Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Who Gets Remdesivir? Shipments Determined By Secret Federal Formula
NPR: How Feds Decide On Remdesivir Shipments To States Remains Mysterious
NPR attempted to dig into federal data to understand how the government was making its decisions about remdesivir, but only a few of the data points used in the allocation process are public. Still, NPR has learned that some states, such as North Carolina, appear to have at times been allocated insufficient amounts of remdesivir, while others were offered more than they needed. Each week in July and early August, some states and territories were earmarked less remdesivir than they were offered the week before or none at all, even as their number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 was trending upward, an NPR analysis found. Meanwhile, some states were allocated enough remdesivir to treat every hospitalized COVID-19 patient more than once that week.(Lupkin, 8/19)
In other news —
The New York Times: Remdesivir Tests For Covid Treatments Enter New Phase
A large federal study that found an antiviral drug, remdesivir, can hasten the recovery in hospitalized Covid-19 patients, has begun a new phase of investigation. Now it will examine whether adding another drug, beta interferon — which mainly kills viruses but can also tame inflammation — would improve remdesivir’s effects and speed recovery even more. (Kolata, 8/18)
