Monday Musings

David Ermer–CDC, COVID-19–

The FEHBlog was pleased to learn about the President’s initiatives to expand COVID-19 testing discussed in last Friday’s post. The President explained that Google would offer a website that allows concerned persons to find out if they need to be COVID-19 tested and if so arrange for a drive thru appointed. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google/ Alphabet ‘s Verily Health subsidiary launched a pilot platform in northern California. The pilot platform was “overwhelmed” by requests. Here’s a Verily Health link to more information on the platform. It’s good to see that Verily already is engaged in a trial and error pilot process and hopefully the platform will be ready for prime time soon because testing for disease also is important.

Speaking of diseases, here are some highlights from the Centers for Disease Control’s latest Fluline report:

  • Laboratory confirmed influenza associated hospitalization rates for the overall U.S. population remain moderate compared to recent seasons, but rates for children 0-4 years and adults 18-49 years are now the highest CDC has on record for these age groups, surpassing rates reported during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Hospitalization rates for school-aged children (5-17 years) are higher than any recent regular season but remain lower than rates experienced by this age group during the pandemic.
  • Pneumonia and influenza mortality has been low, but 144 influenza-associated deaths in children have been reported so far this season. This number is higher for the same time period than in every season since reporting began in 2004-05, except for the 2009 pandemic.
  • CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 36 million flu illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths from flu.

The Health Affairs blog discusses one of the FEHBlog’s favorite topics — opportunities for providers, payers and governments in the U.S. to expand telehealth use in response to the COVID-19 emergency. FEHBP plans generally offer telehealth benefits and there’s no time like the present to promote them.