Based on the Centers for Disease Control’s COVID Data Tracker and using Thursday as the first day of the wee, here is the FEHBlog’s weekly chart of new COVID cases this year:

New cases plateaued this week. Weekly new COVID hospitalizations continue their down trend. For the latest week, the number of new admissions was 5,025 compared to a peak of 16,478 in the first week of 2021.

The number of COVID-related deaths continues it decline according the FEHBlog’s chart:

Distribution and administration of COVID vaccines was up sharply the past two weeks. At least one million doses were administered daily last week.

Here’s a link to the CDC’s weekly interpretation of its COVID statistics. Notably,

As of November 4, 2021, 426.7 million vaccine doses have been administered. Overall, about 222.6 million people, or 67% of the total U.S. population, have received at least one dose of vaccine. About 193.2 million people, or 58.2% of the total U.S. population, have been fully vaccinated.* About 21.5 million additional/booster doses in fully vaccinated people have been reported. As of November 4, 2021, the 7-day average number of administered vaccine doses reported (by date of CDC report) to CDC per day was 1,510,524, a 55.8% increase from the previous week.

The best news is Pfizer’s announcement of a successful trial of antiviral pill to tame early COVID.

• PAXLOVID™ (PF-07321332; ritonavir) was found to reduce the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% compared to placebo in non-hospitalized high-risk adults with COVID-19
• In the overall study population through Day 28, no deaths were reported in patients who received PAXLOVID™ as compared to 10 deaths in patients who received placebo
• Pfizer plans to submit the data as part of its ongoing rolling submission to the U.S. FDA for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) as soon as possible

The Merck pill that Great Britain approved this week and the FDA will consider this month had the following reporting efficacy in its trial —

• At the Interim Analysis, 7.3 Percent of Patients Who Received Molnupiravir Were Hospitalized Through Day 29, Compared With 14.1 Percent of Placebo-Treated Patients Who were Hospitalized or Died

The FEHBlog points this out to illustrate the strength of the Pfizer pill not to downplay the Merck pill.

The public health strategy for defeating COVID always has been a combination of testing, drugs, and vaccines. Nobody expected the vaccines to lead the pack, but the FEHBlog is grateful that testing and drugs finally are catching up to the wonderous vaccines. You combine these new drugs with rapid at home tests like the recently FDA approved FlowFlex on top of the vaccines, and you are left with endemic COVID in the FEHBlog’s view. As the FEHBlog is not a medical expert, let’s close this section with a squib from STAT News:

The development of oral medicines that can be used to treat Covid early on could blunt the impact of the pandemic.

Nahid Bhadelia, the founding director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research at Boston University, called oral antiviral pills “incredibly important” because existing treatments such as monoclonal antibodies must be given intravenously or as shots.

“With an oral antiviral, patients have more time and greater access to a treatment that will keep them out of the hospital,” Bhadelia said. “But the promise of oral antivirals will only be recognized if they’re available at your local pharmacy, and you can afford it, and you can get the test that tells you that you’re positive for Covid, so you can actually take advantage of this drug. So, the promise is there, but the rest of the pieces need to come together.”

From the tidbits department —

Morning Consult reports that

• 72% of U.S. adults who have used telehealth said they’ve accessed virtual care through their regular provider or health plan, while another 17% have gotten care through a direct-to-consumer platform and 11% have used both types of services.
• 53% of U.S. adults said they’d rather use in-person health care than telehealth moving forward, but that share fell to 45% among those who have used telehealth in the past.
• Among the challenges for on-demand telehealth is getting coverage for the services, as traditional payers and providers roll out their own virtual care options.

The HHS Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research reports that

The Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) used an AHRQ initiative to expand treatment for opioid use disorders in Pennsylvania. As a result, primary care physicians are now using medication-assisted treatment to care for their patients with opioid use disorders.  This new practice has been a success; as of fall 2021, 75 percent of patients who initiated treatment have returned in the following calendar month to continue treatment. With addiction treatment, this number of returning patients represents a major improvement, as most patients traditionally end treatment quickly.

With eight hospitals and numerous health centers, physician practices, rehabilitation locations, and other outpatient locations, LVHN serves patients in seven eastern Pennsylvania counties. LVHN used AHRQ resources to integrate treatment for opioid use disorder into primary care practice.

“In one visit, a patient can get his diabetes and blood pressure medications, plus his medication for opioid use disorder, without feeling the judgement of going to an addiction specialist,” noted Gillian A. Beauchamp, M.D., LVHN emergency physician. “When you’re sitting in a primary care waiting room, nobody knows why you’re there, so you don’t feel the stigma you might in another setting of care.”

Bloomberg tells us that

Even though the [COVID pandemic] upheaval increased risk factors for suicide like financial stress, the number of Americans who took their own lives decreased by 3% in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control’s statistical group reported this week

Suicides had increased steadily this century before peaking in 2018 with 48,000 annual deaths. That number declined slightly in 2019 and continued to drop in 2020, to less than 46,000, according to the CDC’s provisional data. In April, when shutdowns were most severe, the U.S. saw the lowest number of suicides in any month of 2020, 14% below the previous year’s total that month.

Federal News Network reports

In an ongoing effort to inject more young talent into the federal workforce, the Office of Personnel Management is out with yet another new hiring policy.

The latest policy, which OPM will publish as an interim rule Friday, is designed to help agencies more easily recruit and hire recent college graduates into administrative and professional positions in the federal government.

The new hiring policy means agencies can noncompetitively appoint qualified and eligible college graduates to permanent career positions at or below the General Schedule 11 level, OPM said. In a blog post on the new policy, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said recent gradates have a chance to earn up to $72,000 a year under this new authority.