Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
New Website Aims To Streamline Reimbursement For Covid Tests
Crain's Detroit Business: Entrepreneurs Launch Goodbill To Target At-Home COVID Test Reimbursement, Negotiate Hospital Bills
Navigating insurers' methods for getting reimbursed for at-home COVID-19 tests can be complicated. It usually involves cutting bar codes off the box, filling out an online form, then printing that form and mailing it to the insurer. Detroit entrepreneur Ian Sefferman and colleagues in Seattle have streamlined that process with a new website called Goodbill. The site, and eventually coordinating mobile app, works by uploading your insurance card and the appropriate bar codes on the tests and automates the reimbursement process for the user. (Walsh, 2/4)
In other testing and monitoring updates —
Fox13Now.com: Utah Pausing Use Of Rapid Tests At State-Run Sites
The Utah Department of Health will temporarily pause the use of rapid antigen tests at state-operated COVID-19 testing sites starting Monday. This includes testing sites run by UDOH mobile test teams, TestUtah, and TourHealth. (Burt, 2/6)
USA Today: COVID Testing Sites, Labs Proliferate Amid Easy Money, Lax Oversight
Tents, storage units, trailers, a former barbershop, an old karate studio and worn-down suburban strip malls. The locations are among the hundreds of sites nationwide where pop-up coronavirus testing vendors have set up shop in recent months, capitalizing on lax regulations, financial incentives and high demand for testing. State officials have been warning residents to avoid unregulated sites. But many Americans – without free, quick and accessible alternatives for coronavirus testing – have rushed to the locations anyway. (Alltucker and Hauck, 2/6)
NPR: Antibody Tests Are Now In Drugstores. What Can They Tell You About COVID?
My drugstore has started advertising antibody tests. Does that mean I can tell how protected I am from COVID by forking over a fee — I've seen $10 to $140 — and a vial of blood? Although antibody tests are increasingly available, the answer is, unfortunately, no. We put this question to experts, who explained why these tests — also called serology tests — are not yet useful for most individuals and why you definitely shouldn't change your behavior based on the results. (Eldred, 2/4)
CBS News: CDC To Ramp Up Wastewater Monitoring Program To Track COVID-19
Hundreds of wastewater treatment sites across the country will start submitting water samples to laboratories to detect the presence of COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. Data from the water samples can help communities detect the virus early on, and is now published to the CDC's COVID Data Tracker. The updated data tracker allows people to see virus level changes in participating communities' wastewater over the last 15 days and will be updated daily, according to Dr. Amy Kirby, who leads the National Wastewater Surveillance program. The percentage of positive tests over the last 15 days will also be made available using the data tracker. (Powell, 2/5)
Also —
Forbes: Meet The Family-Owned Company That Invented Swabs For Covid Tests
On a foggy early January day in the northern Italian city of Brescia, which was hit hard by the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, Stefania Triva, 57, sets out two swabs side by side on her desk. One is a regular cotton Q-tip, the other a special “flocked” swab, studded with tiny synthetic fibers that resemble split ends. That special swab—made by her family’s 43-year-old company, Copan—is the key element in hundreds of millions of Covid-19 PCR tests currently being plunged into noses around the world. Sitting in front of a large red-and-yellow abstract painting and a corkboard filled with photos of her three children, Triva delves into the subtle differences that make her flocked swabs the gold standard. (Tognini, 2/6)
