suggestions that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019. (Zimmer, 6/23)

CNN: Coronavirus Samples From China: Scientist Jesse Bloom Says Early Samples Were Deleted From NIH Database 
Scientists investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic might be working with the wrong samples, because some early samples of the virus submitted by a Chinese researcher were deleted from a shared database, an expert in the evolution of viruses says. Jesse Bloom, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, said he found genetic sequences taken from early coronavirus cases in China that were deleted from a US National Institutes of Health database. Examination shows some of the early cases in the Chinese city of Wuhan are different, genetically, from the variants that eventually spread to cause the pandemic. (Fox, 6/23)

Roll Call: 3 Questions Experts Say Need To Be Asked About Pandemic’s Origin
Biosecurity experts are pushing Congress to investigate a theory that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, saying important information could be uncovered even without the help of Chinese authorities. “Many threads of investigation are available in the U.S. and would be accessible to a congressional inquiry with subpoena power,” said Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, who believes the pandemic resulted from a lab accident. (Kopp, 6/23)

Los Angeles Times: UC Regents Tighten Oversight In Catholic Hospital Deals
The University of California Board of Regents on Wednesday tightened UC’s rules on affiliations with hospitals that impose religious restrictions on care. The policy approved almost unanimously by the board places greater limits than before on interference by religious authorities with the medical judgments of UC physicians practicing at sectarian hospitals. The policy states that UC physicians must be permitted to provide any treatment to a patient at a sectarian hospital even if the treatment violates religious restrictions and the patient can’t be safely transferred to another facility. Affiliated hospitals will have until Dec. 31, 2023, to comply with the policy, or the affiliation agreement must be canceled. (Hiltzik, 6/23)

AP: Ex-West Virginia Cabinet Secretary Named Hospital Chief
A former cabinet secretary in West Virginia has been named president and CEO of Princeton Community Hospital. Karen Bowling currently serves as West Virginia University Health System’s executive vice president of government affairs, as well as president and CEO of WVU Medicine’s Braxton County Memorial Health System and Summersville Regional Medical Center. (6/24)

Stat: Peter Bach, Industry Critic, Joins Company Aiming To Make Liquid Biopsies
Peter Bach, well-known as a drug pricing researcher and pharma industry gadfly, is leaving academia for an executive role at a biotech firm that aims to develop a blood test that can detect lung cancer, the company announced Wednesday. Bach, 56, the director of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, will become the chief medical officer of Delfi Diagnostics, a Baltimore startup that raised $100 million from a syndicate of investors in January to develop a new form of a technology, known as liquid biopsy, that can detect fragments of cancer DNA in the bloodstream. (Herper, 6/23)

AP: Tennessee Doctor Pleads Guilty In Opioid Overdose Death
A Tennessee doctor has pleaded guilty to causing the overdose death of a patient by illegally prescribing the painkiller hydrocodone, federal prosecutors said. Thomas K. Ballard III faces 20 years in prison under a plea agreement, the U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Wednesday. Sentencing is set for Sept. 21. Ballard was one of 53 medical professionals in the U.S. who were indicted in April 2019 on federal charges related to the illegal prescribing of painkillers. (6/24)

Stat: Arcus’ Anti-TIGIT Immunotherapy Shows ‘Encouraging' Tumor Response
Arcus Biosciences said Wednesday that a two-drug combination that includes an anti-TIGIT antibody delivered “encouraging clinical activity” following a preliminary look at a clinical trial of patients with lung cancer. Beyond a verbal description of the interim study results, however, the Hayward, Calif.-based biotech isn’t saying much about its closely tracked TIGIT immunotherapy, called domvanalimab. Gilead Sciences has an option to license domvanalimab, but is deferring a decision until later this year, Arcus said Wednesday. (Feuerstein, 6/23)

ABC News: Company Defends Use Of Toxic Chemicals To Fight Plant Fire 
A company whose northern Illinois chemical plant was heavily damaged in a fire last week defended its use of firefighting foam containing toxic chemicals Wednesday, saying crews had taken steps to contain the material. An industrial team hired by Lubrizol Inc., parent company of Chemtool, used foam containing PFAS compounds June 15 before switching to another foam without them on orders of the fire chief in Rockton, a town near the Wisconsin border. (Flesher, 6/23)

The New York Times: Britney Spears Told Court She Wanted Her IUD Removed 
One of the most explosive details in Britney Spears’s testimony on Wednesday came when she said that the people who control her affairs had refused to allow her to get her IUD removed so that she could try to have a third child. ... She told the court that she wanted to remove the birth control device “so I could start trying to have another baby, but this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have children, any more children.” ... Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, weighed in on Twitter, calling Ms. Spears’s account “reproductive coercion.” (Jacobs, 6/23)

AP: 8 Marijuana Products Being Recalled By Arizona Dispensaries
Arizona Department of Health Services officials announced Wednesday that dispensaries are voluntarily recalling eight marijuana products because of possible contamination. They said no illnesses have been reported so far, and the move is just a precaution after Salmonella bacteria and Aspergillus fungus were detected in some samples. (6/24)

San Francisco Chronicle: More Medical Calls In S.F. Can Mean Longer Waits For Ambulances. Here's How City Aims To Fix It
San Francisco doesn’t always have enough ambulances for medical calls, with a backlog of up to six calls at times. That means an ambulance has been requested but isn’t immediately available. Though paramedics are already at the scene delivering potentially life-saving care, and each delayed request may be resolved in minutes or even seconds, it can delay transport to a hospital in situations where each minute could matter. While medical calls have grown nearly 16% since 2015, the number of ambulance personnel has remained at 200, according to a Fire Department memo. The impacts of more calls can be increased wait times for patients to get ambulances in outlying areas and reliance on overtime to meet staffing needs, the memo said. (Moench, 6/23)

