Walk-Up Pharmacy Prescriptions For Covid Pills Available, But Limited

NPR: COVID Treatments Like Paxlovid To Be Prescribed On The Spot In Some Pharmacies
Starting this week, high-risk patients with COVID symptoms will be able to walk into hundreds of pharmacy-based clinics for a free test – and walk out with a free course of COVID treatment pills. It's the start of a new initiative from the Biden administration, and it's a key feature of the President's national COVID preparedness plan. "I've ordered more pills than anyone in the world has," Biden said in his State of the Union address March 1, "And now, we're launching the 'Test to Treat' initiative so people can get tested at a pharmacy and, if they prove positive, receive the antiviral pills on the spot at no cost." The program aims to speed up the process of getting COVID drugs for high-risk patients who need to start the treatment quickly for it to work. But it is limited by the requirement to have a prescriber on-site — which most pharmacies don't have — and will initially only reach only hundreds among the tens of thousands of retail pharmacies nationwide. (Huang, 3/8)

In other updates on the spread of covid —

NPR: As U.S. COVID Deaths Near 1 Million, Advocates Press For A Memorial Day
Janeth Nuñez del Prado had the date marked on her calendar. Last May, her dad Hugo, who lived in Bolivia, was supposed to visit her family in New Mexico. "And we would look at the date all the time, and be so excited," Nuñez del Prado said. Tragically, her dad came down with COVID-19 before he could make the trip. "He died just two weeks before he was supposed to come and get the vaccine and meet his grandkids for the first time," she said, wiping away tears. "You know, we always thought we would have more time." (Keith, 3/9)

The Atlantic: Why America Became Numb To COVID Deaths
The United States reported more deaths from COVID-19 last Friday than deaths from Hurricane Katrina, more on any two recent weekdays than deaths during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more last month than deaths from flu in a bad season, and more in two years than deaths from HIV during the four decades of the AIDS epidemic. At least 953,000 Americans have died from COVID, and the true toll is likely even higher because many deaths went uncounted. COVID is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after only heart disease and cancer, which are both catchall terms for many distinct diseases. The sheer scale of the tragedy strains the moral imagination. On May 24, 2020, as the United States passed 100,000 recorded deaths, The New York Times filled its front page with the names of the dead, describing their loss as “incalculable.” Now the nation hurtles toward a milestone of 1 million. What is 10 times incalculable? (Yong, 3/8)

Los Angeles Times: California Surpasses 9 Million Coronavirus Cases
California has reported a total of 9 million coronavirus infections, fueled by this winter’s Omicron surge. The overall case count, tracked by The Times, is now larger than the combined populations of San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties and is the equivalent of nearly 1 in 4 Californians testing positive at some point during the pandemic. Even more stunning is how rapidly the caseload has ballooned since the arrival of the hyper-infectious Omicron variant late last year. Of the 9,001,924 total cases that had been compiled as of Monday, 3.9 million — 44% — were reported since Dec. 1. (Money and Lin II, 3/8)

Oklahoman: Oklahoma Health Department Ends Daily COVID Case Updates
The Oklahoma Health Department is doing away with daily COVID-19 updates on new cases as it begins to treat the virus as "endemic." Until now, the department published a daily update at 11 a.m. each weekday — and recently, on some Saturdays during the omicron surge — detailing how many new COVID-19 cases the state had added to its total. It also included updates on how many COVID-19 patients were in hospital beds across the state, averages of new case counts and an updated death toll from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics. (Branham, 3/8)

KHN: One California University Has Unified Town And Gown To Fight Covid. Why Haven’t Others?
Once a week, Lori Janich drives down the street from her office and partakes in an ongoing success story. Phone in hand to confirm her appointment, she strolls into the massive Activities and Recreation Center on the University of California-Davis campus, reaches a covid-19 testing station, swirls water in her mouth, spits into a tube, and leaves. Within a day, she receives her test result. Janich doesn’t live in Davis, but because her job as a licensed dental hygienist brings her there, everything about the covid testing process is free for her. The same goes for all UC-Davis students, faculty members, and staffers; Davis city residents; local workers; and visitors — almost anyone whose life brings them into town. Davis has a population of about 70,000, with an additional 15,000 people living on campus, yet through a joint city-university effort, it has administered more than 740,000 tests. (Kreidler, 3/9)

In other covid news —

CIDRAP: Study: 3% Of Adults With COVID Pneumonia Develop New-Onset Dementia
Three percent of 10,403 adults with COVID-19 pneumonia were diagnosed as having new-onset dementia after a median of 182 days, a significantly higher proportion than that observed with other types of pneumonia, finds a study yesterday in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. University of Missouri at Columbia researchers conducted a case series of COVID-19 pneumonia patients along with matched contemporary control patients who had non–SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia from 110 US healthcare centers to identify new diagnoses of dementia at least 30 days after hospitalization. (3/8)

The Washington Post: Patients With Long Covid Symptoms Face Tough Disability Benefit Fights 
Deepa Singh, 30, of Louisville, has been seriously ill for two years, racked with extreme fatigue, racing heartbeat and memory problems from long covid that she says prevent her from working. Adding to her distress, she says, has been a grueling — and so far unsuccessful — battle for disability payments. Singh, who worked as a project manager for a Fortune 100 company, is among a cohort of long covid patients who have been denied disability benefits, either by private insurance companies, which operate benefit plans offered by employers, or by the Social Security Administration, which manages government disability benefits. (Rowland, 3/8)

The Mercury News: Long COVID Mysteries Studied Using Lab-Grown Heart Cells
The attack of the COVID-19 virus on the human heart is completely hidden from view, revealed only by the damage that’s left behind. But San Francisco scientists have designed a way to witness the assault. In lab-grown globules of throbbing heart cells, they can watch signs of distress, then death. By creating disease in a dish, the Gladstone Institutes team hopes to better understand the mysteries of COVID – not just in the heart, but also in other tissues. They’re part of a growing international effort to study how the virus infects and damages cells. “Very rapidly, this is opening up avenues for us to look at many different organ systems,” said virologist Dr. Melanie Ott, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and professor of medicine at UC San Francisco. (Krieger, 3/8)

Also —

Modern Healthcare: OSHA To Crack Down On COVID-19 Safety Violations
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Wednesday will start a round of follow-up inspections of hospitals, nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities that previously received citations for COVID-19-related infractions. The facilities will have to prove that any past pandemic violations were corrected, and also provide a number of documents and other measures to prove they'll be prepared for another wave of COVID-19. "I think for the most part, we're going to see hospitals being ready for these because hospitals are constantly having to be prepared for quality types of inspections, whether it's from their state licensure agency, other regulators or CMS," said Kevin Troutman, a partner at Fisher Phillips, adding that skilled nursing facilities might have a harder time. "Nursing homes and smaller operations may face a bigger challenge just because they don't typically have as much in the way of resources and dedicated quality assurance types of staff." (Gillespie, 3/8)