Friday Stats and More
Based on the Centers for Disease Control’s Covid Data Tracker and using Thursday as the first day of the week, here is the FEHBlog’s chart of weekly new Covid cases from the 27th week of 2021 through the 5th week of this year:
The Omicron surge is subsiding. The CDC’s weekly interpretation of its COVID statistics indicates that
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are continuing to decline across the United States. As of February 2, 2022, cases are down 53.1% from their peak on January 15. However, community transmission is still high nationwide.
Unfortunately Covid-related deaths, a lagging indicator, continue to rise:
Here’s the FEHBlog’s chart of weekly Covid vaccinations administered and distributed from the 51st week of 2020 through the 5th week of 2022.
The pace of COVID vaccinations is slowing again. 212.5 million out of 303 million Americans (net of 23.6 million children under 5 years old) are fully vaccinated and of that cadre, 89.3 million have been boostered.
The American Medical Association offers seven reasons why parents should get their kids ages 5 to 11 vaccinated against Covid.
Also today the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices unanimously ratified the FDA’s decision to award full marketing approval to the Moderna mRNA vaccine Spikevax for use with adults age 18 and older.
For the hardcore Covid statistics folks check out this tidbit from the CDC’s weekly interpretative report
Wastewater (sewage) surveillance is a promising tool for tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Many people with COVID-19 shed the virus in their feces, so testing wastewater can help us find COVID-19 in communities. Wastewater testing has been successfully used as a method for detection of other diseases, such as polio. Wastewater surveillance results can provide an early warning of increasing COVID-19 cases and help communities prepare.
On February 3, 2022, COVID Data Tracker released a Wastewater Surveillance tab, which tracks SARS-CoV-2 levels in sewage at more than 400 testing sites across the country. This marks the first time CDC’s wastewater surveillance data is available for download. See “A Closer Look” below for more information about this method of data collection.
From the Covid testing mandate front, the Affordable Care Act regulators issued ACA FAQ 52 late this afternoon. The regulators use this FAQ to provide helpful clarifications to the mandate. Check it out.
From the Covid treatment front, Medscape tells us that
A little more than a month after receiving FDA authorization, Merck has delivered 1.4 million courses of its COVID-19 antiviral pill in the United States and expects to deliver its total commitment of 3.1 million treatment courses soon, company CEO Rob Davis said on CNBC.
Merck has also shipped 4 million courses of the pill, molnupiravir, to 25 nations across the world, he said.
“We’ve shown that molnupiravir works against Omicron, which is important against that variant,” Davis said Thursday morning. “And obviously we’ll have to see how this plays out and what is the initial uptake, but right now we feel we’re off to a good start.”
The CDC’s weekly Fluview report summarizes the flu situation as follows: “Influenza activity has decreased in recent weeks, but sporadic activity continues across the country.”
From the Postal reform front, Federal News Network reports that
The Postal Service’s best shot at a long-term legislative reform in recent years is finally moving ahead in Congress next week.
The House expects to vote on the Postal Service Reform Act next week. The House Oversight and Reform Committee approved the legislation last May.
Notably, the most recent version of the bill now has the support of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE), which raised significant concerns about an earlier version.
NARFE, in a letter of support Friday, said an earlier version of the bill contained “onerous provisions” that could have increased health insurance premiums for all non-postal federal employees and retires.
The earlier version of the bill, the association added, would have also required current postal retirees to pay additional premiums for mostly duplicative health insurance coverage through Medicare.
Moreover, this afternoon, the Congressional Budget Office released its report on the House Rules Committee Print 117-32 for H.R. 3076, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022. The FEHBlog does not see any showstoppers in that CBO report. The House Rules Committee has scheduled a hearing on this bill for Monday at 2 pm ET. You can read the current version of the bill here.
Finally, Healthcare Dive reports that
Congress appears poised to work on a bipartisan mental health and substance misuse package this year, following a series of hearings this week stressing the need to boost the workforce, insurer benefits and telehealth access.
Legislators also seemed to support giving federal departments more power to force health insurers to comply with parity laws, following a report in late January finding widespread inequities between mental and medical benefits in the U.S. that sent physician groups up in arms.
That, dear readers, is a big bowl of wrong because the outrage stems from the “non-quantitative treatment limit” mental health parity standard set by the Obama era regulation, not the original law. That standard, in the FEHBlog’s view, is amorphous. The FEHBlog favors mental health parity but please Congress don’t make the standard impossible to achieve consistently. Keep it simple.