AP: South Dakota Board Of Regents: No Medical Pot On Campus
Medical marijuana won’t be allowed on the campuses of South Dakota’s public universities, the Board of Regents announced Wednesday. The board, which oversees the state’s six public universities, changed its policy on medical marijuana as the state prepares for the drug to be legalized on July 1. It reasoned that it had to stay in compliance with federal law, which still outlaws the drug. (6/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Race Between Covid-19 Vaccines And Delta Variant Plays Out In U.K. 
The highly transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant is generating rapidly rising caseloads in the U.K., but smaller increases in hospitalizations and fatalities, in a hopeful sign that mass vaccination can prevent a repeat of the heavy toll of sickness and death seen earlier in the pandemic. The other message is one of caution. Epidemiologists say the U.K.’s experience shows how easily the variant can spread even within populations where vaccine uptake is high. That underscores the risk of further outbreaks of Covid-19 in the U.S. and other advanced economies, as well as the urgency of widening and accelerating vaccination programs. (Douglas and Shah, 6/23)

AP: Merkel: Europe 'On Thin Ice' Amid Delta Virus Variant Rise
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that Europe is “on thin ice” in its battle against the coronavirus, as the highly contagious delta variant threatens to undo progress made in reducing infections. In what may be her last government declaration to the German parliament, Merkel said the further response to the pandemic would be a main topic of discussion among European Union leaders at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday. (6/23)

Al Jazeera: Angela Merkel Receives Moderna Dose After First AstraZeneca Shot
German Chancellor Angela Merkel received a Moderna coronavirus vaccine as her second jab, after getting the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine, a government spokesman said on Tuesday. The 66-year-old took her first dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in April, more than two weeks after German authorities recommended the use of the jab only for people aged 60 and above. (6/22)

The New York Times: U.S. To Send Brazil 3 Million Doses Of J&J’s Vaccine
The White House said on Wednesday that the United States would send three million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to Brazil on Thursday. The country’s virus cases and fatalities are surging again, with a death toll above 500,000. Less than a third of the country’s population has had at least one shot, and an average of 74,490 new cases per day were reported in the country in the last week — an increase of 26 percent from the average two weeks ago. (6/24)

Reuters: Brazil Sets Single-Day Record For Coronavirus Cases 
Brazil registered a single-day record of 115,228 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday, as its outbreak shows new signs of accelerating despite long-delayed vaccination efforts finally gaining steam. Brazil has recorded the world's highest COVID-19 death toll outside the United States, with more than half a million lives lost, according to the ministry's official tally. (6/23)

Reuters: Let Down By Rich And Failing The Poor, Global Vaccine Scheme To Be Shaken Up
Shunned by rich countries and failing to meet the needs of the poorest, a programme co-led by the World Health Organization (WHO) for fair distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is planning a shake-up, internal documents seen by Reuters show. The COVAX programme is far short of its target of delivering 2 billion doses by the end of the year, but does expect a big increase in supplies by early 2022, and wants to make sure that those, at least, reach the countries in direst need. (Guarascio, 6/23)

CNN: Covid Outbreak At US Embassy In Afghanistan Grows
The Covid-19 outbreak at the US Embassy in Kabul has grown to 159 cases, according to a diplomatic cable sent Tuesday, as a devastating third wave of the deadly disease continues to hit Afghanistan. A source familiar with the cable said it noted that several people at the diplomatic mission are on oxygen or have been medically evacuated from the post, which was put under immediate lockdown last week to try to stem the spread of the coronavirus. (Hansler and Atwood, 6/23)

The Washington Post: The Tokyo Olympics Just Got An Important No-Confidence Vote — From Japan’s Emperor
Japanese Emperor Naruhito appears “concerned” that this summer’s Olympics in Tokyo could cause a rise in coronavirus infections, according to the head of the Imperial Household Agency (IHA).“His majesty is very worried about the current infection situation of the COVID-19 disease,” Yasuhiko Nishimura, grand steward of the agency, told a regular news conference on Thursday, the Kyodo News agency reported. (Denyer, 6/24)

The Wall Street Journal: Positive Tests In Uganda Olympic Delegation Challenge Protocols For Tokyo Games 
The scenario cuts through several of the layers of protection that Tokyo organizers have been banking on in preparation for the Games. Participants do not have to be vaccinated, but officials have said they expect that up to 80 percent of them will be. Pre-departure testing is a major part of their plan in order to avoid the prospect of infected people traveling to the Games, where they will be crowded together indoors from the moment of their arrival, and then every day they are at the Olympic Village.  (Radnofsky and Gale, 6/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Illicit Covid-19 Drugs Bound For Mexico Seized By U.S. Authorities 
Federal authorities have seized at U.S. airports unauthorized versions of the Covid-19 treatment remdesivir destined for distribution in Mexico, the latest effort by the government to root out criminal activity related to the pandemic. Counterfeit or generic versions of remdesivir, an antiviral manufactured by Gilead Sciences Inc., are arriving in the U.S. by plane from Bangladesh and India and being smuggled by individuals to Mexico for patients willing to pay top dollar for the drugs, people familiar with the investigation said. (Hopkins, 6/23)