Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
HHS Takes Control Of Antibody Drugs, Will Send To Areas With Covid Surges
Bloomberg: U.S. To Supply Covid Drugs Based On Cases Amid Delta Surge
The U.S. government plans to more directly control where Covid-19 antibody treatments are sent amid a surge in infections and hospitalizations in states with large pockets of unvaccinated people. Hospitals and other care providers will no longer be able to directly order monoclonal antibody therapies from distributors, according to a Sept. 13 update posted on the Department of Health and Human Services website. Instead, the U.S. government will determine what quantity of the drugs to ship to each state and territory based on Covid-19 case numbers and use of the treatments locally. State health departments will then determine how to distribute the antibody therapies to hospitals and other sites, according to the HHS update. (Griffin and Court, 9/14)
Politico: Biden's Team Tightens Grip On State Use Of Covid Antibody Treatments
The Biden administration is imposing new limits on states’ ability to access to Covid-19 antibody treatments amid rising demand from GOP governors who have relied on the drug as a primary weapon against the virus. Federal health officials plan to allocate specific amounts to each state under the new approach, in an effort to more evenly distribute the 150,000 doses that the government makes available each week. (Cancryn, 9/14)
In updates on the treatment of long covid —
Fox News: ‘Long COVID’ Affects 1 In 10 Kids, Israel Survey Finds
Approximately 1 in 10 Israeli children experienced lasting COVID-19 symptoms after recovering from their illnesses, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Findings from a phone survey conducted from late May-June 2021 drew from 13,834 parents of kids aged 3-18 who recovered from COVID-19. Results indicated 11.2% of the kids experienced "some symptoms after recovery," however the figure dropped to 1.8% to 4.6% six months following acute illness, depending on the child’s age. (Rivas, 9/14)
USA Today: Long COVID In Kids: Lasting Illnesses Are Puzzling, Can Be Crippling
Thirteen-year-old Rose Lehane Tureen’s debilitating headache has lasted a year and a half. At 5 months old, Madelynn Birchmeier stopped reaching developmental milestones. She couldn’t hold a bottle and didn’t have the strength to crawl or sit up on her own. Now a year old, she’s undergoing therapy with hopes she’ll catch up. For 7-year-old Waylon Wehrle, complications from COVID-19 stole his memory along with his ability to walk and talk. After months in hospitals and rehab, he has slowly improved but will have diabetes the rest of his life. The virus heightened 14-year-old Nicaja Taylor’s anxiety and asthma and also may have triggered diabetes. (Jordan Shamus and Weintraub, 9/14)
USA Today: New Clinics Help Patients Navigate Litany Of Long-Term COVID Symptoms
WHILE THE LIST of symptoms associated with long-haul COVID-19 may be long, the list of medications to treat it is short. But doctors – and their patients – don’t have the luxury of waiting for the science to catch up with the virus. As more people survive COVID-19 infections yet continue to suffer, health care has begun to respond with multidisciplinary clinics that connect patients with a range of experts. They work together to devise a plan, operating without a playbook because treatment guidelines have yet to be written. Demand already exceeds supply at many clinics, an ongoing challenge, said Dr. Peter Staats, who serves on the medical advisory board for Survivor Corps, a grassroots group of COVID-19 survivors. (Innes and Rudavsky, 9/15)
In other covid research —
CIDRAP: 83% Of Stem Cell Recipients Produce Antibodies After 2 COVID-19 Vaccine Doses
Stem cell transplant recipients with cancers like leukemia had an antibody response rate of 83% to the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, with almost two-thirds having very strong responses, an observational, single-center study today in JAMA Network Open finds. Researchers from Nantes University Hospital in France studied 117 coronavirus-naïve adults who received a donor stem cell transplant for the treatment of hematologic cancer and were given two doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from Jan 20 to Apr 17. The median interval between the two doses was 22 days. (Van Beusekom, 9/14)
CIDRAP: Severe COVID Linked To More Self-Attacking Antibodies, Study Says
Hospitalized COVID-19 patients were more likely to have autoantibodies, or self-attacking antibodies, than those without COVID-19, according to a study today in Nature Communications. The researchers looked at March and April 2020 blood samples from 147 COVID-19 patients at Stanford-affiliated hospitals, as well as 48 patients from Kaiser Permanente in California, although most of the study's assessments didn't involve the whole cohort. (9/14)
