Based on the CDC’s Covid Data Tracker and using Thursday as the first day of the week, here is the FEHBlog’s weekly chart of new Covid cases from the 27th week of 2021 through the 4th week of 2022.

The Omicron surge clearly has peaked. However, the weekly new Covid deaths chart continues to rise as deaths are a lagging indicator.

Here’s the FEHBlog’s chart of Covid vacciniations, including boosters, distributed and administered from the 51st week of 2020 through the 4th week of 2022.

The CDC’s Covid Data Tracker Weekly Review sums it up as follows:

COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are starting to decline across the United States. However, deaths are still rising, and community transmission is still high nationwide. As of January 27, 2022, more than 211 million people in the United States have received a primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine and are considered fully vaccinated. More than 86 million people are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines, which means they have received all recommended COVID-19 vaccine doses, including boosters.

Two new CDC reports show that people who are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines have the highest amount of protection against both the Delta and Omicron variants.

STAT News adds that

New data show that vaccines still protect against a spinoff of the Omicron variant, a welcome sign as the world keeps a close eye on the latest coronavirus iteration.

BA.2, as the sublineage is known, is part of the broader Omicron umbrella. Scientists are paying more attention to it as it begins to eat into the dominance of the more common Omicron strain, which is technically called BA.1.

Here’s a link to the CDC’s latest Fluview whose key update is as follows:

The percent of specimens testing positive for influenza remains stable, indicating that influenza virus circulation has remained at similar levels during the past two weeks, even while overall levels of respiratory illness have declined.

WIRED Magazine informs us that the goverment’ covidtests.com has been working smoothly to distribute sixty million rapid antigen tests to American thanks to sound planning from the U.S. Digital Service supported by the U.S. Postal Service.

At one time, a presidential announcement like that would have caused a mad scramble in the agencies involved. But hard and bloody experience has changed the way the executive branch works. This time, even before Biden made his public promise, the people charged with actually building the site had, as Hsiang says, “a seat at the table” and were able to shape expectations from the beginning. “We did a bunch of work to make sure that it was technically feasible before we decided how we were going to implement it,” says Natalie Kates, who is the Covid lead for USDS.

They decided that the project should be sited and built at the United States Postal Service, which not only had the national database of valid addresses, but would ultimately deliver the packages. When the Postal Service’s CIO, Pritha Mehra, learned about the project in December, she was given estimates that demand might peak at a million users an hour. Mehra, a 31-year veteran of the service, concluded that was a lowball prediction and multiplied the number by 20, striving for a fail-safe capability. “Think about it—free Covid tests,” she says. “Look at the numbers of people that are trying to buy them. And so we read 20 times the demand that had been projected, and I told my team that’s what we’re going to build to.” She had no problem recruiting that team. “This is a technologist’s dream, to be able to do this,” she says.

Mehra knew it would be a challenge to the service’s architecture, which involved a combination of its own data centers and outside cloud providers. Her team set up a system with triple redundancy, beefing up the architecture, separating the customer experience process from the order fulfillment, and caching data multiple times in the process. And doing endless load testing. “Believe me, there was a lot of work behind what seemed like a very simple site,” she says.

Mazaal tov.

Health Payer Intelligence reviews insurer association comments on the HHS proposed 2023 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters which principally focuses on the ACA marketplace.

The proposed rule addressed a broad range of issues on the individual health insurance marketplace, from medical loss ratios to health equity data. 

AHIP and the Alliance for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) have both responded to the proposed rule with mixed reactions. Some elements they strongly applauded, such as the return to pre-2020 language around discrimination, web-broker display requirements, standards of conduct for brokers and agents, special enrollment period verification, and quality improvement strategy (QIS).

AHIP and ACAP highlighted a couple of key areas of the proposed rule that they would like to see changed in the finalized version [including risk adjustment, offering standardized plans, network adequacy, and medical loss ratio.

On the hand, the American Hospital Association also submitted comments on the proposed Notice.

The AHA yesterday voiced support for many of the policies proposed in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2023, including clarifications to the Medical Loss Ratio calculations, reestablishment of standardized health plan option requirements, changes to the essential health benefit nondiscrimination policy, and new requirements and standards of conduct for agents, brokers and web-brokers.

“In particular, we commend CMS on the proposed updates to the network adequacy standards, which are critical to ensuring that patients have access to the care they need,” AHA wrote. “We also strongly support CMS’ attention to advancing health equity throughout the proposed polices.”

Read the detailed comments here.

Finally and considering its the beginning of the weekend, here is a link to the American Medical Association’s What Doctors Wish Their Patients Knew about sodium consumption.